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2 RELEASE NOTES FOR KOHA 3.0
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4 Koha 3 is the next-generation release of the award-winning Koha open-source
5 integrated library system.
7 You can obtain Koha 3.0 from the following URL:
9 http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.01.tar.gz
11 These Release Notes cover What's New in Koha 3, information about the new
12 Revision control system (Git), and Version-release process, pointers to
13 Download, Installation, and Upgrade documentation, a brief introduction to the
14 new Templates, a call to Translation and Documentation writers, and finally,
15 Known Issues with this version.
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21 1. Zebra plugin - Zebra is a high-performance, general-purpose structured
22 text indexing and retrieval engine. It supports large data sets (tens of
23 millions of records) and includes support for SRU, Z39.50 and several query
24 languages: CCL, CQL, and PQF. For more information about Zebra, please see:
26 http://indexdata.dk/zebra
28 Koha's new search engine, built on top of Zebra, supports features such as
29 relevance ranking, field weighting, truncation, stemming, use of fuzzy
30 operators, language-specific indexing, sorting, etc.
32 Indexes are updated in real-time with circulation transactions, enabling
33 limits by availability and statuses.
35 Faceted refine-by limits are available from both staff and opac interfaces.
37 For libraries that don't want the overhead of maintaing Zebra, Koha 3 ships
38 with a NoZebra option, in which bibliographic and authority data is indexed
41 2. New installer - based on the common Perl module ExtUtils::MakeMaker, the
42 new installer makes it a snap to get Koha running on just about any platform.
44 The installer comes complete with a Developer's Toolkit target ('dev') that
45 can be used to get a development environment linked directly to revision
46 control, to support rapid prototyping and an agile development process.
48 3. Standard APIs - Koha 3 supports a number of important library search and
49 retrieval standards and microformats, such as SRU/W, Z39.50
50 (http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/), UnAPI (http://unapi.info/) and
52 (http://ocoins.info; http://www.niso.org/committees/committee_ax.html).
54 Also supported is the popular Internet standard: OpenSearch
55 (http://opensearch.a9.com/) created by Amazon's A9.
57 Records are stored internally in an SGML-like format and can be retrieved in
58 MARCXML, Dublin Core, MODS, RSS, Atom, RDF-DC, SRW-DC, OAI-DC, and EndNote;
59 and the OPAC can be used by citation tools such as Zotero. Creating new
60 export formats is a trivial exercise in writing XSLT; records can be passed
61 through XSLT transformations either directly out of the index, or via a
62 separate parsing function.
64 To retrieve and interact with Circulation and Patron data, Koha 3 includes
65 support for 3M's Standard Interchange Protocol (SIP2), using the OpenNCIP
66 libraries (http://openncip.org).
68 There are also an ever-expanding set of native REST APIs to handle
69 interoperability with external tools such as third-party cataloging clients.
70 These APIs provide authentication as well as add/edit/delete control over
71 bibliographic data within a Koha system. For more information, see:
73 http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:web_services
75 Koha 3 also includes pluggable authentication - easy integration with LDAP and
76 Active Directory via the Auth_with_ldap module.
78 Enriched content web services, such as those offered by Amazon.com, Baker and
79 Taylor's Content Cafe, and the Google Book API can be enabled to enrich
80 bibliographic content with jacket covers, professional reviews, ratings and
81 comments from users, as well as point to 'Similar Items' within the catalog.
82 OCLC's xISBN, and LibraryThing's ThingISBN an likewise be enabled to provide
83 an 'Editions' tab, pulling together all the formats, languages, and editions
84 of a work into the item detail pages. New with Koha 3 is service throttling
85 for these services, to keep within subscription limits.
87 4. Cross-platform, multi-RDBMS, Web-server agnostic - Run Koha on the platform
88 of your choice: Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris. Koha 3 also
89 includes better support for multi-RDBMS (MySQL 5.0 and PostgreSQL), and runs
90 under Apache2, IIS, or the web server of your choosing.
92 5. Multi-lingual support - Koha was designed from the ground up for multilingual
93 libraries. Koha 3 can handle Chinese, Japanese, and even right-to-left languages
94 such as Arabic and Hebrew with ease (BiDi).
96 Koha's index engine (Zebra) can handle record formats containing any UNICODE
97 compliant script, such as Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese and Korean. Zebra
98 has this support via the ICU libraries created and maintained by IBM.
100 You can translate Koha into your language using the built-in translation tools,
101 or by visiting http://translate.koha.org.
103 6. New templates - Koha's staff and patron interfaces are developed with a
104 template system that's easy to theme. The default templates are composed of 100%
105 valid XHTML and CSS. Koha aims to meet or exceed U.S. Government Section 508 and
106 W3C's WAI-AA standards for sight and motor impaired individuals. All
107 Javascript usage comes with fallback modes that work in any web browser.
109 7. Koha 3 has quite a few new modules, as well as enhancements to existing
110 modules, including: news writer, label creator, calendar, OPAC comments, MARC
111 staging and overlay, notices, transaction logs, guided reports with a data
112 dictionary and task scheduler, classification sources/filing rules, and more!
