IRC log for #koha, 2007-03-15

All times shown according to UTC.

Time S Nick Message
11:00 hdl There, you see, we have at least two different ways.
11:00 kados hehe
11:00 hdl It is perlish TMTOWTDI
11:00 kados well I would volunteer to find and change every syspref
11:01 kados but every library upgrading would need to set up sysprefs from scratch (not a huge job)
11:01 owen kados, couldn't you set up a process for translating the old syspref values into the new ones?
11:01 owen ...if they're direct analogues, that is.
11:02 kados yea, that's true
11:02 kados just a bit of sql actually
11:02 kados update systempreferences set X=X where X=X;
11:05 hpassini hi ! I'll try to answer to your questions !
11:05 kados ?
11:05 kados hi hpassini
11:05 kados ahh, you're san op? :-)
11:06 kados did you change your nick?
11:06 hpassini yes i'am
11:06 hpassini no
11:06 kados ahh, ok, just ignore me then :-)
11:07 hpassini about the professional borrowers
11:07 kados yea?
11:07 hpassini it's borrowers like teacher for example who can issues more items than another borrower
11:08 hpassini is it clear for you or not ?
11:08 kados yes
11:08 kados but we dont' have in the US
11:08 kados so probably why I was confused in the first place :-)
11:09 kados thanks
11:09 rch hi hpassini
11:09 kados hpassini: but they seem to need to have a guarantee?
11:09 kados hpassini: why would that be?
11:09 owen kados, that's a feature that we've tried to implement for NPL in the past
11:09 kados hehe
11:09 kados owen++
11:09 owen Only instead of changing the limit on number of issues, we tried to alter the issuing period
11:10 kados it didn't work?
11:10 hpassini normaly only children need a guarantor
11:10 owen It did, but it was something Stephen hard-coded in a previous version.
11:10 owen Probably didn't survive the last upgrade, I don't know.
11:10 rch yes, why is a professional borrower different than an adult borrower with different issuing rules?
11:10 hdl He is different becaus he depends on an institution.
11:11 hpassini beacause we need differents information and differents issuing rules
11:12 owen Good point rch... I wonder if I'm misremembering what we tried to set up?
11:13 kados what is the 'Structure' section ... is that supposed to be 'Institution'?
11:14 kados or is it a guarantor?
11:15 hpassini no it's not
11:16 kados it seems to be guarantor since it has a 'relation'
11:16 kados and options are father|mother
11:18 hpassini you mean relation and not garantor
11:18 hpassini ok it's right
11:18 rch i think both guarantor and structure use relation from systemprefs.
11:19 hpassini yes
11:19 kados does structure mean 'place where professional person works'?
11:20 hpassini yes
11:20 rch so a professional is equivalent to a child borrower, but the guarantor does not need to be a member,
11:20 kados ok, I'm gonna change it to 'Institution' in english
11:22 hpassini ok
11:23 hpassini the departement is the familly of items for example 'items for children' 'litterature' ...
11:23 hpassini rigth ?
11:24 rch btw, paul responded to that email.
11:24 kados man, cvs is really messed up
11:24 kados anyone else having trouble with savannah?
11:25 rch the web cvs was inaccessible this morning
11:25 kados cvs -z3 -d:ext:kados@cvs.savannah.nongnu.org:/sources/koha co -P koha
11:25 kados checks out a bunch of stuff then I get
11:25 kados Terminated with fatal signal 7!
11:25 kados about half way through
11:26 kados hdl: are you able to check out a fresh copy from CVS?
11:27 owen Didn't someone try to kill James Bond with fatal signal 7?
11:29 kados hehe
11:30 kados rch: are you able to check out anything from savannah?
11:30 kados weird, it dies in the same place every time
11:31 owen With my Windows CVS client I get "cvs update: warning: cannot open /sources/koha/CVSROOT/val-tags read/write: Read-only file system
11:31 owen cvs [update aborted]: cannot read /sources/koha/CVSROOT/val-tags: Input/output error"
11:35 kados savannah--
11:35 kados http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/koha
11:35 kados interesting error:
11:36 kados Failed to connect to database. Invalid Group: that group does nto exist :-)
11:36 kados must be a bad day at gnu.org
11:36 owen Strange, I was on the site just over an hour ago and didn't see that error.
11:36 kados looks like the whole site is borked
11:36 kados probably a prob with their database server
11:37 owen Speaking of borked, we need to talk about those help links in the OPAC.
11:37 hdl :(
11:37 owen They're leading to the Koha Wiki homepage, which isn't very helpful.
11:37 kados yea
11:37 owen http://wiki.koha.org/?id=en:opachelp#
11:37 rch yes, those need to go away
11:37 kados did you see that report from diane neal?
