he panui koha 18 October 2002 # # From the Kaitiaki: Wow! Thigs are continuing to move quickly. More libraries seem to be looking at Koha, and a couple of vendors are starting to show it to libraries as well. This week's edition of the news came together pretty easily, and I think it covers the scope of the project and community much better than I could on my own. Thanks to all those who ptiched in. 1.4: The 1.3.x team is proud to announce the birth of the breeding farm. The breeding farm is a place where you can place (lot of) MARC records in 2 clicks. they stay in the breeding farm as long as you have no items for this record. When you want to add an item in koha, you enter ISBN/ISSN of the book. If the book is in the breeding farm, it's immedialty called, and entering a biblio is very quick (you just have to modify what you want). This functionnality is avaible only in CVS currently, but will be ready for 1.3.2 in around 2 weeks. Note: This functionnality is not intended for migrating a library to Koha - to do this (migrating biblios AND items, you need to use bulkmarcimport, avaible in 1.2 and that will be completed/rewritten in 1.3) Docs: Thanks to some thoughts and work from Steve and Finlay, in short order The SGML version(s) of the full manual will be uploaded via a nifty form to Sourceforge, where the files will live in their own CVS tree (to keep them a little away from the code). Steve has thrown together something already: http://www.haz.cmsd.bc.ca/cgi-bin/kohadoc/upload This will let us run the SGML->HTML and HTMLtidy routine as part of the buildrelease scipt, since the "most recent" manual will be in CVS. ThemeHowTo/ThemeNotes will be marked up into SGML format, and will join the manual (developer section) soon. Ditto info on the POD stuff (http://www.kohalabs.com/resources/pod/). Transitions will most likely be getting a contribution re: how to move out of the "Winnebago" package. How to do a language template is not as far along, but as there is existing stuff from Katipo on how to use Kea, I don't anticipate huge problems doing the same for that material. I'm hoping to have the above done/proofed/final for the next stable release (1.3.something I guess). Developers: Especially NEW developers, please check the *current "released" manual* if you haven't do so already. We *want* to credit you, and spell your names correctly. Thanks. That goes especially for our new language contributors. Community: There were three big items from the community this week. One of the Win32 developers has not only gotten Koha running on several versions of windows, but he has put together a Win32 installer. If you're interested in helping work on this, please join the koha-win32 mailing list at: http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/koha/ Please take some time and fill out the survey that was posted to the mailing list recently. Getting the word out about Koha is one of the most important steps in keeping the development and user community flourishing. It's also a very easy way to contribute. Marshall Breeding's request earlier this week was another, similar, way to contribute to the long term success of Koha. In some ways it might be more visible. Marshall's site gets a lot of eyes. If Koha looks good there, it will be a big plus. French Koha: Thanks to several worthy librarians, we now have a CSV file of the whole UNIMARC tables : UNIMARC compliance will really help to make Koha a viable alternative to commercial ILS in France. UNIMARC is the standard used in libraries, from the Fench National Library to the smallest public libraries. This is a major step forward for the project in France. Another, smaller step forward that occured this week is the translation of the koha web site in French : it will soon go live at http://fr.koha.org. It will help us publicize all Koha related business in France, and provide a resource center for French libraries interested in Koha. All in all, it's been another great week. thanks, the Koha team