September's VuFind® development work was focused on completing the 8.0 release, which went out on schedule (and which was quickly followed by an 8.0.1 release to fix some potentially annoying bugs that were discovered by early adopters). The VuFind® 8.0 press release contains more details on the highlights of the new release. With the major release now completed, work will shift to adding new features for next year's 8.1 release, and beginning to plan further upgrades and architectural improvements for the next major release.

In addition to supporting the completion of the new release, the Project Management Committee, along with some other members of the community, participated in a beta test of the forthcoming It Takes a Village toolkit for open source sustainability. This process included significant brainstorming about possible improvements to VuFind's community, and the PMC will work to put some of these ideas into action over the coming months.

Planning on the Virtual VuFind Summit 2021 is also progressing. The call for papers closed this month, with enough submissions to completely fill the schedule. Thanks to all who participated! Final details of the schedule are now being arranged, and the talks will be announced soon. In the meantime, early registration for the free event is already open.

Finally, this month saw the start of work to update VuFind websites and documentation to reflect the fact that the VuFind® name is now a registered trademark. Trademarking the name helps to protect the project's identity and to discourage misleading or confusing use of its name. The code remains free and open, as always. If your VuFind instance has a “powered by” notice (or equivalent), please update it to include the ® mark. Updated logo graphics are included in the 8.0 release of VuFind and can be downloaded from the logo wiki page.

The following items were completed in the past month:

• Add ability to filter sitemap results: #2102
• Add alias support for icon helper: #2127
• Add change tracking to XSLT examples: VUFIND-1461 / #2100
• Add GetItemStatuses::renderFullStatus(): #2149
• Add support for conditional extra parameters in searchspecs.yaml: #2104
• Add support for including browser's user agent in the feedback email: #2116
• Add translations for the User Agent field in feedback forms: #2117
• Aleph driver: paging support in my transactions: #2122, #2126
• Aleph driver: parse position in queue from item status: #2107
• Aleph driver: z304 mapping of address can be overriden for REST DLF API: #1994
• Allow Javascript to be loaded in the header OR the footer: VUFIND-1437 / #1799
• Avoid cache-related out-of-memory exceptions: VUFIND-1505 / #2137
• Catch exceptions when loading records from the cache: #2124
• Consistent variable names and code style for backend commands: #2111
• Create new truncation mechanism; apply to existing truncation functionality: #2121, #2135
• Do not circumvent search service: VUFIND-1483 / #2036
• Feedback forms: Fix a couple of code comments: #2119
• Fix catalog login with MultiBackend: #2015
• Fix hierarchy highlighting: #2130
• Fix limitOrderOverride: #2081
• Fix selection of ILL or storage request to update button state: #2146, #2147
• Fix typos in Czech translation: #2136
• Icon helper: #1926
• Improve/add tests for search commands: #2087
• Improve array support in config writer: #2088
• Improve escaping behavior of RecordLink helper: #2072
• Improve search service command object error handling: #2085
• Improve XML batch-loading support: VUFIND-1458 / #2034
• Improvements to feedback forms: #2113
• Indexing: Avoid fatal error if configs are missing: #2131
• KohaILSDI driver: fix fines problem: VUFIND-1418 / #2110
• KohaILSDI driver: simplify database initialization: #2112
• Make EDS connector not override HTTP client's adapter: #2109
• Make Form class non-shared: #2125
• Make generator config update more fault-tolerant: VUFIND-1506 / #2138
• Make handling of missing locale settings more robust: #2095
• Make OAI-PMH cursormark configurable: #2103
• Make page mandatory in content page route: #2141
• Make PHPUnit command a configurable Phing property: #2140
• More consistent backend validation in commands: #2097
• More flexible MARC 21 XML type handling: #2099
• Pass all form element data to the email template: #2123
• Refactor alphabrowse to use search service: #2084
• Refactor backend event targets and Solr error listeners: #2108
• Refactor BrowZine code to use search service: #2091
• Refactor CallMethodCommand and add backend command argument accessors: #2114
• Refactor EDS code to use search service: #2086
• Refactor MapSelection to use search service: #2092
• Refactor sitemap generator to use search service more consistently: #2037
• Refactor Solr TreeDataSource to use search service: #2093
• Refactor SwitchQuery module to use search service: #2106
• Refactor WorldCat code to use search service: #2090
• Refactoring of template resolving logic: #1424
• Remove unused/broken multi-breadcrumb functionality: #2098
• Rename CommandInterface method: #2096
• Rename Form class method: #2120
• Replace Linkify with UrlHighlight: #1709
• Simplify unnecessary array_push call: #2115
• Trigger print dialog only once: #2139
• Truncate fixes and improvements: #2134
• Update import mappings to use DDC 23: #2094
• Update logos to indicate trademark status: #2132
• Upgrade Phing to 2.17.0: #2101
• Upgrade to laminas-form version 3: #2051
• Use icon helper for spinners in JS code: #2133
• Use icon helper for spinners in templates: #2129
• Validate submitted form option values: #2118
• VuFind\Captcha\ImageFactory: Solve cache path problem: #2128
• WorkKeys.java: Optimize caching behaviour: #2082
• XCNCIP: Various holds related fixes: #2142

These PRs were closed because they were determined to be unnecessary:

• Open an external link instead of loading it into the lightbox: #2089
• SierraRest: Disable keepalive as it may cause trouble with Sierra: #2083

The following items were reported / begun in the past month, but are not yet completed:

• Add proxy settings for Phing: #2144
• Fix bug: Hierarchical facets do not display correctly in right-to-left mode: VUFIND-1504 / #2151
• Improve Document title with libraryname: #2148
• Improve version number processing during upgrade: VUFIND-1508 / #2150
• Move print dialog triggering code to separate file: #2143
• Reads current count of book bag in screen reader (without focus on it): #2145

• Add cursorMark support to MapSelection recommendation module: VUFIND-1501
• Allow sub-themes to disable JS files set by parents: VUFIND-1507
• CORE API integration: VUFIND-1500
• Holdings information might be missing from printed records: VUFIND-1509
• Make use of ellipsis consistent and customizable in translation: VUFIND-1503
• Need tests to verify that the Form class is non-shared: VUFIND-1502

The following items saw significant progress / activity during the past month:

• Utilize icon helper: #1962