11:38 kados she mentioned that having help directly next to the items was the way to go
11:38 kados inline help
11:38 owen Oh, the usability report?
11:38 kados yea
11:38 kados hehe
11:39 kados I also have a ton of feedback from her students sitting here
11:39 kados from the first koha with class class
11:39 kados they all did reports on their experiences
11:39 kados might be useful to look it over and glean any usability tips from it as well
11:39 kados I know everyone had trouble with serials and acquisitions
11:39 kados and authorities too
11:39 owen Yeah, me too :)
11:40 kados hehe
11:40 kados serials is getting there now
11:40 kados with the new corp serials module out of NZ
11:40 kados but acqui could still use some attention
11:40 kados and our MARC editor is perhaps the weakest part of Koha currently
11:41 owen Off the subject, but what is the part of the MARC record that indicates whether the title is fiction or non-fiction?
11:42 kados yea ...
11:42 owen I'm curious about the first result of this search: http://search.athenscounty.lib[…]:e%20and%20fic:0)
11:43 owen I'm assuming it's a catalogging error
11:43 kados it's position 33 in the 008
11:43 kados 0=non fiction, 1=fiction
11:44 kados there is no position 33 in that 008
11:44 kados so I'm not sure why it's coming up ...
11:46 kados maybe null==0 ?
11:47 owen So it is a catalogging error, but it's also an error that it appears in the search results?
11:50 kados yea, it would seem so
11:50 kados I might be able to fix it by doing it as a number index
11:51 kados rather than a string
11:51 kados in fact, I bet that's the prob
11:51 kados owen: I'll try that tonigth and report back
11:52 owen Thanks. I realize it's not a big thing.
11:52 kados seems big to me :-)
12:18 owen :)
12:19 kados once I get it right I'm gonna do a blog post on it :-)
12:23 kados success!
12:24 kados owen: try it out in the opac and if you're satisfied, close that bug :-)
12:25 kados owen: by the way, in a demo I did yesterday, some catalogers were wondering why we had ON ORDER printed in records
12:26 kados are the catalogers still putting in that text?
12:26 owen Yes, because there was no good way to indicate to the users that a title was on order
12:27 owen ...at the time, that is. Now we've got the status working for us.
12:27 kados ahh, ok
12:35 kados owen: now I've got a bug for you :-)
12:35 kados owen: if you look at the NPL opac in IE there's a 'rendered but with errors' warning
12:36 owen Which page?
12:36 kados all of them AFAIK
12:37 kados or at least all the search results pages
12:37 owen Which version of IE?
12:38 kados weird
12:38 kados I can't reproduce it
12:38 kados but I've seen it twice now
12:38 kados and darrell from SMFPL reported it
12:38 kados sorry :-)
12:39 owen Ah, SMFPL--yes
12:39 owen I saw this the other day, kados
12:39 kados ahh, yea?
12:39 owen Let me re-check.
12:39 kados maybe it's just on their site?
12:40 kados prepareopaclogin is undefined
12:40 kados just got that debug message
12:40 kados maybe that's it
12:40 owen Yes, they've got NPL's custom javascript in their system preferences.
12:40 kados rch: you there?
12:43 owen Looks like they removed one chunk of the custom javascript but not all of it. They should take it all out.
12:54 kados lunch time
12:54 kados bbl
15:00 kados savannah--
15:05 rch kados: any word from savannah?
15:05 kados their only help channel is the website
15:05 kados that I know of
15:09 rch is Shelf.pm an abandoned OO rewrite of virt. shelves?  or is BookShelves.pm a non-OO rewrite of Shelf?
15:10 kados no idea
17:22 kados I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd love to have 40 billable hours per week out of all three of you :-)
17:23 kados but that's probably not realistic :-)
23:06 kaavik are there any pages on the web, that talk about computing power estimates?
23:06 chris sorry?
23:06 chris im not sure i understand what you mean
23:06 kaavik IOW, someone is trying to suggest to a local school
23:07 kaavik about putting some kind of electronic circulation system in place
23:07 kaavik and I want to know, "how big a computer" is needed
23:07 kaavik assuming they went with koha ...
23:08 kaavik I mean, if they make an old P60 boot, and it's their only circ terminal
23:08 kados hi kaavik
23:08 kaavik ...will that cut it?
23:08 kados you can run koha on anything
23:08 kados I've got it running on a linux pda :-)
23:08 kados the big question is how many records you have
23:09 kaavik hmm
23:09 kados if you run version 2.2.8 and you have more than say, 100K records, you should consider better hardware
23:09 kaavik and, I assume, how many terminals are active at once ...
23:09 kados how many terminals do you plan on having active?
23:09 kados more than say 15 or so?
