IRC log for #koha, 2005-01-29

All times shown according to UTC.

Time S Nick Message
15:08 rach morning
15:47 owen Hi rach
15:48 owen I'm glad you asked the question on the list about subject maintenance.  I'm confused about that too
15:49 rach hi owen
15:49 rach I was doing my idea for the intranet homepage
15:49 rach and was thinking about the questions we're usually asked
15:50 rach and "where do you do subject maintenance" is a definite FAQ :-)
15:50 rach http://katipo.co.nz/gallery/al[…]103/intranet_home
15:51 owen Koha 2.2 has much less emphasis on subject headings.  Now when you do a subject search, you're not given a list of official subject headings to choose from.  It simply takes you to search results.
15:51 rach but will take critism/comments particularly on wether I've left anything off
15:52 rach ah that is interesting Owen - it tends to be one of the things that needs to get sorted out when people transfer libraries I think though - they tend to want to tidy up their subjects
15:52 rach I guess if disk is cheap, and it goes fast, they may not have to :-)
15:52 rach but is useful for where a typo has snuck in etc in their old lists
15:53 owen I wonder if that's something that's more of a focus for non-MARC libraries?
15:53 rach yep
15:53 rach because they are doing their own cataloging as well
15:53 owen Many MARC catalogers tend to treat MARC records as sacosanct--they won't change it to suit the library, because they think it's already "correct"
15:54 rach often why they aren't interested in marc is just that the records they want either aren't there, or don't make sense within the context of their library, and once you start doing your own cataloguing for some stuff, it's easier to keep going
15:54 owen So your intranet home puts the catalogue up front by default?
15:55 rach http://library.lgnz.co.nz/cgi-[…]ha/opac-search.pl
15:55 rach (see use of subject there - that's what all the "categories" are)
15:55 rach um sort of - it actually pulls all of it up, so there are no mouseover thingys which I just find anoying
15:56 rach but catalogue is given most importance
15:57 rach I missed that pauls ones did still have the search the catalogue box on the homepage - it fell off the bottom for me, so I haven't put it on, but I might
15:57 owen One thing I tried to do in my template design was make top priority actions available from anywhere--so there's an issues form field built into the left-hand navigation
15:57 rach an issues form field?
15:58 rach like for issues and returns?
15:58 rach circulation
15:58 owen Where you can scan a library card to start an issuing session
15:58 rach ah right - that is a cool idea
15:58 owen So we've got that, a patron search box, and a catalog quick search box all in the sidebar
15:58 rach do people use them?
15:59 owen Honestly, I don't know.
15:59 owen *I* do! :)
15:59 rach :-)
15:59 rach If you get the chance to sneak up on people, give it a go
16:00 owen Yeah, I should.  The trouble is, I work all by myself most of the time!
16:00 rach it's really interesting to see what they do, and which cunning, useful things they completely ignore
16:00 rach that's one of the really useful bits about going to conference and doing presentations etc
16:01 rach you get a bunch of newbies, and take note of the bits they can/can't find easily
16:01 rach would be good for small libraries I think though
16:02 rach so is that in your npl templates?
16:02 rach the ones with 2.2
16:02 rach because I'm on *strick* instructions not to introduce new functionality  into these particular templates
16:02 rach hence the questions about how I shoud/could do that :-)
16:03 rach http://katipo.co.nz/gallery/al[…]d_in_home_bookbag
16:03 rach that one got vetoed on those grounds
16:04 owen Is what in my npl templates?  The search boxes?
16:04 rach in the official 2.2 npl released templates
16:04 rach yep
16:04 owen Yes.
16:05 owen I'm gung-ho for introducing new functionality via the templates, particularly because my Perl skills aren't good enough to do much else.
16:05 rach yep me too
16:06 owen I like your book bag list...I wonder how hard that would be to implement?
16:06 rach apparently 2 days out from a major conference isn't a "good time" tho :-)
16:06 owen I see :)
16:07 rach ah yep I see the circulation thingy
16:08 rach I like the idea, maybe after conference :-)
16:10 owen Here's an example of messing with the templates:  originally you could only renew from the member details screen (moremember)
16:10 owen I realized we could do it from circulation just by changing the template.
16:11 owen All the librarians like it, but they hate the fact that the script automatically returns you to the member details screen instead of back to circulation!
16:11 owen So now I'm back to messing with Perl...
16:17 rach :-)
16:17 rach sounds like a good innovation
16:22 owen Hey, that wasn't too hard.
16:57 rach excellent :-)
17:59 owen chris, are you around?
18:02 chris yep owen
18:02 owen I've got a question for you.
18:03 chris http://bigballofwax.co.nz:8081[…]koha/opac-main.pl <-- demo koha for the conference complete with 500 bibliographic records from NPL :-)
18:03 chris fire away
18:03 owen I'd like to show borrower flags in moremember.pl.  Looking at circulation.pl, I see the flags are fetched via the patrontable subroutine.
18:03 owen rach, your new template design looks great!
18:04 owen chris, I'm wondering if there might be another subroutine in one of the modules that does the same thing?
18:04 owen Or will I have to duplicate that in moremember.pl if I want to get the flag information?
18:05 chris hmm
18:06 chris good question
18:06 chris ill go have a look
18:07 chris all patrontable is doing, is putting the flags into a more readable format
18:08 chris $borrower = getpatroninformation(\%env,$borrowernumber,0);
18:08 chris actually fetches the info
18:08 rach thanks owen :-)
18:08 chris then my $flags = $borrower->{'flags'};
18:09 owen So what kind of data is $borrower->{'flags'} ?
18:09 chris its a hash
18:09 chris well a reference to a hash
18:09 chris (or an associated array)
18:09 chris foreach $flag (sort keys %$flags) {
18:09 chris in patrontable
18:09 chris is just looping over the hash
18:10 owen Right.
18:10 chris and setting some template parameters
18:10 owen So I'd have to do the same thing in moremember.pl if I wanted to get similar output
18:10 chris yep
18:10 chris you have to hand some more meaningful data to the template
18:12 owen Okay, well I should be able to bang on that and see what comes out.
18:12 chris cool
18:29 owen Since moremember.pl uses borrdata() instead of getpatroninformation(), the flags are there as separate variables
18:30 owen So all I have to do is ask TMPL_IF NAME="debarred".
18:30 chris ahh cool :)
08:01 slef is paul trying to get a slap, marking rach's answers?
08:01 slef :-)
08:16 slef kados: hello?

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