IRC log for #koha, 2007-03-13

All times shown according to UTC.

Time S Nick Message
13:19 mn hello
13:19 dewey salut, mn
13:20 mn i'd like to know some things about koha before trying it
14:55 mn especially concerning barcodes
14:57 mn i'd like to have the whole circulation as a self-service-station with a barcodereader
14:57 kados hi mn
14:58 mn hi
14:58 kados mn: LibLime has a separate self-service self checkout module for Koha that's not yet been contributed
14:58 kados and it uses barcodes
14:58 kados so patron scans their barcode, then the barcodes of the items they are checking out
14:59 kados then clicks on 'complete transaction'
14:59 mn exactly what i was thinking about
14:59 mn where is the hook?
14:59 kados it will probably be wrapped into a future version of the public release
14:59 kados but we haven't had enough sponsorship for it to afford that thusfar
15:00 kados it was developed for one client on a strict budget
15:01 mn well i'm not someone to sponsor something. I'm on a strict (read no) budget myself. I do a ~5000 books private lib for around 150 patrons
15:01 kados public library?
15:02 mn no not public
15:03 mn i was inspired by our city library though but they use something comercial
15:03 kados right
15:03 mn it will run on a celeron with 98mb ram
15:04 kados you can run koha on a PDA :-) (I've done it :-))
15:04 mn really? sounds cool
15:04 kados yea, was a bit of fun I had a few years back :-)
15:05 kados anyway ...
15:05 kados here are some demos:
15:05 kados http://liblime.com/demos
15:05 kados of Koha, if you want to experiment
15:06 kados there are plenty of free support options, including this IRC channel and the mailing list
15:06 kados and there are companies that offer inexpensive support as well
15:06 kados http://koha.org/support/
15:07 mn great, thank you. How long do you think will it take me to set it up and enter the books?
15:07 kados hard to say
15:08 kados are you going to run on linux? debian?
15:08 kados install and maintain yourself?
15:08 kados do you have basic command-line skils?
15:08 kados understand apache, mysql, etc.?
15:09 kados if so, it should only take a day or two at the most
15:09 kados but if you're also learning all of that stuff, it could take a while
15:09 mn presumably ubuntu. cli proficient. mysql too. but it is always a pain for me to maintain apache
15:10 kados if you want a system up and running immediately, some of the companies offering hosted packages can get your system installed in a few hours
15:10 kados probably not on a sunday though :-)
15:11 mn why could that be?
15:11 mn how do i checkout something without barcodes. Isn't this going to be error-prone?
15:12 kados you need barcodes to check something out
15:12 kados or at least some identifier in place of a barcode
15:12 kados that's unique
15:14 mn so barcodes for the books but not for the users. And your system is for users?
15:19 kados the koha you download from koha.org has two interfaces:
15:20 kados 1. public interface for searching, placing reserves, checking account information
15:20 kados 2. a staff interface for managing patrons, checking out items, adding books to the collection, etc.
15:20 kados liblime has a separate interface that allows:
15:20 kados 3. patrons to use a unique identifier (usually barcode) to check out books to themselves (using another uniquie identifer for the book)
15:21 kados #3 is not in standard koha, it's only available on LibLime's hosted platform
15:21 kados we may eventually contribute it if we find sponsorship for the project
15:23 mn i see ...
15:25 mn and koha can print barcodes for the books?
15:25 kados yep
15:26 mn but not for the patrons?
15:26 kados a previous version could print for both, but that feature isn't currently maintained
15:26 kados printing barcodes is pretty easy
15:26 kados there are plenty of websites that let you do that for free
15:27 kados or you can just buy some pre-printed ones pretty cheaply too
15:27 mn i didn't know that... And will i find compatible barcodereaders in europe?
15:28 kados yep
15:29 kados barcode standards are international
15:29 mn yeah i mean in terms of devicedrivers
15:30 kados ?
15:30 kados not sure I understand your question
15:32 mn well i asume that the barcodereader connets via usb. And then? There has to be some part which brings this into the perl-application that is koha
15:32 kados koha is web based
15:32 kados and a barcode reader is just a keyboard to the computer
15:33 mn So you have to place the cursor in the right field?
15:33 kados there is auto-focus built in
15:34 mn so i can use any barcodereader? Even one with RS232?
15:34 kados yep
15:34 mn cool
15:39 mn if your self-checkout module only works with an online-server it is unusable to me anyway
15:40 kados well, all of Koha is web based
15:41 mn yes but i can install mysql+httpd+perl+firefox on the same machine, right?
15:42 kados yep, if you want to
15:43 mn well for our needs everthing else would be overkill. Althogh backup and the like are going to be a problem
15:51 mn well thanks a lot for answering my nasty questions! It should be quite late now in nz! Thanks a lot and a nice week!
15:52 kados no prob
15:52 kados and btw, I'm based on our US office
15:52 kados ohio in fact :-)
15:53 mn so its more like noon there
15:55 kados 15:00 in fact
15:55 kados and it's early morning in NZ
05:17 toins hello world
05:22 chris hi toins
05:23 toins hello chris
05:23 chris how are things?
05:27 toins chris, good !
09:07 kados morning #koha
09:09 hdl hi kados
10:45 kados morning owen
10:45 owen Hi kados
10:46 kados so I spent a few hours over the weekend on YUI
10:46 kados it's actually pretty simple to use
10:47 kados I think the hardest thing about the design for 3.0 is gonna be the design part
10:47 kados implementation shouldn't be too hard
10:48 owen Tell me about what you tried with YUI
10:48 kados I played with the following components:
10:48 kados Button
10:48 kados DataTable
10:48 kados Menu
10:48 kados TabView
10:48 kados and ...
10:49 kados there's a general layout one
10:49 kados can't remember what it's called :-)
10:50 kados Grids
10:52 kados actually, of them, I think Grids is probably the one we want to start with
10:52 kados it's so simple to use and works so well
10:52 owen yeah, we talked briefly about that one on Saturday
10:53 kados as I played around it struck me that we're really not that organized about what types of data elements we have
10:53 kados in the intranet
10:53 owen What do you mean?
10:53 kados (probably in the opac too, but I was looking at the intranet)
10:53 kados well for instance, there are global navigation elements
10:54 kados in NPL templates that aren't in default or katipo
10:54 kados and vice versa
10:54 kados and each module presumably has its own set of navigation elements
10:54 kados I was also mentally experimenting with the idea of 'action' vs 'view'
10:55 owen that sounds interesting
10:55 kados so 'change password' or 'delete' is an action
10:55 kados whereas 'Fines' and 'Reserves' are views
10:56 owen Much like we did in the OPAC
10:58 kados yea
10:58 kados something else that's cool about YUI is you can have different behaviors for different elements of the same class
10:58 kados so take tabs for instance
10:58 kados you might have 4 tabs on a detail page
10:58 kados three of them have pre-loaded content
10:58 kados one of them is a link to another page
10:59 kados with YUI, you can make them all behave and look like one set (of course the new page would have to be set up to look the same, etc.)

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