IRC log for #koha, 2004-12-04

All times shown according to UTC.

Time S Nick Message
13:46 kados what time was the IRC meeting today set for /me erased the email by mistake
13:46 paul mmm... wait, i'm searching
13:47 paul 9GMT if i don't mind
13:47 paul (thanks to remind it to me, as I would have missed it...)
13:47 kados ok ... thanks paul
13:47 kados :-)
13:47 paul Is Thursday December 2nd,
13:47 paul 9PM GMT
13:47 paul 4PM Eastern Standard (USA)
13:48 paul (copy of Rachel mail)
13:48 kados cool
13:48 paul i'll release a 2.2.0RC4 very soon.
13:48 paul unless everybody want me to name it 2.2.0 ;-)
13:49 paul (but i think rach had a very good idea : release the 2.2.0 official on January 2 or 3, for the 5th birthday of Koha !)
14:14 kados that's a great idea!
14:14 kados I've submitted some docs for Koha to Stephen ... so those will be included
14:14 paul great
14:15 paul i've a woman that translate docs for me (being paid)
14:15 paul so, french docs should follow soon
16:50 rach hello
16:52 rosa morena
16:52 rosa as I heard someone say this morning, to the surprise of the Morning Report reporter
16:52 rosa are we an hour ahead of GMT now?
16:57 rach I wish I knew
16:57 rach right I gotta shut down the electrics for a few minutes according to the sparky
16:57 rach back shortly
17:54 kados I guess it's close to that time eh?
18:00 kados hi stephen
18:01 shedges hi josh -- small group?
18:01 kados sofar
18:01 kados paul and I talked about the meeting earlier and he said he'd be here
18:01 kados hi owen
18:01 chris hi all
18:01 shedges how's the baby, owen?
18:01 owen Feeling lots better.
18:02 owen My wife's got her at the moment, but I may need to disappear at a moment's notice here.
18:02 genji hiya all
18:02 chris i have apologies from rach and russel, rach has no power currently and russel's net connection is down
18:02 kados ahh ...
18:03 genji oh, the meeting.. cool.
18:03 kados yea rach mentioned something about power earlier
18:03 kados hehe
18:03 shedges are you our fearless leader today, chris?
18:04 chris dunno about that :)
18:04 chris but i can have a crack at chairing
18:04 owen I wonder if slef will be joining us?
18:05 chris shall we give it a couple more minutes see if paul or slef wander in
18:05 owen Yeah, we really should have paul here
18:05 shedges i've forgotten what rach wanted to accomplish today
18:05 chris me too
18:05 owen And slef is the one that knows what's going on with 2.0
18:05 chris and i think her phone is down also
18:05 shedges does she still have a house??
18:06 chris :) yeah, its just the phone is one of those cordless jobs, they dont handle having no power very well
18:07 owen Rachel wrote: "As Paul is making good progress with the release of 2.2, another release candidate out over the weekend, can we please have another Koha IRC meeting.
18:07 owen Specifically we'll be looking for feedback on the release canadidates, to see where the documentation project is at, and to sort out a publicity plan for when the new release is out. "
18:07 kados I've emailed slef and paul ...
18:07 chris ahh cool
18:08 owen Seems like this is later than our usual time.  I hope they can make it.
18:08 kados not much of a meeting without the two release managers :-)
18:09 chris yeah, i think we forgot we are gmt+13 at the moment
18:09 chris 8pm gmt might have been a better time
18:09 owen Be good to have Emiliano here too...I don't think I've heard anything from him recently though
18:09 chris i wonder if we should try to reschedule
18:10 kados might be a good idea
18:11 shedges chris, have you looked at 2.2 yet?
18:12 shedges (I confess I haven't, just seen Paul's docs.)
18:12 chris yep, we have a copy running
18:12 chris functionality wise .. its pretty sweet
18:12 shedges stable?
