VuFind® Community Call Minutes: June 6, 2023

Attending: Demian Katz, Claas Kazzer, Stephanie Leary, Ere Maijala, Peter Murray, Andrea Buntz Neiman, Katja Tietze, Susan Turkel, Thomas Wagener

The May, 2023 Newsletter was discussed.

The following pull requests are scheduled for inclusion in release 9.1:

• #2271 - Ajax facets - fetch only requested facets from Solr
  • Status: awaiting input from PR creator (@xrosecky)
• #2659 - Use CachingDownloader for Covers
  • Status: awaiting input from PR creator (@mtrojan-ub)
• #2688 - Announce number of search results in title
  • Status: awaiting input from PR creator (@stephanieleary)
• #2702 - Replace Slick Carousel with accessible-slick
  • Status: Discussion suggests we might want to close this and start over with Splide instead (Stephanie agrees). Ere investigated whether there was reusable code from finna, but it appears their usage of Splide was in a different context. Chris has volunteered to begin the investigation.
• #2723 - Component: confirmation menu
  • Status: needs significant work; might be reprioritized to 10.0. Chris suggested that we might be able to use the newly introduced popover property (spec) in combination with a polyfill to address this in a standards-based way.
• #2763 - SetupThemeResources: Ensure 'Content-Type' is never escaped
  • Status: awaiting input from PR creator (@mtrojan-ub)
• #2814 - Replace jumpMenu controls with menu-button components
  • Status: needs significant work, including conflict resolution and accessibility review.
• #2850 - Change route type for Help/Home from Static to Segment
  • Status: requires further discussion
• #2852 - Add header and h2 for title and author
  • Status: awaiting final consensus about approach; requires significant conflict resolution. Chris is okay with merging this as long as other accessibility experts agree that it is useful – he raised some questions about the necessity of the extra header tags but does not feel that this makes things worse.
• #2860 - Add LibGuidesAZ backend for Databases A-Z list
  • Status: in review
• #2874 - Improve accessibility for checkboxes
  • Status: in review; probably needs to be broken into smaller parts for manageability
• #2914 - Turn my account menu into ul, because it is a list
  • Status: in review; Chris raised the question of whether a menu tag would be a better option than a ul, but Stephanie offered some alternative suggestions on the PR.
• #2922 / #2924 - Correct SCSS compile extend error
  • Status: #2922 is currently in review; #2924 adds some continuous integration functionality that should be merged after #2922 is fixed.

The following JIRA tickets represent features, fixes and improvements that need to be started:

• VUFIND-1252 - Add ID prefix option to deletes script
  • Status: assigned to Demian; not started.
• VUFIND-1568 - Make Solr port configurable during installation
  • Status: assigned to Demian; not started.
• VUFIND-1598 - Allow users to view their proxy relationships
  • Status: unassigned; Ere mentioned that this is done locally for Koha.
• VUFIND-1599 - FOLIO: improve documentation/error handling around permissions
  • Status: unassigned
• VUFIND-1604 - Templates: components do not work inside of slots
  • Status: unassigned
• VUFIND-1606 - Upgrade vanilla-cookieconsent to fix HTML validation when new version available
  • Status: Assigned to Ere; in progress.
• VUFIND-1607 - Embedded records (in results list) have invalid aria and/or role attributes
  • Status: unassigned
• VUFIND-1611 - Accessible local CAPTCHA option
  • Status: unassigned, but Chris is doing some research on options.

The following JIRA tickets represent test suite improvement ideas:

• VUFIND-1351 - Create Mink tests for email verification functionality
  • Status: unassigned
• VUFIND-1471 - Create mink test for excluding hierarchical facets
  • Status: unassigned
• VUFIND-1541 - Add Mink test coverage for Markdown rendering
  • Status: assigned to Chris; not started.
• VUFIND-1585 - Create Mink tests for library card functionality
  • Status: unassigned
• VUFIND-1603 - Add test to verify that search tabs are created properly
  • Status: assigned to Ere; not started.

The following JIRA tickets represent tasks to be handled closer to the final release:

• VUFIND-1608 - Update language translation files for release 9.1
• VUFIND-1609 - Update dependencies for release 9.1
• VUFIND-1612 - Double check for “PHP version 7” in file comments
• VUFIND-1613 - Update GitHub branch protection rules for release-* branches

Quite a few minor issues have been fixed in the month since the release of 9.0.1, but the pace of fixes is slowing down and open tickets should be resolved soon. Demian proposes scheduling a 9.0.2 release for June 26, 2023 to mark the approximately two-month anniversary of the initial 9.x releases.

Demian has been talking with Bob Haschart, the lead developer of SolrMarc, about improving the sustainability of the project. These discussions led to a new release incorporating some recent bug fixes, and this release has been incorporated into the dev branch already. Bob is receptive to expanding involvement in SolrMarc; if you are interested in being more involved in that project or in helping to review open issues and pull requests, please let Demian know. Peter asked about skill requirements: mainly Java, MARC and Solr familiarity.

The July meeting would normally fall on July 4, but since this is a holiday in the United States, Demian proposes pushing the meeting forward a week to July 11.

Reminder: WOLFcon and the Summit are coming up in August!

Ere will be out of office for July.

Peter reported that a University of Colorado accessibility review revealed some problems with the autocomplete/autosuggest functionality. He demonstrated the problem with NVDA. Stephanie is going to compare notes with Peter as she is also working on a review; she suspects it's aria-related. Claas and Ere will also look into this locally. Demian has shared the results with Chris so that he can investigate further. Peter will open a JIRA ticket.

Demian mentioned that the dev-10.0 branch has been established to merge PRs that are too advanced for 9.1.

Demian also mentioned that he created an accessibility PR tag in GitHub to help keep track of accessibility-related PRs.

The next call will be Tuesday, July 11, 2023 at 9am Eastern Daylight Time (13:00 GMT).