IRC log for #koha, 2006-08-10

All times shown according to UTC.

Time S Nick Message
12:25 qiqo kados: still there?
12:25 dewey rumour has it there is a minor diff in <div>s, that I missed
12:26 qiqo i still cant make the barcode generator run efficiently though i already downloaded from cvs
12:27 qiqo ermmm
12:28 qiqo anyone who could help me?
12:28 kados qiqo: yep
12:28 qiqo already done the steps with the updating koha manual
12:29 kados you are useing the new barcodes manager, not the old one?
12:29 qiqo yup
12:29 kados did you update the database?
12:29 qiqo im using the new one based on the cvs i download
12:29 qiqo yup
12:29 kados using the labels sql in the barcodes dir?
12:29 qiqo already did
12:29 qiqo using mysqlcc
12:30 kados well, don't know what else to tell ya
12:30 kados working fine for me
12:30 kados you could hire someone to fix your install :-)
12:30 qiqo ohh..
12:30 qiqo hmm
12:31 qiqo ill still try to dig out
12:31 kados qiqo: what library do you work for?
12:31 qiqo for a non government organization
12:31 qiqo here in the philippines
12:31 kados ahh
12:31 qiqo im a library science student
12:31 kados cool
12:32 kados well, you could try your luck on the koha-devel list
12:32 kados explain what you did, what the log error messages are, etc.
12:32 qiqo actually next week i will deploy koha as a marc entering tool for our computer laboratory
12:32 qiqo okie..
12:32 kados I'm a bit too busy at the moment to be of much help I'm afraid
12:33 qiqo :) i really appreciate the big help
12:33 kados np
12:34 qiqo actually i really suspect that its my operating system which makes my work hard
12:34 qiqo im using slackware...
12:34 kados yea, just use debian, everything works :-)
12:35 qiqo really?
12:35 dewey really are quite different
12:36 qiqo will it run on a freespire box?
12:36 kados I've not tried it, but I imagine so
12:36 qiqo i really like the gui of freespire / a debian based distro
12:36 kados I don't use the gui :-)
12:36 kados none of my systems even have X installed :-)
12:37 qiqo i have to use one
12:37 qiqo because we only have one PC here for the library
12:38 qiqo i guess im going to have my macbook next week so i could just use that one for the inputs
12:38 kados yay ... I use a macbook as my desktop
12:38 kados love it
12:39 qiqo macbooks are way too expensive here
12:39 qiqo i really dont know why people here overcharge on the prices of notebooks
12:40 qiqo even library systems,, they cost too much
12:42 slef url for freespire?
12:42 qiqo www.freespire.org
12:42 slef ta
12:42 qiqo basically its the free version of linspire foremerly know as lindows because they have been sued by microsoft
12:42 qiqo hehe
12:42 slef kados: are you short of customers?  you seem to be giving qiqo the hard sell
12:43 kados slef: hard sell?
12:43 qiqo hard sell?
12:48 qiqo anyway
12:48 qiqo have you seen the screenies?
12:50 kados qiqo: naw ...
12:50 kados qiqo: haven't followed linspire much
12:51 qiqo ah well it seemed to be a good distro
12:51 qiqo but too much corporatization
12:51 kados well more power to them
12:51 qiqo i hope koha will be free forever
12:51 kados I'm ok with corporatization if it gets something done
12:51 thd kados: you should have my message now
12:51 kados thd: thx
12:52 kados qiqo: only if the community supports it
12:52 kados qiqo: things don't stay free if there's no market to support them
12:52 kados qiqo: simple economics :-)
12:52 qiqo ahh well
12:53 qiqo i would still stick with the original philosophy of koha: it should be free forever
12:53 qiqo as being stipulated on the site.. hehe
12:53 kados of course ... but being free is worthless if it doesn't work
12:54 kados as I suspect you're discovering with the barodes :-)
12:54 qiqo hehe
12:54 kados in the end, you either need to have libraries with staff pitching in development time, or libraries willing to sponsor development
12:55 kados I've been with the project for a while now
12:55 kados and with library software, I can tell you, volunteers just don't cut it
12:55 kados it's just one of those strange market things
12:56 qiqo hmm i really dont know,, a student from our university (still undergraduate) has created a library system
12:56 thd kados: there is also the possibility that a Koha foundation could be well funded.
12:56 qiqo and he's earning a little from it
12:56 kados thd: there is that
12:57 kados qiqo: more power to him
12:57 Burgwork kados, I suspect is that the issue is small pool of people who a) are talented and b) are interested
12:57 qiqo its the phpmylib
12:57 kados qiqo: but a library system in the phillipines is quite different than a world-wide library system ... as katipo discovered with version 1 of Koha
12:57 qiqo yes,, specially with marc..
