Hi folks, I'm happy to announce that a packaged alpha release of Koha 3 is now available. You can download from the usual location: http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.00-alpha.tar.gz http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.00-alpha.tar.gz.sig You can check the integrity of the package; either by verifying the provided GPG signature (.sig) or by comparing the MD5 checksum: 4fbd715cc6cd197264bba12b53391e42 koha-3.00.00-alpha.tar.gz I've also tagged this in Git as "version 3.00.00 alpha" v3.00.00-alpha This is the first packaged release of Koha 3. Prior to the official stable release of Koha 3.0, software issues, bugs, and unimplemented features must be addressed. These are documented on Koha's Bugzilla: http://bugs.koha.org and organized on the 3.0 RM's QA notes Wiki page: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:qanotes3.0 The release notes for this alpha version are pasted in below, and will also on the koha.org website sometime over the weekend. Cheers, -- Joshua Ferraro Koha 3.0 Release Manager ============================================================================== RELEASE NOTES FOR KOHA 3.0 ALPHA ============================================================================== Koha 3 is the next-generation release of the award-winning Koha open-source integrated library system. You can obtain Koha 3.0 Alpha from the following URL: http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.00-alpha.tar.gz These Release Notes cover What's New in Koha 3, information about the new Revision control system (Git), and Version-release process, pointers to Download, Installation, and Upgrade documentation, a brief introduction to the new Templates, a call to Translation and Documentation writers, and finally, Known Issues with this version. ============================================================================== WHAT'S NEW IN KOHA 3? ============================================================================== 1. Zebra plugin - Zebra is a high-performance, general-purpose structured text indexing and retrieval engine. It supports large data sets (tens of millions of records) and includes support for SRU, Z39.50 and several query languages: CCL, CQL, and PQF. For more information about Zebra, please see: http://indexdata.dk/zebra Koha's new search engine, built on top of Zebra, supports features such as relevance ranking, field weighting, truncation, stemming, use of fuzzy operators, language-specific indexing, sorting, etc. Indexes are updated in real-time with circulation transactions, enabling limits by availability and statuses. Faceted refine-by limits are available from both staff and opac interfaces. For libraries that don't want the overhead of maintaing Zebra, Koha 3 ships with a NoZebra option, in which bibliographic and authority data is indexed in the RDBMS. 2. New installer - based on the common Perl module ExtUtils::MakeMaker, the new installer makes it a snap to get Koha running on just about any platform. The installer comes complete with a Developer's Toolkit target ('dev') that can be used to get a development environment linked directly to revision control, to support rapid prototyping and an agile development process. 3. Standard APIs - Koha 3 supports a number of important library search and retrieval standards and microformats, such as SRU/W, Z39.50 (http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/), UnAPI (http://unapi.info/) and COinS/OpenURL (http://ocoins.info; http://www.niso.org/committees/committee_ax.html). Also supported is the popular Internet standard: OpenSearch (http://opensearch.a9.com/) created by Amazon's A9. Records are stored internally in an SGML-like format and can be retrieved in MARCXML, Dublin Core, MODS, RSS, Atom, RDF-DC, SRW-DC, OAI-DC, and EndNote; and the OPAC can be used by citation tools such as Zotero. Creating new export formats is a trivial exercise in writing XSLT; records can be passed through XSLT transformations either directly out of the index, or via a separate parsing function. To retrieve and interact with Circulation and Patron data, Koha 3 includes support for 3M's Standard Interchange Protocol (SIP2), using the OpenNCIP libraries (http://openncip.org). There are also an ever-expanding set of native REST APIs to handle interoperability with external tools such as third-party cataloging clients. These APIs provide authentication as well as add/edit/delete control over bibliographic data within a Koha system. For more information, see: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:web_services Koha 3 also includes pluggable authentication - easy integration with LDAP and Active Directory via the Auth_with_ldap module. The Amazon.com module can be enabled to enrich bibliographic data with jacket covers, professional reviews, ratings and comments from Amazon users, as well as point to 'Similar Items' within the catalog. OCLC's xISBN, and LibraryThing's ThingISBN can likewise be enabled to provide an 'Editions' tab on item detail pages. New with Koha 3 is service throttling for these services, to keep within subscription limits. 