18:13 chris so far so good, but we havent done any load testing
18:13 chris i have some issues with the interface .. but those are purely cosmetic
18:14 chris id really like for us to do a "pretty" version for the default intranet/opac templates
18:14 shedges hey, would you and owen consider working up a doc on templating?
18:14 chris im game if owen is
18:14 owen It's already on my list, stephen.
18:14 shedges great!
18:14 chris he could tackle the html, ill tackle the perl side
18:15 shedges i think it's help a lot of folks
18:15 chris i think you are right
18:16 kados speaking of docs ... I was working on the Backing up and Restoring section earlier and I was wonder whether chris uses keychains for passwordless authentication (to scp backups offsite)
18:16 JYL57 Stephen, can you give us a 2.2 doc status ?!
18:17 shedges I'm waiting for Paul to approve the XML of his French version
18:17 JYL57 We are using a 2.2 release but french online help is missing...
18:17 shedges As for English, somebody's supposed to be working on a translation
18:17 JYL57 I can read and check it for you both if you want
18:18 JYL57 Yes, I saw that a part of the documentation is already translated in french
18:18 kados I wonder how well google would translate french to english docs
18:18 shedges sounds good -- what's your e-mail
18:18 chris joshua, yep i use keys
18:18 JYL57 jylemaire@rocketmail.com
18:19 shedges (I think that's what I've got so far, and the translation is way too rough.)
18:19 JYL57 google translation is a starting point... but anything will do for my librarians... ;-)
18:20 JYL57 My opinion is that the manual is IT focused
18:20 shedges i've got the docs stored on a different machine, I'll e-mail what I've got later.
18:20 JYL57 Ok, no prob
18:20 shedges yeah, the online help was supposed to be aimed at the user.
18:21 JYL57 Is the online help included with screens copies ?!
18:21 JYL57 I mean in your manual
18:21 shedges nope.  In fact, we're avoiding screen shots if possible, because different installs can look very different.
18:21 JYL57 Or should I post some french translation proposals to the wiki ? or you directly ?!
18:21 kados owen I noticed that the npl templates aren't loaded on our test machine (101) ... is that just from the last update?
18:22 owen You mean they aren't set as the current template, or they're not there?
18:22 kados the're not set up as the current template
18:22 shedges to me would be great JY -- shedges@skemotah.com
18:22 JYL57 wiki or mail ?!
18:22 shedges mail
18:22 JYL57 Ok !
18:23 owen kados, I think the last thing I worked on yesterday was in the default template, so it got left that way
18:23 kados ahh
18:23 kados I like chris's proposal that we have a "pretty" default template ...
18:24 chris i still think that being able to switch templates is really cool .. just as an aside
18:26 chris joshua: i think perhaps we should aim to have a nice set of pretty default templates for the jan release if possible .. im not sure how feasible it is .. but we should be able to do that for the opac at least
18:27 shedges and the opac is the most important...
18:27 chris http://opac.qa.katipo.co.nz/cg[…]koha/opac-main.pl
18:27 chris is a 2.2 version running
18:27 chris so there are a few template issues (the title being one of them)
18:28 JYL57 Stephen, I thought about online help again
18:28 chris that id like to see fixed before the 2.2 full release .. as i said before im pretty happy with the functionality though
18:28 JYL57 Wouldn't it be nice to have a date or a version of the online help text ?!
18:28 chris paul and anyone who has been helping have done well with that
18:29 kados well as far as templates go, how do the npl templates compare?
18:29 JYL57 I want to be able to check easily some changes in one version or another
18:29 shedges JYL, yeah, I think I should be knocking the online helps into XML, complete with revision numbers
18:30 shedges the revision numbers match (sort of) the version numbers
18:30 JYL57 Yes, I read that some weeks ago
18:30 JYL57 Online help in the XML is fine for me, one place for all !
18:31 shedges Maybe I'll make that a priority.
