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All times shown according to UTC.
| Time | Nick | Message |
|---|---|---|
| 13:19 | mn | hello |
| 13:19 | dewey | salut, mn |
| 13:20 | mn | i'd like to know some things about koha before trying it |
| 14:55 | especially concerning barcodes | |
| 14:57 | i'd like to have the whole circulation as a self-service-station with a barcodereader | |
| 14:57 | kados | hi mn |
| 14:58 | mn | hi |
| 14:58 | kados | mn: LibLime has a separate self-service self checkout module for Koha that's not yet been contributed |
| 14:58 | and it uses barcodes | |
| 14:58 | so patron scans their barcode, then the barcodes of the items they are checking out | |
| 14:59 | then clicks on 'complete transaction' | |
| 14:59 | mn | exactly what i was thinking about |
| 14:59 | where is the hook? | |
| 14:59 | kados | it will probably be wrapped into a future version of the public release |
| 14:59 | but we haven't had enough sponsorship for it to afford that thusfar | |
| 15:00 | it was developed for one client on a strict budget | |
| 15:01 | mn | well i'm not someone to sponsor something. I'm on a strict (read no) budget myself. I do a ~5000 books private lib for around 150 patrons |
| 15:01 | kados | public library? |
| 15:02 | mn | no not public |
| 15:03 | i was inspired by our city library though but they use something comercial | |
| 15:03 | kados | right |
| 15:03 | mn | it will run on a celeron with 98mb ram |
| 15:04 | kados | you can run koha on a PDA :-) (I've done it :-)) |
| 15:04 | mn | really? sounds cool |
| 15:04 | kados | yea, was a bit of fun I had a few years back :-) |
| 15:05 | anyway ... | |
| 15:05 | here are some demos: | |
| 15:05 | http://liblime.com/demos | |
| 15:05 | of Koha, if you want to experiment | |
| 15:06 | there are plenty of free support options, including this IRC channel and the mailing list | |
| 15:06 | and there are companies that offer inexpensive support as well | |
| 15:06 | http://koha.org/support/ | |
| 15:07 | mn | great, thank you. How long do you think will it take me to set it up and enter the books? |
| 15:07 | kados | hard to say |
| 15:08 | are you going to run on linux? debian? | |
| 15:08 | install and maintain yourself? | |
| 15:08 | do you have basic command-line skils? | |
| 15:08 | understand apache, mysql, etc.? | |
| 15:09 | if so, it should only take a day or two at the most | |
| 15:09 | but if you're also learning all of that stuff, it could take a while | |
| 15:09 | mn | presumably ubuntu. cli proficient. mysql too. but it is always a pain for me to maintain apache |
| 15:10 | kados | if you want a system up and running immediately, some of the companies offering hosted packages can get your system installed in a few hours |
| 15:10 | probably not on a sunday though :-) | |
| 15:11 | mn | why could that be? |
| 15:11 | how do i checkout something without barcodes. Isn't this going to be error-prone? | |
| 15:12 | kados | you need barcodes to check something out |
| 15:12 | or at least some identifier in place of a barcode | |
| 15:12 | that's unique | |
| 15:14 | mn | so barcodes for the books but not for the users. And your system is for users? |
| 15:19 | kados | the koha you download from koha.org has two interfaces: |
| 15:20 | 1. public interface for searching, placing reserves, checking account information | |
| 15:20 | 2. a staff interface for managing patrons, checking out items, adding books to the collection, etc. | |
| 15:20 | liblime has a separate interface that allows: | |
| 15:20 | 3. patrons to use a unique identifier (usually barcode) to check out books to themselves (using another uniquie identifer for the book) | |
| 15:21 | #3 is not in standard koha, it's only available on LibLime's hosted platform | |
| 15:21 | we may eventually contribute it if we find sponsorship for the project | |
| 15:23 | mn | i see ... |
| 15:25 | and koha can print barcodes for the books? | |
| 15:25 | kados | yep |
| 15:26 | mn | but not for the patrons? |
| 15:26 | kados | a previous version could print for both, but that feature isn't currently maintained |
| 15:26 | printing barcodes is pretty easy | |
