[Koha] From the Kaitiaki

[Pat Eyler]

On Fri, 7 Jun 2002, Glen Eustace wrote:

Thanks for your response.

> On Fri, 07 Jun 2002 05:45, Pat Eyler wrote:
> >    1.4
> >        Paul Poulain, Steve Tonnesen, and Sergey Yanovitsky have been
> >        hard at work laying out a database schema for MARC.  Now that
> >        they're down to dotting I's and crossing T's, they're going to
> >        be starting on a clean API for developers.  These two pieces
> >        will provide the foundation for a stronger, faster, better
> >        Koha.
>
> Just a couple of suggestions, hoping it isn't too late;
>

I think we're still early enough on for suggestions to be welcome.  One
things we're trying to do is develop in small bites.  This should make the
overall cost of change a bit lower than it would be in a traditional
system.  (Translation:  suggest early, suggest often.)

> 1. Can some of the table and column names be shortened please. When I
> converted the database to postgresql, some of the automatically generated
> objects, i.e. sequences and indices ended up with names that got truncated.
> Fortunately, they were still unique but that was more luck than good
> management.
>
> 2. Remove the hardcoded Horowhenua stuff from the source i.e. the logic
> dealing with branches and collections.

I think you'll see this happening as we move along.  One of our big
desires is that Koha become a systems that works well for everyone.

>
> >    Documentation
> >        Nicholas Rosasco has started writing our documentation.  We
> >        already have some volunteers, but could certainly use more.
> >        Even if you can only contribute a little time to read it and
> >        give us your feedback, or to write a short article, your help
> >        will be appreciated.
>
> 3. IMHO, there needs to be two distinct flavours of documentation. I am not a
> librarian and need to see the system from a technical/implementation point of
> view. The prospective users who were evaluating Koha, wanted to see the
> system from the Librarian point of view to help them make decisions about its
> usefulness.

I'll let Nick respond to this in more detail, but there is a very nice
outline taking shape that includes developer, user, and administrator
flavors of documentation.


thanks,
-pate

>
> Glen
>