12:57 kados yep
12:57 qiqo actually marc from the philiipines is same as USMARC
12:58 qiqo but according to my professor USMARC is different from MARC21
12:58 kados yep
12:58 qiqo and so he tells us that cataloguing in the philippines is not holistically based on LC's
12:58 kados :-)
12:58 kados welcome to the world of libraries
12:59 qiqo haha
12:59 kados where no standard is standardized :-)
12:59 qiqo i wont bother to use ranganathans colon classification if i only knew it hehe :)
13:03 qiqo what is the time there?
13:04 kados in Ohio it's 2:00pm
13:04 qiqo cool its 2am here
13:10 thd kados: as long as librarians are not building rockets we should be safe from the worst effects of a non-standard conception of standards
13:10 owen I don't think rockets come into the picture until version 5 or 6
13:11 thd kados: even rocket engineers forget which units they are using in a dangerous way
13:15 kados hehe
13:15 kados thd: yea, forgot about that :_)
13:15 thd qiqo: do you have a quick link to the version of USMARC used in the Philippines?
13:16 qiqo we really have no standard when it comes to mark..
13:16 qiqo they say that its a hybrid USMARC/MARC21
13:17 qiqo most of the libraries here dont even know marc... hehe
13:18 qiqo they still stick wit the traditional card catalog/aacr
13:18 kados thd: you could tell us best, but isn't USMARC a subset of MARC21?
13:18 qiqo my professor told me that in the 60s or 70s almost all countries have had their own version of MARC
13:19 thd qiqo: There is no formal standards documents describing what is used at the Philippines national library?  Are most Philippine libraries still using CDS/ISIS?
13:19 qiqo then some consolidated and formed MARC21 which part is US MARC
13:19 qiqo yes CDS ISIS
13:20 qiqo but at our university. which is the University of the PHilippines, we programmed our own ILS..
13:20 qiqo which is in java
13:20 thd kados: USMARC evolved into MARC 21 with the convergence of CANMARC and others.
13:21 qiqo The University of the Philippines Main Library is the largest library in the Philippines containing millions of monographs..
13:21 qiqo The UP college of law library is the largest law library in asia
13:22 qiqo UP library is larger than our national library
13:23 qiqo http://ilib.upd.edu.ph/
13:24 thd qiqo: Does your library have a depository right to copies of anything published in the Philippines or does that right rest only with the national library?
13:25 qiqo only the national library has the rights to have a copy of anything published
13:25 qiqo however,, some of the publisher here give copies to our library for free
13:26 qiqo but still collection development would still be followed when it comes to honoring gifts
13:27 thd qiqo: good that you have public spirited publishers.
13:27 qiqo it's UP... basically its the premier university
13:28 qiqo we have a library course: B. Library and Information Science
13:29 qiqo BTW we are an authorized distributor of WINISIS here..
13:29 qiqo but winisis is not doing well
13:33 qiqo did UNESCO abandon it?
13:33 thd qiqo: My understanding is that there is not enough investment in keeping ISIS up to date with improvements in electronic distribution of information.
13:33 qiqo ahh ok..
13:34 qiqo last thing i heard, theyll be going opensource
13:35 qiqo unesco wont fund us anymore, they have been our partners for the longest period of time
13:35 thd qiqo: it is likely to atrophy in favour of MARC 21 or UNIMARC in the face of free software systems supporting MARC.
13:38 qiqo hm
13:39 thd qiqo: UNESCO has always been underfunded in general but I suspect the effect of politics upon funding choices is more difficult over time.
13:39 qiqo i have a question,, what is your vision on library systems and library school
13:40 qiqo because my thesis is the Information Systems Strategic Plan of our College
13:41 qiqo its a 5 year plan 2006-2011
13:41 thd qiqo: I do not understand what you mean to ask?
13:41 qiqo the future of library systems.. trends etc..
13:41 qiqo i need to listen to insights of other people..
13:41 qiqo .. experts etc..
13:43 thd qiqo: in the future library systems will find what you want to read for you instead of merely interpreting queries.
13:44 qiqo ahh you mean relative to googlebooks?
13:44 qiqo i mean without the restrictions?
13:45 thd qiqo: that also
13:45 qiqo do you think that google is big threat to libraries and librarians?
13:47 slef no more to libraries than the rest of the internet :)
13:48 thd qiqo: there is a chance that the lawsuit over the Google Books library programme will end in a bad way for everyone concerned with information except for the short term goal of giving a copyright holder maximum control over content restriction for cases that ought to be fair use under US law.
