VuFind® Community Call Minutes: November 7, 2023

Attending: Ephraim, Demian Katz, Maccabee Levine, Luke Magoyo, Ere Maijala, Robert Sipek, Susan Turkel, Thomas Wagener

The October, 2023 Newsletter was discussed.

The following pull requests are scheduled for inclusion in release 10:

• #1680 - Display flash message on login
  • Status: Complex issue; may need to open one or more PRs in order to close this one.
• #2233 - Convert from Laminas\Db to Doctrine
  • Status: 100 commits so far; many checkboxes still need to be checked.
• #2612 / VUFIND-1588 - Add support for WorldCat Search v2 API
  • Status: Work in progress, with many unchecked checkboxes; some checks have not been completed.
• #2624 - Replace grunt with NPM scripts
  • Status: Work in progress; has some conflicts and failed checks.
• #2723 - Component: confirmation menu
  • Status: Much work still needed; some checks unsuccessful.
• #2814 - Replace jumpMenu controls with menu-button components
  • Status: Work in progress; all checks have passed, but branch has conflicts, and more work and review are needed (@crhallberg?).
• #2934 - Switch to Splide Carousel Library
  • Status: Needs conflict resolution, testing, and consensus-building around package.json strategy.
• #2941 / VUFIND-1617 - Prevent single sign-on (SSO) from breaking out of lightbox
  • Status: Minor changes and review still needed.
• #3039 - Accessibility: Moravian Library Report
  • Status: Work in progress; some checks were unsuccessful. This PR is an umbrella covering a number of topics, some of which have been split out as separate PRs.
• #3046 - Refactor hierarchical facets
  • Status: Passed all checks, but needs to have theme conflicts resolved.
• #3064 - Fix autocomplete opening with autofocus
  • Status: Work in progress; some checks were unsuccessful and there are theme conflicts. We should figure out what is still needed from this work, as some problems were addressed in a different way. Another look from @crhallberg might help.

• #2929 - Add an option to update search results without loading the full page
  • Status: Work in progress; all checks have passed. Requires additional testing, documentation, and review.
• #2952 - Adding optional virtual keyboard to searchbox
  • Status: Almost done, just needs a bit more testing and needs some conflicts to be resolved. Needs response from @ThoWagen to suggestion re: simplifying code.
• #2991 - Add filtering capability to facet list pop-up
  • Status: One remaining issue; otherwise, all checks passed (but conflicts that need resolving).
• #3027 - Add support for persistent login
  • Status: Work in progress; some checks were unsuccessful.
• #3069 - Search Result Explanation Feature
  • Status: Currently in review.
• #3094 - FOLIO: Display bound-with titles
  • Status: Almost ready to go; will need more attention once #3096 is done. All checks passed, theme and module conflicts need resolution.
• #3103 - VuFind Notifications CMS
  • Status: Under discussion with changes requested; needs review by @jschultze. Some checks were unsuccessful, and the branch has conflicts.
• #3142 - Multi page selection in favorite list
  • Status: Almost ready! Needs final review, plus one theme conflict needs resolution. All checks passed.
• #3160 - Recommend databases based on EDS results
  • Status: Demian suggests minor adjustments to make this code even more reusable/flexible. Awaiting rsponse from @maccabeelevine.

• #2642 - Create view helper for translating EDS labels
  • Status: This is at an early stage of work, with no significant updates since end of 2022. The branch has conflicts.
• #2933 - Language labels matching MARC standard
  • Status: Almost ready to merge; needs final approval, changelog note about need to reindex, and creation of followup PR re: indexing ISO codes.
• #3096 - Narrow the first holdings tab column to 25% width
  • Status: Needs review by @sturkel, and possibly a mockup to be created by @crhallberg. All checks passed, but needs theme conflicts to be resolved.
• #3098 - Add option to enable facet filters for advanced search facets
  • Status: In review.
• #3126 - Add option to return an HTMLElement from the icon helper
  • Status: Almost ready! Needs review by @crhallberg. All checks passed, no conflicts.
• #3175 - Accessibility: Use $headTitle as <h1> on results
  • Status: Ready to merge after review by @crhallberg
• #3181 - Updated jQuery to Javascript for button disable on submit
  • Status: Only minor changes are needed; awaiting input from @padmasreegade.
• #3192 - Support hidden filters on recommendation modules
  • Status: In review
• #3193 - Configurable fields for RecordDataFormatter
  • Status: In review

• #2060 - makes the DAIA services which should be accepted configurable (etc.)
  • Status: In review/under discussion.
• #2688 - Announce number of search results in title
  • Status: Under discussion.
• #2763 - SetupThemeResources: Ensure 'Content-Type' is never escaped
  • Status: Discussion underway on GitHub; awaiting response from @mtrojan-ub.
• #2850 - Change route type for Help/Home from Static to Segment
  • Status: Work in progress; all checks have passed. PR needs review by @mtrojan-ub.
• #2999 - Get unique html element id from record view helper
  • Status: Only a bit more work is needed, now that PR 2982 has been merged. Ready for @elsenhans and @RLangeUni to revisit.
• #3025 - Add new Overdrive features
  • Status: Significant work still needed; waiting for @bpalme to make updates.

Demian is currently trying to balance addressing newly-added PRs quickly (to resolve small/easy ones immediately and prevent the backlog from growing) with addressing older long-standing PRs (which are being addressed in a roughly oldest-first order). It will take considerable time to get caught up.

Thomas and Maccabee emphasized that they are not in a huge rush to get their PRs resolved.

Ere offered to help with some new feature reviews; Maccabee offered to assist with various front-end infrastructure PRs as needed (though this was not discussed in detail yet because Chris was unable to attend).

Susan will continue to do hands-on testing where possible/appropriate.

There was some discussion about tagging and assigning PRs to make management easier. Demian will take some of the suggestions under consideration and apply further classification where possible.

We'll talk about JIRA tickets at a future meeting; first we should focus on triaging the pull requests.

There was discussion about the increasing need to eliminate Bootstrap 3 due to its end of life status.

Some questions:

• Where should we go next? (Bootstrap upgrade? Other framework? Pure HTML?)
• How much can be abstracted? What abstraction mechanism should we use? (View helper? LESS? Sub-templates?)
• How do we balance this with other priorities?

Some thoughts:

• The Doctrine work in progress is touching many template files, so trying to do that at the same time as a full Bootstrap replacement may cause many conflicts and make progress difficult. We may want to prioritize concluding the Doctrine project before attempting other major theme migration work.
• It would be good to assess the scope of Bootstrap usage in the current theme. How many features are we using? How many templates are impacted? What patterns are prevalent in the code?
• Once we have an idea of patterns that need to be addressed, we could begin some proof-of-concept work to come up with solution patterns before fully applying those solutions.
• There may be some situations where modern HTML can address needs previously met by Bootstrap. It is unlikely we can entirely give up framework use, but perhaps we can reduce it – this should be a goal where practical.
• Abstraction of framework functionality to simplify future customization is a good goal but may be less practical than a simple Bootstrap upgrade. While abstraction would be nice to have, if the best we can do is a reduction of Bootstrap dependency and a straight upgrade, that might be acceptable for this round to keep forward momentum moving.
• Entirely abandoning the bootstrap3 theme all at once would be an inconvenience for many users, but we don't want to have to maintain multiple themes in parallel for a long time. Maybe we could freeze and deprecate bootstrap3 while adding a new theme. We'll have to assess possibilities.

Demian assisted Luke with some Solr troubleshooting. They ran out of time on the meeting and will continue via email.

The next call will be Tuesday, December 5, 2023 at 9am Eastern Standard Time (14:00 GMT).