4. Cross-platform, multi-RDBMS, Web-server agnostic - Run Koha on the platform of your choice: Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris. Koha 3 also includes better support for multi-RDBMS (MySQL 5.0 and PostgreSQL), and runs under Apache2, IIS, or the web server of your choosing. 5. Multi-lingual support - Koha was designed from the ground up for multilingual libraries. Koha 3 can handle Chinese, Japanese, and even right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew with ease (BiDi). Koha's index engine (Zebra) can handle record formats containing any UNICODE compliant script, such as Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese and Korean. Zebra has this support via the ICU libraries created and maintained by IBM. You can translate Koha into your language using the built-in translation tools, or by visiting http://translate.koha.org. 6. New templates - Koha's staff and patron interfaces are developed with a template system that's easy to theme. The default templates are composed of 100% valid XHTML and CSS. Koha aims to meet or exceed U.S. Government Section 508 and W3C's WAI-AA standards for sight and motor impaired individuals. All Javascript usage comes with fallback modes that work in any web browser. 7. Koha 3 has quite a few new modules, as well as enhancements to existing modules, including: news writer, label creator, calendar, OPAC comments, MARC staging and overlay, notices, transaction logs, guided reports with a data dictionary and task scheduler, classification sources/filing rules. ============================================================================== REVISION CONTROL ============================================================================== With Koha 3, we've started using a new distributed revision control system called Git; it's the same system in use by many other projects, including the Linux Kernel. To learn more about how to develop Koha using Git, please see the Wiki page: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:git_usage ============================================================================== VERSION NUMBERING ============================================================================== With Koha 3, version numbering has been changed to use a method similar to Perl's: major.minor[.revision[.build]] * major: one digit * minor: two-digit * revision: two-digit * build: three-digit This alpha release of Koha 3.0 is versioned 3.00.00.041. Every database change or significant enough code change requires an update to the 'build' number, and developers will be able to easily upgrade their systems using the built-in updater. Koha 3.0 Release Schedule: This alpha release of Koha 3.0 will be followed by a beta release on Feb 1, 2008, including fixes to the following components: * General Bugfixing (everyone) * New API for item management (gmcharlt) * MARC21 Authorities (gmcharlt) * Improved I18N/L10N, lang detection (kados) * OPAC Templates re-design (oleonard) * Documentation and Translations (everyone) The final stable release of Koha 3.0 is slated for March 1 2008 and will include bugfixes to 3.0 beta. Subsequent releases of 3.0 will be bugfix releases, and won't include any new features. New features will be available in Koha 3.2 and subsequent releases. ============================================================================== UPGRADING FROM A PREVIOUS VERSION OF KOHA ============================================================================== The upgrade process from a previous version of Koha is documented on the Wiki at the following page: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=22_to_30 ============================================================================== TEMPLATES ============================================================================== You may have heard that the templates for Koha 3 have been re-skinned; there is also the start of a template style guide on the Wiki: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:documentation:templates_style_guide Kudos to Owen Leonard and the Nelsonville Public Library for their contributions! ============================================================================== TRANSLATIONS ============================================================================== Koha 3 alpha (this release) currently has complete translations for en-GB (English) and fr-FR (French). The Koha Team welcomes additional translations; please see http://www.kohadocs.org/usersguide/apb.html for information about translating Koha, and join the koha-translate list to volunteer: http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-translate ============================================================================== DOCUMENTATION ============================================================================== User-contributed documentation for Koha 3 is available on the Koha Wiki (http://wiki.koha.org). The Koha Team welcomes documentation contributions; please join the Koha-devel list to volunteer: http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel ============================================================================== KNOWN ISSUES ============================================================================== Known bugs are documented on the Koha wiki: http://bugs.koha.org and at the 3.0 RM's QA notes Wiki page: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:qanotes3.0