VuFind® Community Call Minutes: July 11, 2023

Attending: Ephraim, Demian Katz, Comfort Maeresera, Luke Magoyo, Andrea Buntz Neiman, Samuel, Mario Trojan, Susan Turkel

The June, 2023 Newsletter was discussed.

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

• #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)
• #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 accessibility review.
• #2850 - Change route type for Help/Home from Static to Segment
  • Status: requires further discussion
• #2874 - Improve accessibility for checkboxes
  • Status: in process of being broken into smaller parts; will likely be closed soon
• #2934 - Switch to Splide Carousel Library
  • Status: in review; needs fixes.
• #2947 - Inheritance of local dirs for configuration files
  • Status: approved by Demian but being left open for further discussion in case others have opinions.
• #2961 / VUFIND-1252 - Add ID prefix option to deletes script
  • Status: needs review
• #2962 / VUFIND-1568 - Make Solr port configurable during installation
  • Status: needs review
• #2974 - Fetch only requested facets from Solr
  • Status: awaiting input from Ere following his vacation
• #2979 - Quote autocomplete results for more accurate matches
  • Status: in review/discussion
• #2982 - Add translations to improve accessibility for account/list checkboxes
  • Status: changes extracted from #2874; in review
• #2985 - KohaRest: Add missing permission to .ini comment
  • Status: awaiting input from Ere following his vacation

The following JIRA tickets represent features, fixes and improvements that do not yet have an active PR associated with them:

• 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: minimum viable solution was merged via pull request #2959; Chris is researching better options.
• VUFIND-1621 - Ellipsis missing from long facet values
  • Status: assigned to Chris, not started yet.

The following JIRA tickets represent test suite improvement ideas that have not been started yet:

• VUFIND-1541 - Add Mink test coverage for Markdown rendering
  • Status: assigned to Chris; not started.
• 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

Release 9.0.2 went out on time. A few more fixes have been submitted following the release, so a 9.0.3 release is justified. Demian plans to schedule the release for July 24th, unless anyone objects.

The PMC has discussed training needs for the community, led by Mohan Pradhan of Healthnet Nepal, who has run several extensive training sessions around VuFind® and related technologies. (Registration is open for an upcoming series).

We are trying to answer some questions to gain a better understanding of the communities needs and capacities. In particular:

Do you or others at your organization need hands-on VuFind® training? On what topics and at what scale?

Is anyone interested in volunteering to help training of new users?

Would hands-on training make sense as a part of future Community Calls if we identify topics where training would be helpful?

Ephraim expressed an interest in institution-level training, focused on technical aspects. Demian also shared links to videos and the Learning VuFind® book.

There was no other feedback.

Mario is working on making facet functionality more flexible/accessible by adding a filter box to the pop-up facet window. We recorded a brief video demo of his work in progress. We will discuss technical aspects in more detail next month when more people are able to attend the call.

Luke asked for some support setting up the KohaRest driver. Since Ere is on vacation, Demian suggested focusing on the harvesting and indexing steps, and we can troubleshoot the ILS driver in more detail next month. He will send some specific details to Luke via email.

The next call will be Tuesday, August 1, 2023 at 9am Eastern Daylight Time (13:00 GMT).