13:51 thd qiqo: If Google does not settle that lawsuit adversely, I hope they do not loose too much for everyone else in court.
13:54 thd qiqo: the real problem with Google is that it succeeded in the market where librarians failed.  They merely index full text and do not understand or give any public showing of an interest in any other means of accessing information.
13:55 thd qiqo: Even the concept of fielded indexing and searching is almost completely lost on them.
13:56 thd qiqo: The trouble is that since any arbitrary query is liable to find something in Google people assume that is always sufficient.
13:58 thd qiqo: That is a function of the size of Google's index and not an indication that full text indexing is a more valuable technique than using a controlled vocabulary.
13:59 qiqo hmm
13:59 qiqo wow
13:59 qiqo let me log that
14:01 qiqo ei thd thank you for that
14:01 qiqo it will help me in my thesis
14:01 thd qiqo: I expect that Google and other full text only systems like it will always be influential but I hope that a centuries of library systems are not lost on the next generation of information access tools that succeeds in the market.
14:02 thd qiqo: Read Marcia Bates.
14:02 qiqo i really dont want to loose my job
14:02 thd qiqo: what is your job?
14:03 qiqo ill be a librarian
14:03 qiqo :)
14:03 qiqo ei i hafta sleep now
14:03 qiqo thakyou very much for the insights
14:04 qiqo i really appreciate your views
14:04 qiqo thank you kados for the big help
14:04 thd qiqo: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/bates/
14:05 qiqo thanks
14:05 qiqo good morning
14:12 hdl back
14:20 kados hi hdl
14:25 hdl kados : is there a mysql hack to get the id of the latest record created ?
14:26 kados max(timestamp) maybe?
14:27 owen http://mysql.com/doc/refman/5.[…]ng-unique-id.html ?
14:44 hdl owen : mysql5.0....
14:45 hdl Atm, I am not sure Koha is supposed to be working only for mysql50.
14:52 hdl kados : 1140 and 1145 should be fixed now.
14:52 kados hdl: I'll update and test immediately
14:53 hdl I should have warned that :
14:54 hdl A) To my mind it is not THAT stable a solution. (it uses LAST_INSERT_ID) and some time can pass and therefore this value can be mistaken.
14:54 hdl But.
14:54 hdl This comes from a missing codingguideline.
14:55 hdl Indeed, when you use a sub that creates a row into a table, one SHOULD ALWAYS return a value, an id so that we can use that for further progress.
14:56 kados hdl: can you clarify which bugs are fixed?
14:56 kados in the commit message it's 1144 adn 1140
14:57 hdl 1140 : three LATEST serials should be shown in OPAC.
14:57 hdl And adding a manual issue itemization.
14:58 kados http://opac.smfpl.org/cgi-bin/[…]tail.pl?bib=59614
14:58 kados that's a previously checked in serial
14:58 kados do I need to re-checkin for the fix to apply>
14:58 kados ?
14:58 kados I will check manual itemization now
14:59 Burgwork kados, are you in the middle of a rework of zoomopac?
15:00 hdl kados : My wife is mad at me... So I will read you. (lurking here or by mail henridamien at koha dot org )
15:00 hdl koha-fr...
15:00 hdl of course.
15:00 kados Burgwork: yea, owen's working on the template
15:01 kados hdl_away: ok ... thanks :-)
15:02 Burgwork kados, cool. Anything else I can do to help on that?
15:03 kados Burgwork: ask owen, he's the interface guy :-)
15:03 Burgwork right
17:21 thd chris: are you there?
17:22 chris partially
17:24 thd chris: were you partially discussing OpenURL with kados yesterday?
17:24 chris not really
17:25 chris just mentioned it in passing
17:25 thd chris: I was confused about the context or the reason it came up.
17:26 chris just talking about the format a form passes information to a cgi script as
17:27 chris it was just a throwaway remark
17:28 thd chris: I guess it is not important if there was no issue about doing something with OpenURL but it does not have an elaborate formal query language.
17:30 thd chris: When you become interested I can supply you with links to implementation documents.  Reading the NISO standard is not enough.
17:31 chris cool
02:37 hdl hi paul and toins
02:37 paul hi hdl
02:37 toins hi all !
07:07 kyle kados: you around?
07:30 kados kyle: yep
07:30 paul hi kados (& kyle)
07:30 kados hi paul
07:30 kyle hey paul.
07:30 kyle I was wondering what the current state of fines calculation was.
07:31 paul did you see that toins announced having a head search working with zebra (this morning) ?