18:31 chris http://opac.qa.katipo.co.nz/cg[…]koha/opac-main.pl  whoops i think  the npl ones are busted on our install :)
18:31 JYL57 Didn't dare to ask for... ;-)
18:31 chris maybe missing the css file?
18:31 kados chris looks like the css files are missing
18:32 owen I wonder if the path to the css file is wrong...
18:32 chris ill look to see if its there
18:33 JYL57 The OPAC is really cool in the 2.2
18:33 shedges yeah, you know, it really is pretty impressive.
18:33 owen That's the old version of the npl templates that still has our navigation menu items in it (fixed in CVS this week)
18:34 chris ill get the new versions from cvs and install them later on then
18:34 chris ta owen
18:34 shedges does the default opac-main use css now?
18:34 owen Yes
18:35 shedges (thought so, from the bottom of the page)
18:35 owen Or no, is Paul's css version called 'css', and the default is still the non-css one for the OPAC?
18:35 chris http://opac.qa.katipo.co.nz/cg[…]koha/opac-main.pl <-- default .. i think should be deprecated and something else should become the default
18:36 chris thats right owen
18:36 chris opac.qa is running the default templates now, i think either npl or css ones should become the default or a new set made
18:37 chris and what is the default now, should be taken out
18:37 kados I think paul recently mentioned that css is the new default
18:37 shedges good.
18:37 chris yep, would be good to call it default then i think
18:37 kados on both opac and intranet I think
18:38 kados the change language feature is really nice but sofar I haven't seen it work since no other language templates have been committed
18:38 kados chris could you commit your mauri templates? :-)
18:39 owen css should be in English and French, shouldn't it?
18:39 kados hmm ... lemme try
18:39 chris maori :)
18:39 kados yep french works
18:39 kados ahh ... well I was close :-)
18:39 chris so far i only have them for the vanilla theme
18:40 JYL57 Yes, franch is working quite nice
18:40 JYL57 french sorry
18:40 kados hmmm, on chris's opac french doesnt' give an option to switch back to english :-/
18:40 JYL57 switching is useful to take a look at the online advices ! ;-)
18:40 shedges yep.
18:41 chris yeah the buttons is missing in the french templates
18:41 JYL57 It was a bugg in earlier versions
18:41 JYL57 but should be solved now !
18:41 chris i think there is stuff like that, that we need to iron out before release
18:41 JYL57 anyway a quick SQL query can do
18:41 chris annoyances for the users
18:41 chris and we dont want that :)
18:42 JYL57 I'm confirming it's okay for 2.2 RC2 & RC3 releases !
18:43 chris maybe in the css templates
18:44 chris ill switch the opac back to them
18:44 kados yep that did it chris
18:45 chris cool
18:45 chris thats why we should make the default templates vanish
18:45 chris since if you switch to them, stuff doesnt work
18:45 kados we should have names for the languages rather than just letter codes IMO
18:45 kados right
18:46 chris yeah
18:46 shedges yeah, letter codes aren't user-friendly
18:46 chris so i think the consensus is .. online help, and tidying templates/interface is where we should expend some energy
18:47 owen Right now it's just looking at directory names, I think.  How do we tell it something different?  New system preferences?
18:47 kados sounds like a hash would be nice here
18:48 owen I wonder if this bug is affecting people's interest in Koha: http://bugs.koha.org/cgi-bin/b[…]ow_bug.cgi?id=798
18:49 chris hmm yeah that should be fixed really
18:50 shedges it's still assigned to Steve?  I thought MJ assigned it to someone else.
18:50 JYL57 didn't notice it or check it but will have soon to deal with that...
18:51 owen MJ just marked it as a 2.2 bug since it wasn't going to get done for 2.0
18:51 chris i think it might be time for me to become one with the how the permissions work
18:51 kados hmmm someone moved the index files for opac and intranet out of htdosc
18:51 kados in cvs ... anyone know about that?