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118 With Koha 3, we've started using a new distributed revision control system
119 called Git; it's the same system in use by many other projects, including the
120 Linux Kernel. To learn more about how to develop Koha using Git, please see
123 http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:git_usage
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129 With Koha 3, version numbering has been changed to use a method similar to
132 major.minor[.revision[.build]]
136 * revision: two-digit
139 This release of Koha 3.0 is versioned 3.00.00.107. Every database change
140 or significant enough code change requires an update to the 'build' number,
141 and developers will be able to easily upgrade their systems using the built-in
144 Koha 3.0.1 Release Schedule:
146 This release of Koha 3.0.1 includes the following general improvements over
147 the previous release:
149 * General Bugfixing (over 150 bugs fixed since RC1!)
151 Authorities structure edition
152 Authorities edition with diacritics
154 Adding failover when null string searched
156 When editing an item, clearing a field.
158 tags Management improved
159 shelves browsing improved
160 improved COInS Support
162 Boolean search on Advanced Search page (more options) Added
163 Deletion of private list fix
165 Improving concistency of strings
167 Adding some untranslated strings to translation files.
168 More consistency in dates display
170 Adds the creation date of biblios to frameworks in order to improve Rss support
171 You have to launch the script ./maintenance/UNIMARC_sync_date_created_with_marc_biblio.pl
172 995$2 as lost items management.
173 If you had a previous installation of Koha without 995$2 linked to items.lost then
174 you have to launch the script ./maintenance/sync_items_in_marc_bib.pl
175 and rebuild indexes with rebuild_zebra.pl (see wiki.koha.org or rebuild_zebra.pl -h for documentation)
177 Some sorting problems on patron names and libraries fixed
178 js and update of strings for better coherence
179 CGI::Session::Serialize::yaml is now required and not only CGI::Session
180 Adding better display of links on conformance with MARC standards
181 Fixing POD for correctness
182 Preparing for debian packaging
183 Adding more SIP2 functions
184 Adding some information on reports
185 UTF8 support improved
187 Many performance improvements under the hood
188 * Adding a Subject cloud
189 * better UNIMARC version 5 compliance
190 * Improving diacritics management in zebra
191 * Additional translations
192 * Improving Quality Assurance with test suite
193 * Adding a Renew All button to OPAC
194 * options added to overdue_notices script
196 Subsequent releases will be bugfix releases, and won't include new
197 features which would require some databas changes.
199 New features will be available in Koha 3.2 and subsequent releases.
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202 UPGRADING FROM A PREVIOUS VERSION OF KOHA
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205 The upgrade process from a previous version of Koha is documented on the Wiki
206 at the following page:
208 Upgrading from 2.2 or earlier version:
210 http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=22_to_30
212 Upgrading from a previous version of 3.0:
214 Please consult INSTALL files for details on how to upgrade
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220 You may have heard that the templates for Koha 3 have been re-skinned; there
221 is also the start of a template style guide on the Wiki:
223 http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:documentation:templates_style_guide
225 Kudos to Owen Leonard and the Nelsonville Public Library for their
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232 Koha 3.0 (this release) currently has complete translations for the following
235 OPAC: de-DE (German), el-GR (Greek), es-ES (Spanish), en (English), fr-FR (French)
236 hu-HU (Hungarian), it-IT (Italian), pt-PT (Portuguese), tr-TR (Turkish),
237 ru-RU (Russian), uk-UA (Ukranian)
238 zh-Hans-CN (Simplified Chinese in China), zh-Hans-TW (Simplified Chinese in Taiwan)
240 Staff Client fr-FR (French), en (English), hy-Armn (Armenian),
241 ru-RU (Russian), uk-UA (Ukranian)
242 zh-Hans-CN (Simplified Chinese in China), zh-Hans-TW (Simplified Chinese in Taiwan)
244 Additionally, Koha 3 (this release) has partial translations for the following
247 OPAC: am-Ethi (Amharic), bg-Cyrl (Bulgarian), fa-Arab (Persian), fi-FI (Finnish)
248 gl (Galego), he-Hebr (Hebrew), id-ID (Indonesian), ja-Japn (Japanese),
249 kn-Knda (kannada), ko-Kore (Korean), mi-NZ (Maori), pl-PL (Polish),
252 Staff Client: de-DE (German), el-EL (Greek), es-ES (Spanish), hu-HU (Hungarian),
253 ja-Japn (Japanese), tr-TR (Turkish),
255 The Koha Team welcomes additional translations; please see
256 http://www.kohadocs.org/usersguide/apb.html for information about
257 translating Koha, and join the koha-translate list to volunteer:
259 http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-translate
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265 User-contributed documentation for Koha 3 is available on the Koha Wiki
266 (http://wiki.koha.org). The Koha Team welcomes documentation contributions;
267 please join the Koha-devel list to volunteer:
269 http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel
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275 Known bugs are documented on the Koha wiki: http://bugs.koha.org and at the
276 3.0 RM's QA notes Wiki page:
278 http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:qanotes3.0