07:31 kados currently fines are calculated via a cron job
07:31 kados paul: no, I didn't see that
07:31 kados paul: good news
07:33 kyle kados: John & the librarians want fines calculated immediately upon a book being checked in. I figured I'd try to copy and modify fines2.pl to this end, and then a call to it could be made for it each time a book is checked in.
07:33 kyle That is, a new version that only checks and processes a single barcode.
07:33 kados hmmm
07:33 paul kyle : if you have some time to solve this, you should bug the SAN
07:33 kados you may want to check with SAN
07:33 kados heh
07:33 paul hehe... I won ;-)
07:33 kados :-)
07:34 paul the only "problem" being that they are in holiday for instance.
07:34 kyle I thought they were working on fines : )
07:34 kyle more holidays ; )
07:34 paul and don't expect too many ppl before sept, 2nd or something like that
07:34 paul (it's arnaud laurin that works on fines, iirc)
07:35 kyle what is his IRC nick?
07:36 paul alaurin
07:36 paul (usually)
07:37 kyle thanks. Have either of you checked out the offline circulation extension yet?
07:37 paul nope.
07:37 kyle http://www.ccfls.org/koha/
07:38 kyle it doesn't *work* yet, but it does collect data. And I wouldn't mind some constructive criticism. Kados: how about having it store a list of debarred patrons, and perhaps reserves data.
07:38 kyle It could sync with the server every morning.
07:39 kados I haven't had a chance to check it out yet
07:40 kyle It's just a new window with three tabs, check in, check out, and process (for uploading to koha). It stores the barcodes in a list box, until they are moved to an array.
07:41 kyle It should work fine with any barcode scanners that already work with koha.
07:48 kados paul: you around?
07:48 paul yep
08:33 kados cm: any progress with zebra?
08:38 kados morning owen
08:38 owen Hi
08:38 owen Did I missing anything by going home and sleeping?
08:38 kados hehe
08:45 owen So kados, what are we going to do about opac-main?
09:00 cm kados: hi...zebra is working, but it seems that bulkmarcimport is going to take 3 days to import all our data now. :/
09:01 paul isn't it a commit problem cm ?
09:01 cm what do you mean?
09:01 paul (zebra commit every time you import something & that's quite long...)
09:01 cm yeah.  without zebra it took about 3 hours
09:02 paul tumer & kados planned to have a system preference to commit just at the end of the bulkmarcimport.
09:02 paul I don't know if it's done.
09:02 cm that would be *really* nice.  :)
09:02 paul you'll have to wait for kados answer ;-)
09:03 cm ok.  I really need it to take less time.  We have to migrate Meadville over a weekend.
09:09 paul kados around ?
09:10 paul you told me libLime did something about template/includes choosing in dev_week, but I don't remember seeing anything about that.
09:10 paul you also once told me you had a self checkout somewhere. Am I missing something ?
09:13 kados cm: you can import into zebra, then use export.pl to export the marc and index in zebra
09:13 kados cm: should take about 4 hours tops
09:13 kados paul: I checked with ryan and I was wrong
09:13 cm I couldn't get export.pl to work.
09:13 kados paul: we didn't do a template/includes yet
09:13 paul ok, i'll take care of it then
09:13 kados paul: also the self-checkout is severely deprecated ... not even NPL uses it
09:14 paul ok.
09:14 kados cm: if you use the dev_week repo and koha.xml and a dev_week install (with MARC records in biblioitems.marc) it should work
09:16 cm hmm...I think that's what I was using.
09:17 paul cm : note that, if I don't mind, you just could stop zebrasrv & run bulkmarcimport without it.
09:18 kados yep
09:18 paul you'll get many many zbera errors, but no zebra time either ;-)
09:18 kados but she's having trouble exporting the MARC
09:18 cm thanks, paul.  I was wondering if there was a way to stop it from exporting into zebra.
09:18 paul ok, sorry
09:18 kados cm: can you verify that when you do it that way, it's importing into biblioitems.marc?
09:18 kados ie, that the MARC records are actually getting into Koha
09:19 cm i have data in biblioitems.marc
09:19 kados ok ... so now we need to figure out why you can't export it ...
09:19 kados all export.pl does is run MARCgetbiblio
09:19 kados try this (i know, you've probably done it before):
09:20 kados export KOHA_CONF=/path/to/koha.xml
09:20 kados cd /path/to/dev_week/repo/koha
09:20 kados export/export.pl /path/to/zebradb/records/ccfls.iso2709
09:21 kados I'm trying it too
09:21 cm ok.  just a moment.
09:22 kados seems to be working for me
09:23 cm i just got this:
09:23 cm No such file or directory at export/export.pl line 16.
09:25 cm nevermind.  didn't have records directory
09:25 cm but...now I have an iso2709 file, but it's empty
09:25 cm no other errors.