| 15:26 | there are plenty of websites that let you do that for free | |
| 15:27 | or you can just buy some pre-printed ones pretty cheaply too | |
| 15:27 | mn | i didn't know that... And will i find compatible barcodereaders in europe? |
| 15:28 | kados | yep |
| 15:29 | barcode standards are international | |
| 15:29 | mn | yeah i mean in terms of devicedrivers |
| 15:30 | kados | ? |
| 15:30 | not sure I understand your question | |
| 15:32 | mn | well i asume that the barcodereader connets via usb. And then? There has to be some part which brings this into the perl-application that is koha |
| 15:32 | kados | koha is web based |
| 15:32 | and a barcode reader is just a keyboard to the computer | |
| 15:33 | mn | So you have to place the cursor in the right field? |
| 15:33 | kados | there is auto-focus built in |
| 15:34 | mn | so i can use any barcodereader? Even one with RS232? |
| 15:34 | kados | yep |
| 15:34 | mn | cool |
| 15:39 | if your self-checkout module only works with an online-server it is unusable to me anyway | |
| 15:40 | kados | well, all of Koha is web based |
| 15:41 | mn | yes but i can install mysql+httpd+perl+firefox on the same machine, right? |
| 15:42 | kados | yep, if you want to |
| 15:43 | mn | well for our needs everthing else would be overkill. Althogh backup and the like are going to be a problem |
| 15:51 | well thanks a lot for answering my nasty questions! It should be quite late now in nz! Thanks a lot and a nice week! | |
| 15:52 | kados | no prob |
| 15:52 | and btw, I'm based on our US office | |
| 15:52 | ohio in fact :-) | |
| 15:53 | mn | so its more like noon there |
| 15:55 | kados | 15:00 in fact |
| 15:55 | and it's early morning in NZ | |
| 05:17 | toins | hello world |
| 05:22 | chris | hi toins |
| 05:23 | toins | hello chris |
| 05:23 | chris | how are things? |
| 05:27 | toins | chris, good ! |
| 09:07 | kados | morning #koha |
| 09:09 | hdl | hi kados |
| 10:45 | kados | morning owen |
| 10:45 | owen | Hi kados |
| 10:46 | kados | so I spent a few hours over the weekend on YUI |
| 10:46 | it's actually pretty simple to use | |
| 10:47 | I think the hardest thing about the design for 3.0 is gonna be the design part | |
| 10:47 | implementation shouldn't be too hard | |
| 10:48 | owen | Tell me about what you tried with YUI |
| 10:48 | kados | I played with the following components: |
| 10:48 | Button | |
| 10:48 | DataTable | |
| 10:48 | Menu | |
| 10:48 | TabView | |
| 10:48 | and ... | |
| 10:49 | there's a general layout one | |
| 10:49 | can't remember what it's called :-) | |
| 10:50 | Grids | |
| 10:52 | actually, of them, I think Grids is probably the one we want to start with | |
| 10:52 | it's so simple to use and works so well | |
| 10:52 | owen | yeah, we talked briefly about that one on Saturday |
| 10:53 | kados | as I played around it struck me that we're really not that organized about what types of data elements we have |
| 10:53 | in the intranet | |
| 10:53 | owen | What do you mean? |
| 10:53 | kados | (probably in the opac too, but I was looking at the intranet) |
| 10:53 | well for instance, there are global navigation elements | |
| 10:54 | in NPL templates that aren't in default or katipo | |
| 10:54 | and vice versa | |
| 10:54 | and each module presumably has its own set of navigation elements | |
| 10:54 | I was also mentally experimenting with the idea of 'action' vs 'view' | |
| 10:55 | owen | that sounds interesting |
| 10:55 | kados | so 'change password' or 'delete' is an action |
| 10:55 | whereas 'Fines' and 'Reserves' are views | |
| 10:56 | owen | Much like we did in the OPAC |
| 10:58 | kados | yea |
| 10:58 | something else that's cool about YUI is you can have different behaviors for different elements of the same class | |
| 10:58 | so take tabs for instance | |
| 10:58 | you might have 4 tabs on a detail page | |
| 10:58 | three of them have pre-loaded content | |
| 10:58 | one of them is a link to another page | |
| 10:59 | with YUI, you can make them all behave and look like one set (of course the new page would have to be set up to look the same, etc.) |
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