[Koha] Seeking programmer: Patron Cards and Book labels: 3.06-- How are people printing them?

Tue Aug 24 01:14:25 NZST 2010

Just installed Koha from git, and the patron card/spine labels seem to work fine.

However....

While using Koha 2.2.9 on win32 I was not happy with the standard barcode generated by Koha (when I 
could get them to work) so I used the following software and process to 
generate my own.

Option 1 ********************************

This requires allowing access to the MySQL database that holds all of your Koha information.
*BE CAREFUL AND MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND THE RAMIFICATIONS OF DOING THIS*

Barcodes are just a font. 
Free barcode 39 font http://www.squaregear.net/fonts/free3of9.shtml

Free (for non-profit and edu) label making/design software 
http://www.idautomation.com/labelsoftware/free/

MySQLAdmin and GUI tools from 
http://library.pantek.com/Applications/MySQL/Downloads/MySQLGUITools/mysql-gui-tools-5.0-r12-win32.msi 

Install MySQLGUITools.
Use a multi-table MySQL query to pull the data from both the biblio and 
items tables into a single “output” table, then export to CSV.

the SQL query :
SELECT biblio.biblionumber, biblio.title, items.barcode, 
items.itemcallnumber FROM biblio, items WHERE biblio.biblionumber = 
items.biblionumber;

Will produce (in my case) a CSV like
biblionumber 	title 	barcode 	itemcallnumber
1 	Novell's ZENworks administrator's handbook / 	1 	
2 	The New York Public Library desk reference. 	30525 	031 new
3 	Picture perfect / 	36003 	FIC PIC
6 	Just listen : 	30431 	FIC DES
5 	The lovely bones : 	30319 	FIC SEB
8 	Unexplained / 	109541 	001.94 ALL
9 	Whatever happened to Janie? / 	109542 	
10 	The bad beginning / 	50000 	F SNI
11 	The field guide / 	50003 	F DIT
12 	The clique : 	109528 	F HAR

As you get into larger and larger biblionumbers you may want to add a > 
to the query:

SELECT biblio.biblionumber, biblio.title, items.barcode, 
items.itemcallnumber FROM biblio, items WHERE biblio.biblionumber>4 = 
items.biblionumber;
The >4 causes the query to only show rows where the biblionumber is 
(greater than)> 4

Install the barcode font, and the label making software. You can then 
design your labels, input data from the CSV, and produce your own custom 
labels with almost any information you desire.
I include the barcode, title, call number, and school name on all of my 
labels.

If you can obtain one, the Brother QL-500 is a wonderful label printer 
that also includes label design software that will allow you to print 
barcodes.

This process is not as easy as just pressing the button in Koha, but, I 
have found it to work quite in my environment.

Option 2:******************************

Create a "remote query" in PHP so that you can automagically generate a barcode ready list.
The cut/paste/format into a CSV, and print as above in option 1. 

example:
http://koha.almaschools.net/RQ/booklist.php

This requires a bit more work....but is very handy.

If you want the messy details, let me know off list......

-Scott Owen
Alma Public Schools

>>> Chris Nighswonger<cnighswonger at foundations.edu> 8/23/2010 7:53 AM >>>
Hi David,

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 4:02 AM, David M. Bucknell <dbucknell at iteachnet.org> wrote:

If there is someone who would be willing to jury-rig patron card and
spine label printing ... write a script ... I'd be willing to
compensate hourly costs.

I haven't heard from anyone except Chris, who is a contributing
programmer, I take it, so I guess everyone else has either an on-site
team or is paying a provider. 3.06 seems pretty cool and there is
really no alternative, so if anyone is willing to help for some cash
via paypal, it would be worth it to me. I have three installations
that need this, none of which have a budget, but all of them hell-bent
on Koha because of me.

Why don't you just upgrade to the current beta of Koha 3.2? There are several libraries, including ours, that have been running over this code for months now.

It seems a bit counter productive to pay money for a feature that will die in a couple of weeks anyway.

Kind Regards,
Chris

----- Message from cnighswonger at foundations.edu ---------
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2010 08:27:26 -0400
From: Chris Nighswonger <cnighswonger at foundations.edu>
Reply-To: Chris Nighswonger <cnighswonger at foundations.edu>
Subject: Re: [Koha] Patron Cards and Book labels: 3.06 -- How are
people printing them?
To: david at intknowledge.com
Cc: koha <koha at lists.katipo.co.nz>

> Hi David,
>
> On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 11:24 PM, David M. Bucknell <dbucknell at iteachnet.org
>> wrote:
>
>> Hello Everyone,
>>
>> Printing Spine label and patron cards: I started working on this in
>> May and 3.06 is
>> still the preferred stable version. I've seen two posts that say to
>> wait for 3.2.
>>
>>
> 3.2 includes a complete re-write of the label and card creator code. So
> waiting is probably the thing to do.
>
>
>> I've installed in various configurations (now have Thai lang with
>> marc-21; strange, but
>> it seems to work for input and searching).d
>>
>> I can't get any of the label options to work (English lang mostly) for
>> books or patrons
>> (at least not more than minimally -- I can get a barcode graphically
>> and as text, but
>> that's it. (Oh, and a nice red box around the items. Nothing I do to
>> customize (choose
>> what's on the label) has any effect.
>>
>>
> Label printing is pretty broken when it comes to unicode support. The short
> of it is that the pdf standard is not unicode friendly. This is true of 3.2
> as well.
>
> Having said that, we printed several thousand English (and a few Spanish)
> labels with the 3.0.x labels code. So it will work for English and probably
> some other Latin based alphabets.
>
>
>> Finally, I can't get the export to csv to work to try it.
>>
>
> I'm not sure what might be going on here.
>
>
>>
>> Apologies for not seeing it if it's obvious, but now I would like to
>> ask for suggestions.
>> Am I wrong or is this just not working? How are people getting
>> their labels and patron
>> cards done in 3.06?
>>
>
> The patron card code in 3.0.x is basically inflexible as many of the
> settings are hard coded. You will have to wait for 3.2 stable or go ahead
> and grab 3.2 alpha2 or the latest development master from
> http://git.koha-community.org/koha.git
>
> Kind Regards,
> Chris
>

----- End message from cnighswonger at foundations.edu -----

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