09:26 kados sec
09:27 cm kados: what's the creation date on your export.pl. Mine's March 31. I don't seem to have revision info in the file.
09:31 kados sorry ... damn phone
09:31 cm s'okay.  I'll be back in a few.
09:31 kados same date on mine
09:32 kados so the export runs, and finishes, and produces an empty iso2709 file ...
09:32 kados how strange
09:33 kados if you look in C4/Biblio.pm
09:33 kados you'll see the MARCgetbiblio subroutine
09:33 kados it basically just does:
09:33 kados my $sth =      $dbh->prepare("select marc from biblioitems where biblionumber=? "  );
09:33 kados pulls that raw data out, turns it into a MARC::Record object, and returns it
09:34 kados so if you have biblioitems.marc data, it should work :(
09:38 cm huh.  yep, my Biblio.pm has that line.  weird!!
09:38 kados maybe try to do it manually
09:39 kados select marc from biblioitems limit 3;
09:39 kados see if it looks like valid MARC strings
09:41 cm looks fairly normal, AFAIK.  I'll email you the output.
09:44 cm did you get it?
09:45 kados yep
09:45 kados looks normal
09:45 cm thought so.
09:45 kados well ... those are _very_ minimal records
09:45 kados and they're also no utf-8 encoded
09:45 kados s/no/not/
09:45 kados but that shouldn't affect export
09:46 cm the minimality is expected...those are rotating collection ones, and they are pretty barebones
09:46 cm why wouldn't they be utf-8?
09:47 kados your leader is 00264nam  2200109u
09:47 kados if they were utf-8 it would be:
09:47 kados 00264nam a2200109u
09:47 cm ah
09:49 cm lemme try it again, with perl -I /path/to/modules.
09:49 kados sounds good
09:49 kados yea, if you're using the old C4, it won't work
09:49 kados cuz it'll look in empty marc_subfield_table
09:50 kados I'd highly recommend transforming your data to utf-8
09:50 kados otherwise, it'll be in MARC-8 format, and no browser understands that
09:51 kados so all your special characters will be mangled
09:52 cm nope, same diff.
09:52 cm how do I do that?
09:53 kados well ... I've been passing it through MARC::File::XML and back
09:53 kados weird it's not working
09:53 cm yeah.
09:54 kados cm: can you throw a warn in MARCgetbiblio for me
09:54 cm sure
09:54 kados warn "BIBID".$bibid;
09:54 kados right after the
09:54 kados my ( $dbh, $bibid ) = @_;
09:56 cm it's in there.  try it again?
09:56 kados yep
09:56 cm didn't give me any warnings.
09:56 kados so that means that you're not getting a list of bibids
09:57 kados try this in mysql:
09:57 kados select bibid from marc_biblio order by bibid limit 3;
09:58 cm empty set!
09:58 kados interesting
09:58 kados try:
09:58 kados select * from marc_biblio limit 3;
09:58 kados seems like maybe marc_biblio is empty :-)
09:58 cm yep.  empty set again
09:59 kados ahh ... just looking at bulkmarcimport
10:00 kados hmmm ...
10:01 kados so basically, it calls NEWnewbiblio and NEWnewitem
10:01 cm okay...
10:02 kados I think the problem is
10:03 kados that marc_biblio is deprecated
10:03 kados in dev_week
10:03 cm yikes.
10:03 kados should be a pretty quick fix
10:03 kados just a sec
10:03 cm good.  :)
10:04 kados try this:
10:04 kados select biblionumber from biblioitems limit 4;
10:04 kados (make sure you've got biblionumbers in the first place)
10:05 cm 4 rows.
10:05 kados sweet
10:05 cm at least something's in there.  ;)
10:05 kados ok, all you need to do is change export.pl
10:05 cm ok.
10:06 kados instead of:
10:06 kados select bibid from marc_biblio order by bibid
10:06 kados use:
10:06 kados select biblionumber from biblioitems order by biblionumber
10:06 kados and it should work
10:06 cm ok
10:08 cm it's working.  :D
10:09 cm yep, there's data in the iso2709 file now.  now I can get on with the show.  Thanks!
10:13 kados maybe we should commit it :-)
10:13 paul ok, I was not sure it was not something from me, I wanted to avoid breaking dev_week ;-)
10:13 kados in fact, I'm not 100% sure it's correct either
10:14 kados we should ask tumer if marc_biblio is deprecated
10:14 kados (I think it is though)
10:14 kados (based on reading in Biblio.pm)
10:17 kados ok, committed
10:17 kados and in the msg I asked tumer about it

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