18:51 owen This seems to be the only "critical" bug in Bugzilla, but I don't know if it's current: http://bugs.koha.org/cgi-bin/b[…]ow_bug.cgi?id=824
18:52 kados chris or at least how they dont :-)
18:52 chris :)
18:53 shedges owen, i suspect that bug has more to do with the MARC records than anything.
18:53 shedges MARC uses things like "c1998" for dates
18:53 shedges Koha needs an integer.
18:54 shedges (Our import script cleans the dates before loading.)
18:55 shedges I think the fix for this bug would be to modify the Koha tables to take character data
18:55 owen Or maybe we need to put the same magic into the breeding farm import script?
18:55 chris either fix has pros and cons
18:55 chris character data, makes it harder to sort
18:55 owen Harder to limit by date, no?
18:56 chris ie c1998 comes after 2000 in ascii sort
18:56 owen Right
18:56 JYL57 character data for date should be limited to the tank I think
18:56 shedges then we need to clean the dates before loading.
18:56 JYL57 yes
18:56 chris the con with dropping the data, is we lose some data .. so i guess the question is what is that c for and is it important?
18:57 JYL57 in a second step
18:57 shedges the c is for copyright.
18:57 chris ahh
18:57 owen It's just MARC junk.  As long as it's still intact in the MARC record why keep it?
18:58 shedges catalogers get picky, and even put several dates in the date field if the copyright date doesn't match the pub date
18:58 shedges librarians are just anal
18:58 owen That's the real issue--how to tell what the real (or most important) copyright date is
18:58 chris i think im agreeing with owen .. without the c we can do things like find me all the stuff between 1998 and 2000 quite simply .. with character data it becomes much more cpu intensive
18:59 owen Stephen, does your script simply take the first one in the field?
18:59 shedges the most recent date is always last, so that's what I kept in our import script
19:00 shedges something like a reissue of Gone with the Wind could have "c1936, 1987"
19:00 owen It's a toughie...Someone searching the catalog might be looking for something based on its original copyright date or the most recent one.
19:01 shedges more likely they're going to be looking for new issues, don't you think?
19:01 JYL57 Guys I 'll get some rest now, but I'm hoping to read wonderful stories on the Koha IRC log tomorrow !
19:02 shedges cya JYL
19:02 JYL57 see you !
19:02 chris cya jyl
19:02 JYL57 Still searching for some translations stored somewhere but where ?!...
19:02 JYL57 bye
19:02 shedges we've got biblio.copyrightdate and biblioitems.publicationdate, maybe we use them both?
19:03 genji we do.
19:03 chris we do at hlt
19:03 shedges only one will show in the template, right?
19:03 genji copyrightdate is the date that the work was first created.
19:03 chris nope both can show
19:03 genji publication date is the date that this copy of the work was created.
19:04 chris i think in the opac tho, by default only the copyright is showing
19:04 shedges We should check with some of the MARC experts on the list, but I think if there's more than one date in the MARC record, the first is always copyright date, the second the pub date
19:05 chris right
19:05 chris thatd be worth checking
19:05 shedges Steven B. would probably know
19:06 chris then the trick is how do you map 1 MARC field to 2 koha fields
19:06 chris i think that is more an interface problem
19:06 shedges oh yeah...  tricky.
19:07 shedges well, it messes with the MARC tag structure, too.
19:07 chris true
19:08 chris we could do something fancy
19:08 chris on importing from the reserviour (whats it called now?)
19:08 shedges MARC reservior
19:08 shedges reservoir
19:09 chris if koha notices 2 dates in a field, it could do somehting like, hey there are 2 dates here, shall i put the first one in copyright the secondone in publication date
19:09 chris of course .. you still have the problem come edit time that way
19:10 shedges the simplest (though not the best) thing to do is pick one date.  Probably the copyright date.
19:10 shedges (unlike what I chose)
19:11 paul i made a big mistake...
19:11 paul we are in WINTER time. So GMT+1 !!!