23:09 kaavik I don't know, being as I don't even know which school they're talking about
23:10 kados right
23:10 kaavik I work for the 'big library'
23:10 kaavik in the computer dept
23:10 kaavik ...some patron just asked about "free circ. software'
23:10 kaavik ...at another branch ;-P
23:10 kaavik us, we're using Sirsi / Dynix
23:10 kaavik 'cuz we're rich, I guess ...
23:11 kaavik but, 10-15 terminals, is you think the point at which they need to look at rack mounted servers to power it?
23:12 kados most of the medium sized libraries running koha (with 10-15 terminals) run on very modest hardware
23:12 kados say an entry level dell server with 2 gig of ram or something
23:13 kaavik not bad
23:13 kaavik now, we have about 400 terminals all told
23:13 kaavik most of which are catalog only
23:14 kados right
23:14 kaavik Dell server though -- that's promising
23:14 kaavik I'll pass it along
23:14 chris Koha isnt cheaper its better :-)
23:14 kados yea
23:14 kados kaavik: liblime.com/demos
23:14 kaavik as a linux geek myself, I agree wholeheartedly
23:15 kados kaavik: check out the link for 'Koha ZOOM Opac'
23:15 chris its the problem FLOSS runs up against
23:15 kados the searching in Koha is among the best in ILSes today
23:15 chris which as a linux geek im sure you are aware of
23:15 kaavik chris: yeah. :-|
23:19 chris i think someone got koha going on a playstation once
23:19 chris why, i dont know
23:19 chris :)
23:19 kaavik ROTFL
23:20 kaavik I have a PS2, and have considered getting a linux disc for it ...
23:20 chris yeah i never use my ps2 anymore
23:20 kaavik that would greatly amuse me, to check tools out using a PS2
23:20 chris hehe
23:20 kaavik katamari damacy
23:20 chris ah yeah, everyone loves katamari
23:20 kaavik I bought a PS2 just so I could play it
23:21 kaavik well, too, I just bought mine a month ago
23:21 kaavik haven't been into the console wars since I gave up my original NES
23:21 chris http://blog.bigballofwax.co.nz[…]l-katamari-lovers
23:22 kaavik Na Naa, Na na na na na na naaaa ....
23:24 kaavik OK you guys, many thanks
23:24 chris np
23:24 kaavik I need to get back to work :-|
06:09 js hi #koha
09:27 kados hdl: are you there?
09:27 kados hdl: savannah is still down for me
09:27 kados :(
09:53 owen kados, you around?
09:54 hdl kados : yes
10:02 kados hey guys
10:02 kados owen: what's up?
10:02 owen I noticed your Liblime OPAC demo has the same javascript error as SMFPL
10:02 kados hehe
10:02 kados thanks for noticing :-)
10:02 kados rch: !
10:02 owen ...and I notice you nicked NPL's featured search idea ;)
10:03 kados hehe, yea :-
10:03 kados your front page still owns though :-)
10:03 kados hdl: so what are we gonna do about CVS?
10:04 kados hdl: is paul available briefly?
10:04 kados hdl: I'm concerned that whoever runs savannah hasn't even bothered to put up a splash page saying 'we know we're down, and we're working on it'
10:05 kados I wonder if we shoould host at google
10:06 kados hi paul
10:06 paul hi kados
10:06 kados thanks for coming
10:06 kados savannah has been down for two days
10:06 kados with no splash page even saying why
10:07 kados hehe
10:07 kados sorry
10:07 kados google has subversion: http://code.google.com/hosting/
10:09 kados paul: any thoughts?
10:11 paul yep, even if no definitive opinion.
10:11 paul - we need a better tool
10:11 paul - we need a tool that can attract developpers, or at least, not frighten them
10:12 paul - we need to choose wisely & "definetly"
10:12 paul OpenCataloger uses SVN, it's quite fun
10:12 paul & has some nice graphic tools under linux.
10:12 rch svn++
10:12 kados yea, liblime uses svn internally, and we love it
10:12 paul hdl just tells me that chris is testing GIT
10:12 kados yes, chris and I discussed this yesterday
10:13 kados and we agreed that git is cool
10:13 kados but probably too hard for most koha developers
10:13 paul I have no opinion about a distributed or not distributed tool.
10:13 kados to understand 'distributed' version control
10:13 kados and it might prevent user contribution
10:13 paul so, let's stay with a standard one.
10:13 hdl To my mind using a distributed version control would be useful.
10:13 paul that's a definitive exclusion for me.
10:14 hdl User contribution is not so frequent with CVS widely spread.
10:14 paul yes hdl, but I strongly think we need more "more devs" than a distributed tool.
10:15 kados hdl: but if we move to git we will probably get no contribs :-)
10:15 hdl ppl coming on the project or ppl we would "coach" would learn CVS or any version control system.
10:15 kados what chris and I discussed
10:16 kados is better use of branching in svn
10:16 kados and then when a branch is stable, merge it into the main trunk
10:16 kados anyway, can we arrive at a concensus about svn?
