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2 RELEASE NOTES FOR KOHA 3.0.6
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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 3.0.6 from the following URL:
9 http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.06.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.
89 Koha runs preferrably under Apache2, IIS, or the web server of your choosing.
91 5. Multi-lingual support - Koha was designed from the ground up for multilingual
92 libraries. Koha 3 can handle Chinese, Japanese, and even right-to-left languages
93 such as Arabic and Hebrew with ease (BiDi).
95 Koha's index engine (Zebra) can handle record formats containing any UNICODE
96 compliant script, such as Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese and Korean. Zebra
97 has this support via the ICU libraries created and maintained by IBM.
99 You can translate Koha into your language using the built-in translation tools,
100 or by visiting http://translate.koha.org.
102 6. New templates - Koha's staff and patron interfaces are developed with a
103 template system that's easy to theme. The default templates are composed of 100%
104 valid XHTML and CSS. Koha aims to meet or exceed U.S. Government Section 508 and
105 W3C's WAI-AA standards for sight and motor impaired individuals. All
106 Javascript usage comes with fallback modes that work in any web browser.
108 7. Koha 3 has quite a few new modules, as well as enhancements to existing
109 modules, including: news writer, label creator, calendar, OPAC comments, MARC
110 staging and overlay, notices, transaction logs, guided reports with a data
111 dictionary and task scheduler, classification sources/filing rules, and more!
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117 With Koha 3, we've started using a new distributed revision control system
118 called Git; it's the same system in use by many other projects, including the
119 Linux Kernel. To learn more about how to develop Koha using Git, please see
122 http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:git_usage
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128 With Koha 3, version numbering has been changed to use a method similar to
131 major.minor[.revision[.build]]
135 * revision: two-digit
138 This release of Koha 3.00.06 is versioned 3.00.06.008. Every database change
139 or significant enough code change requires an update to the 'build' number,
140 and developers will be able to easily upgrade their systems using the built-in
145 This release of Koha 3.0.6 includes 69 patches with bug fixes and translations:
168 Adds IndependentBranchPatrons system preferences for libraries which would not like to see patrons from other libraries
169 Adds XSLT systempreferences so that path can be provided
170 Also adds CSV exports
171 Adds a page for subscription history management
172 Changes the way reserves are allowed. You HAVE TO enter the itemtypes and holds Policy in order to enable your patron to reserve
176 It adds 10 changes in database, which adds some new tables required for some partial features ports from 3.2 due to the previous release and updates languages tag for portuguese and updates Calendar SystemPreference.
179 Note that Windows is not supported for this version as there are blockers.
181 Note that this version is still supporting only MySQL.
182 Support for PostgreSQL is still very experimental.
184 New features which have deep impact on code will be available in Koha 3.2
185 and subsequent releases.
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188 UPGRADING FROM A PREVIOUS VERSION OF KOHA
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191 The upgrade process from a previous version of Koha is documented on the Wiki
192 at the following page:
194 Upgrading from 2.2 or earlier version:
196 http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=22_to_30
198 Upgrading from a previous version of 3.0:
200 Please consult INSTALL files for details on how to upgrade
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206 You may have heard that the templates for Koha 3 have been re-skinned; there
207 is also the start of a template style guide on the Wiki:
209 http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:documentation:templates_style_guide
211 Kudos to Owen Leonard and the Nelsonville Public Library for their
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218 Koha 3.0.6 (this release) currently has complete translations for the following
221 OPAC: ar-Arab (Arabic), da-DK (Danish), de-DE (German), el-GR (Greek), es-ES (Spanish), en (English),
222 en-NZ (New Zealand English), fr-FR (French),
223 hu-HU (Hungarian), it-IT (Italian), nn-NO - Norwegian Nynorsk, nb-NO Norwegian (Bokmål),
224 nl-NL (Dutch), pt-PT (Portuguese), tr-TR (Turkish),
225 ru-RU (Russian), uk-UA (Ukranian)
228 Staff Client: de-DE (German), el-EL (Greek), fr-FR (French), en (English),
229 es-ES (Spanish), it-IT (Italian), uk-UA (Ukranian),
232 Additionally, Koha 3.0.6 (this release) has partial translations for the following
235 OPAC: am-Ethi (Amharic), bg-Cyrl (Bulgarian), fa-Arab (Persian), fi-FI (Finnish)
236 gl (Galician), he-Hebr (Hebrew), hr-HR (Croatian), hu-HU (Hungarian), id-ID (Indonesian),
237 ja-Japn (Japanese), kn-Knda (kannada), ko-Kore (Korean), lo-Laoo (Laoo),
238 mi-NZ (Maori), pl-PL (Polish), sv-SE (Swedish),
239 tet (Tetum), zh-Hans-CN (Simplified Chinese in China), zh-Hans-TW (Simplified Chinese in Taiwan)
241 Staff Client: ar-Arab (Arabic), es-ES (Spanish), hu-HU (Hungarian),
242 hy-Armn (Armenian), ja-Japn (Japanese), nn-NO - Norwegian Nynorsk, nb-NO Norwegian (Bokmål),
243 pt-PT (Portuguese), ru-RU (Russian), tr-TR (Turkish), Hindi, Greek, Italian, Polish,
244 zh-Hans-CN (Simplified Chinese in China), zh-Hans-TW (Simplified Chinese in Taiwan)
246 The Koha Team welcomes additional translations; please see
247 http://www.kohadocs.org/usersguide/apb.html for information about
248 translating Koha, and join the koha-translate list to volunteer:
250 http://lists.koha.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-translate
252 You can find latest uptodate translations on Pootle : http://translate.koha.org/languages/
253 You can also ask for translation rights if you need.
254 Thank you for your patience and your work, translators.
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260 User-contributed documentation for Koha 3 is available on the Koha Wiki
261 (http://wiki.koha.org). The Koha Team welcomes documentation contributions;
262 please join the Koha-devel list to volunteer:
264 http://lists.koha.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel
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270 Known bugs are documented on the Koha wiki: http://bugs.koha.org and at the
271 3.0 RM's QA notes Wiki page:
273 http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:qanotes3.0