VuFind Developers Call Minutes: December 11, 2012

Attending: Filipe Bento, Andy Erion, Demian Katz, David Maus, Benjamin Mosior, Tod Olson, Luke O'Sullivan, Sean Purcell, Al Rykhus, Ernie Simuro

• VUFIND-169 / VUFIND-629 - Ronan's patch to use VIAF to improve the accuracy of Wikipedia retrievals has been ported to 2.0 and committed as a new optional feature of the AuthorInfo recommendation module; no changes have been committed to 1.x in the interest of simplicity (though the patch remains available on VUFIND-629); VUFIND-169 has also been closed since this improvement addresses the main need of that ticket. If any of the specific VUFIND-169 suggestions are implemented as additional options, these should be covered by separate tickets.
• VUFIND-340 - Some progress on better password security in 2.0 has been made; code is posted here, and Demian will review shortly.
• VUFIND-421 - Hierarchy support is now fully implemented, so this ticket is closed.
• VUFIND-590 - This ticket has been resolved; VuFind 2.0 now requires authentication to send email (to avoid spammer abuse), but this feature can be disabled to allow anonymous emailing if desired.
• VUFIND-596 - Ronan's improvements to VuFind's use of 7xx MARC linking fields have been committed (1.x and 2.0).
• VUFIND-643 - New 2.0 MultiBackEnd ILS driver code has been posted here; Demian will review shortly.
• VUFIND-670 - David has completed some YAML-related refactoring; has merged the work in progress to the 2.0 master, but this ticket remains open and in progress.
• VUFIND-702 - An updated 2.0 installer with architecture-aware instructions for Apache configuration has been posted here; Demian has committed it.
• VUFIND-708 - This is a minor Shibboleth bug fix (avoid blank usernames) and has been committed to 1.x (2.0 already solved the issue).
• VUFIND-709 - This ticket addresses some odd side effects of functionality to make searches with trailing question marks work more intuitively; a proposed patch is attached, but the fix doesn't completely solve the problem, so nothing has been committed yet.
• VUFIND-710, VUFIND-712, VUFIND-715 - These tickets point out some problems with VuFind's YAML search configuration relying on eccentricities of the Horde/YAML parser which break more standards-based YAML readers and propose switching to a different YAML library. These tickets have been resolved – the YAML has been standardized, and 2.0 has been switched to use the more standards-compliant Symfony YAML component.
• VUFIND-711 - This ticket proposes a configuration option to allow OAI-PMH harvesting of password-protected repositories; a patch is forthcoming.
• VUFIND-713 - This ticket was opened to track David's progress on his search component refactoring.
• VUFIND-714 - This ticket reports a bug in the NewGenLib ILS driver. The fix has been committed.
• VUFIND-716 - This ticket reports a bug in 1.x where AJAX calls can affect the “last search” saved in the session under some circumstances; Demian has committed fixes to 1.x and 2.x code.
• VUFIND-717 - This ticket reports a bug with the template_full_path Smarty helper used by the jquerymobile theme in 1.x; Demian has committed a fix.
• VUFIND-718 - This ticket is a reminder to implement support for the new Summon “best bets” feature.
• VUFIND-719 - This ticket provides a patch (now in trunk) which makes the “expire searches” tool more memory efficient.
• VUFIND-720 - This ticket reports a bug in the “create list, then add to favorites” workflow. A fix has been committed.
• VUFIND-721 through VUFIND-725 - These tickets track various details of David's search refactoring work.

Demian has continued working on the collection branch functionality; as noted above, hierarchy trees are now fully functional in 2.0 (including search within trees). This feature is now documented. The actual collection view is in progress.

David prepared a branch to demonstrate his refactored search system and sent a pull request with commentary recently.

Demian and David have continued discussing the best way to manage VuFind components in Git; the idea of using submodules has been ruled out due to the extra complexity it introduces for users who are not Git experts. Instead, Demian plans to try the subtree merge strategy to pull components into a single large Git repo – he will try a proof-of-concept integration of the VuFindHttp module when time permits.

There was some discussion of whether VuFind 2.0 will be more usable as an API than 1.x. Demian proposed mapping out AJAX calls, looking at where existing URLs can be reused with content negotiation in place of custom AJAX module calls, etc. Benjamin volunteered to investigate whether he can find resources on his end to start drafting something.

HTML5, semantic markup and multiple themes in VuFind 2.0 were discussed. Demian is reluctant to proliferate themes in 2.0 (to keep code maintenance simple) but is willing to consider a responsive HTML5 theme in the interest of keeping up with technology and possibly eventually eliminating the standard/mobile dichotomy through responsive design. Demian is currently opposed to semantic markup in the core code because it makes templates less generic by putting specific meanings on specific fields, which can reduce valid code reuse; however, it makes sense as a local customization for search engine optimization, and a JIRA patch might be valuable.

David attended a Semantic Web in Libraries conference recently; slides and videos are available here.

Demian plans to read the latest BIBFRAME document when time permits.

Because of repeated spammer vandalism, the wiki start page has been locked; if you need to edit it, let Demian know.

Due to the holidays, the next call will not be until January 8, 2013.

Luke mentioned a blog post about the way he uses VuFind as an API for use by other applications.

Al has been working on making the alphabetic browse feature consortia-friendly (by using a new database field to limit by location). He will open a JIRA ticket with details.

Benjamin mentioned that one of the KLN developers is working on a VuFind 2 feedback module similar to the 1.x version found in JIRA (VUFIND-276). He will attach a new patch when work is complete.

The next call will be Tuesday, January 8, 2013 at 10am Eastern Standard Time (15:00 GMT).