10:17 kados hdl: do you hate svn? :-)
10:17 hdl Nope. I didnot test.
10:17 paul hdl : very easy to use with kdesvn
10:17 paul it's as easy as cervesia for CVS
10:18 hdl But I currently have problems with versions that I tweaked for clients and that I want to upgrade.
10:18 kados hdl: what kind of probs?
10:19 paul 1 thing ++ for svn is the possibility to import CVS with most of the history afaik
10:19 kados yea
10:19 kados but we don't have a CVS repo anymore :-)
10:19 hdl I have to re do all the diffs.
10:20 hdl There are svn forge though.
10:20 paul kados : why choose ggl for svn hosting ?
10:20 hdl gna!
10:20 paul why not gna.org (like for opencataloger)
10:20 hdl https://gna.org/
10:21 kados paul: because in a year, I dn't want to have to say 'gna is slow ... or broken ... what will we do?'
10:21 kados with google we know it will be fast, and maintained well
10:21 paul good point. ggle can be considered as "stable" I bet.
10:22 paul so why not a private hosting ?
10:22 paul (on koha.org or koha-fr.org ?)
10:22 kados my thinking is:
10:22 kados - we are software developers, not sys admins :-)
10:22 kados - google has real sysadmins to manage their savannah hosting platform
10:23 hdl s/savannah/subversion
10:23 kados hehe, yea
10:23 kados sorry
10:23 hdl :D
10:23 paul ok, sounds good reasons.
10:23 owen kados, have you Googled for feedback about Google's code hosting?
10:24 kados owen: no, but I've used it for a few projects
10:24 paul can I let you continue this speak & go back to dish cleaning ?
10:24 hdl could we host and sync backups ?
10:24 kados owen: like the google worldmap
10:24 kados owen: I mean koha worldmap
10:24 paul (i can read & answer 1 or 2 questions in 20mn I think)
10:24 kados paul: ok, thanks
10:24 hdl thx paul
10:24 kados hdl: yep, we could have backups
10:24 owen Yeah, if paul gets in trouble for not doing the dishes his wife might not let him come play with us!
10:25 kados hehe
10:25 kados http://www.infoq.com/news/Revi[…]on-Google-Hosting
10:25 kados looks like a balanced review
10:25 owen "While Google provides Subversion hosting, it doesn’t look like there’s currently a way to import the contents of an existing repository into it."
10:25 owen http://endoframe.com/log/?p=23
10:26 kados yea, we'd have to start over with our history
10:26 kados personally, I don't think that matters much
10:26 kados at this point
10:26 kados I can't anticipate we'll need to roll back
10:29 kados I know chris would probably disagree with me there :-)
10:29 kados he likes repo histories
10:30 kados hehe
10:31 kados ok, well where to go from here?
10:31 kados paul, jmf, rch, chris agree that svn is OK
10:31 kados hdl too?
10:32 kados so I suppose we should also check with the koha-dev community :-)
10:32 kados I'll write an email
10:32 kados hdl: ok with google too?
10:32 kados or do you need more info?
10:33 hdl what you told was quite sensible.
10:33 hdl But I regret to fall back into american hands :D
10:33 kados hehe
10:34 hdl we could initiate the stuff for google then officlize when koha-devel community agrees. Couldn't we ?
10:34 kados I'm gonna write a email to alert that a decision will be made today
10:35 kados if someone wants to give an opinion they can
10:40 paul reading the little history...
10:40 PaulShannon The download page at savannah looks like it is down. Anyone confirm?
10:40 paul OK to be counted in the "pro svn" team.
10:41 kados PaulShannon: yea, email about that forthcoming to koha-devel
10:41 paul my only question is about ggl licence of the code. do they guarantee ggl code is JUST a code repo.
10:41 paul and ggl in this matter is just a forge.
10:41 PaulShannon Is there a mirror somewhere?
10:41 paul I may sound paranoiac, but I just want to be sure.
10:41 paul ok, guys, I leave again ;-)
10:43 kados paul_away: i will address that question in my email after a bit of research
10:43 kados PaulShannon: you looking to check out from CVS or download 2.2.8?
10:44 PaulShannon 2.2.8. Haven't looked at it at all yet.
10:44 kados hdl: do you have a 'backup' of 2.2.8 we can throw up on koha.org?
10:46 hdl I didnot download the tarball.
10:46 hdl But I have rel_2_2_7
10:47 hdl a pity TG will have to recommit his stuff
10:54 PaulShannon Is someone putting 2.2.7 up on koha.org, or can I get a copy?
10:56 kados PaulShannon: we'll get you a copy of 2.2.8 asap
10:56 kados PaulShannon: I gotta finish this email to koha-devel first

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