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2 RELEASE NOTES FOR KOHA 3.0 ALPHA
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4 Koha 3 is the next-generation release of the award-winning Koha open-source
5 integrated library system.
7 These Release Notes cover What's New in Koha 3, information about the new
8 Revision control system (Git), and Version-release process, pointers to
9 Download, Installation, and Upgrade documentation, a brief introduction to the
10 new Templates, a call to Translation and Documentation writers, and finally,
11 Known Issues with this version.
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17 1. Zebra plugin - Zebra is a high-performance, general-purpose structured
18 text indexing and retrieval engine. It supports large data sets (tens of
19 millions of records) and includes support for SRU, Z39.50 and several query
20 languages: CCL, CQL, and PQF. For more information about Zebra, please see:
22 http://indexdata.dk/zebra
24 Koha's new search engine, built on top of Zebra, supports features such as
25 relevance ranking, field weighting, truncation, stemming, use of fuzzy
26 operators, language-specific indexing, sorting, etc.
28 Indexes are updated in real-time with circulation transactions, enabling
29 limits by availability and statuses.
31 Faceted refine-by limits are available from both staff and opac interfaces.
33 For libraries that don't want the overhead of maintaing Zebra, Koha 3 ships
34 with a NoZebra option, in which bibliographic and authority data is indexed
37 2. New installer - based on the common Perl module ExtUtils::MakeMaker, the
38 new installer makes it a snap to get Koha running on just about any platform.
40 The installer comes complete with a Developer's Toolkit target ('dev') that
41 can be used to get a development environment linked directly to revision
42 control, to support rapid prototyping and an agile development process.
44 3. Standard APIs - in addition to support for library standards for search
45 and retrieval (SRU and Z39.50), Koha has native support for OpenSearch/RSS.
47 To retrieve and interact with Circulation and Patron data, Koha 3 includes
48 support for 3M's Standard Interchange Protocol (SIP2), using the OpenNCIP
49 libraries (http://openncip.org).
51 There are also an ever-expanding set of native REST APIs to handle
52 interoperability with external tools such as third-party cataloging clients.
53 These APIs provide authentication as well as add/edit/delete control over
54 bibliographic data within a Koha system. For more information, see:
56 http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:web_services
58 Koha 3 also includes pluggable authentication - easy integration with LDAP and
59 Active Directory via the Auth_with_ldap module.
61 Amazon.com can be enabled to enrich bibliographic data with jacket covers,
62 professional reviews, ratings and comments from Amazon users, as well as point
63 to 'Similar Items' within the catalog. OCLC's xISBN, and LibraryThing's
64 ThingISBN can likewise be enabled to provide an 'Editions' tab on item detail
65 pages. Service throttling is now available to keep within subscription limits.
67 4. Cross-platform, multi-RDBMS, Web-server agnostic - Run Koha on the platform
68 of your choice: Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris. Koha 3 also
69 includes better support for multi-RDBMS (MySQL 5.0 and PostgreSQL), and runs
70 under Apache2, IIS, or the web server of your choosing.
72 5. Multi-lingual support - Koha was designed from the ground up for multilingual
73 libraries. Koha 3 can handle Chinese, Japanese, and even right-to-left languages
74 such as Arabic and Hebrew with ease.
76 You can translate Koha into your language using the built-in translation tools,
77 or by visiting http://translate.koha.org.
79 6. New templates - Koha's staff and patron interfaces are developed with a
80 template system that's easy to theme. The default templates are composed of 100%
81 valid XHTML and CSS. Koha aims to meet or exceed U.S. Government Section 508 and
82 W3C's WAI-AA standards for sight and motor impaired individuals. All
83 Javascript usage comes with fallback modes that work in any web browser.
85 7. Koha 3 has quite a few new modules, as well as enhancements to existing
86 modules, including: news writer, label creator, calendar, OPAC comments, MARC
87 staging and overlay, notices, transaction logs, guided reports with a data
88 dictionary and task scheduler, classification sources/filing rules.
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94 With Koha 3, we've started using a new distributed revision control system
95 called Git; it's the same system in use by many other projects, including the
96 Linux Kernel. To learn more about how to develop Koha using Git, please see
99 http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:git_usage
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105 With Koha 3, version numbering has been changed to use a method similar to
108 major.minor[.revision[.build]]
112 * revision: two-digit
115 This alpha release of Koha 3.0 is versioned 3.00.00.041. Every database change
116 or significant enough code change requires an update to the 'build' number,
117 and developers will be able to easily upgrade their systems using the built-in
120 Koha 3.0 Release Schedule:
122 This alpha release of Koha 3.0 will be followed by a beta release on Feb 1,
123 2008, including fixes to the following components:
125 * General Bugfixing (everyone)
126 * New API for item management (gmcharlt)
127 * MARC21 Authorities (gmcharlt)
128 * I18N/L10N, BiDi, lang detection (kados)
129 * OPAC Templates re-design (oleonard)
130 * Documentation and Translations (everyone)
132 The final stable release of Koha 3.0 is slated for March 1 2008 and will
133 include bugfixes to 3.0 beta.
135 Subsequent releases of 3.0 will be bugfix releases, and won't include any new
138 New features will be available in Koha 3.2 and subsequent releases.
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141 UPGRADING FROM A PREVIOUS VERSION OF KOHA
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144 The upgrade process from a previous version of Koha is documented on the Wiki
145 at the following page:
147 http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=22_to_30
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153 You may have heard that the templates for Koha 3 have been re-skinned; there
154 is also the start of a template style guide on the Wiki:
156 http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:documentation:templates_style_guide
158 Kudos to Owen Leonard and the Nelsonville Public Library for their
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165 Koha 3 alpha (this release) currently has complete translations for en-GB
166 (English) and fr-FR (French). The Koha Team welcomes additional translations;
167 please see http://www.kohadocs.org/usersguide/apb.html for information about
168 translating Koha, and join the koha-translate list to volunteer:
170 http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-translate
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176 User-contributed documentation for Koha 3 is available on the Koha Wiki
177 (http://wiki.koha.org). The Koha Team welcomes documentation contributions;
178 please join the Koha-devel list to volunteer:
180 http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel
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186 Known bugs are documented on the Koha wiki: http://bugs.koha.org and at the
187 3.0 RM's QA notes Wiki page:
189 http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:qanotes3.0