19:12 shedges yeah, yeah
19:13 shedges I've gotta step away for a while, hope to be back later.
19:13 shedges (I'll stay logged in so I don't miss anything.)
19:13 chris :)
19:14 chris i probably need to wander off and do some work about now
19:18 paul mmm... i've read logs.
19:18 paul anybody still around ???
19:18 paul or I go to bed ?
19:19 chris i think probably head to bed paul, we should try to reschedule another meeting when more people can make it .. some good stuff came out of this one though
19:19 chris some things to work on
19:19 paul ok, did you do some tests with MARC=OFF ?
19:20 paul (note also I confirm that language switching works perfectly between fr & en in css opac)
19:21 chris yep, im pleased to report full acquisitions (with budgets) worked fine with marc=off
19:21 chris we plan to do more testing still
19:21 chris but so far so good
19:21 paul (except that i commited something VERY important today)
19:21 paul I copy the commits notes :
19:21 paul CRITICAL bug in acquisition (another one...) : when MARC=ON, and an order line is created from an existing biblio (to buy another item), the MARC biblio is lost and replaced by the non marc one (that has a lot less informations...). To solve the problem, the biblio can no more be modified after the order has been placed. Less feature, but more reliable ! (not simple solution to solve this problem. Would imply to rewrite the MARC biblio from the
19:21 paul non marc datas, and no API is provided for this yet)
19:22 chris ahhh right
19:22 paul maybe we could also test if MARC=ON or OFF.
19:22 paul and if MARC=OFF, we could let the old behaviour if katipo needs it
19:22 chris ahh good idea paul
19:23 chris ok i have visitors be back later
19:23 paul (in fact, I just show the variables, without <input type=text> when it's a modif)
19:23 paul ok, i'll take care of this idea. Should be really easy
19:23 paul have a good day, i go to bed
20:01 kados chris still around?
20:01 kados I'm wondering how I can use the koha.conf file to populate some variables for a script I'm working on
20:17 genji okay, i found something interesting.
20:18 genji savebiblio.pl saves the subjects, but something else erases them, something happens between savebiblio and searching for an item from the biblio. so.. could be saveitem.pl.. could be searchmarc... could be anything.
20:22 genji any way to trap a write attempt onto that table?
20:25 genji found the bug. legacy code in biblio.pm
23:06 kados chris around?
23:08 chris sorta
23:08 kados I'm wondering how I can use the koha.conf file to populate some variables for a script I'm working on
23:09 chris is the script running as a cgi? ie under apache?
23:09 kados no
23:10 kados it's just a script to build the symlinks to a CVS koha repo
23:10 chris in that case probably C4::Context is ur best bet
23:10 kados and I want to keep the configurable variables to a minimum
23:11 chris use C4::Context("/path/to/koha.conf");
23:11 kados (It's going into the documentation I'm writing at the moment)
23:11 chris $config_value = C4::Context->config("config_variable");
23:11 kados cool, thanks
23:13 chris or if its just in /etc/koha.conf
23:13 chris you can go
23:13 chris use C4::Context;
23:13 chris my $context = new C4::Context;
23:14 chris then $config_value = $context->config("config_variable");
23:14 chris bit less typing :)
03:02 genji hey chris, you in?
04:04 chris am now genji
04:27 chris now im gone
05:03 genji hiya paul. okay, something wierd... got a multipage search result, click next page, and it doesn't search on the same terms.. and, on first page, it doesn't show number of items.
05:03 genji nor location
05:19 genji search.marc does not search subjects.... this is with MARC=OFF.
05:20 genji same with MARC=ON
05:23 genji doing rebuildnonmarc.pl to see if something happens.
06:02 genji and no. it didn't work.
06:16 genji hmm.. going to do a fresh install of everything, and see what happens.
07:31 genji fresh install done, import done. still the subjects won't search. only through catalogue-home.pl and the result interface is buggy.

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