Re: [CODE4LIB] Life after Expect
iii--
Re: [CODE4LIB] Life after Expect
> My biggest complaint at the current time is that the III Millennium > modules run just barely faster than a human can interact with them. Between the speed and reliability issues, automating GUIs is a hopeless cause except when needs are modest. Despite the mind blowing hardware we stick on desktops nowadays, it is more accurate to describe some applications as "walking" rather than "running" (Mil is hardly the only offender in this category). The good news is that these apps probably reduce your chances of getting repetitive stress injuries... ;) kyle
Re: [CODE4LIB] Life after Expect
Charles Ledvina wrote: |Yes, AutoIt is really cool, but according to my experience AutoIt |cannot read the Millennium client screen, which is a real drag. A |body is able cut keystrokes with it but you do have to babysit the |process. I'd like to disagree slightly with your complaint. I've been writing scripts that automate Millennium with AutoIt for the past 3 years. Initially, I had the same complaints and ranted numerous times about them (see my OML site). However, with increased experience and experimentation, I've found that one can figure out many workarounds that can accomplish things *without* being able to read certain portions of a screen, and I've incorporated these kinds of things into my scripting here. My biggest complaint at the current time is that the III Millennium modules run just barely faster than a human can interact with them. III seems to be completely uncognizant--no, uninterested or even *ignorant*--of the fact that a computer, rather than a human, might be "sitting at" the keyboard. This means that, although in theory scripts should be able to operate speedily, in Millennium's case scripts have to be slowed down quite considerably so that Millennium can keep up with them. Actually writing scripts to do useful stuff is relatively simple compared to the effort that has to be put in to make them work with Millennium. This screen synchronization issue (that is, keeping Millennium "in sync" with a script, especially over lengthy repetitive processes) is, in my opinion, often even more challenging than being able to "read" the Millennium screens. Another related complaint I have nowadays is that, as one writes scripts and tests/runs them with Millennium, it becomes painfully obvious that III has nowhere near completely documented the system for customers in terms of situations and error messages that can occur and which "screw up" scripts. Successful script writing depends upon the exact operation of the system being automated. After all, a system working the way it's documented is standard business practice. Apparently not with III, however! It is quite daunting when "the unexpected" occurs, particularly when it's not documented as a possibility. We're part of a small INN-Reach consortium, and it's been one unexpected INN-Reach surprise after another as we've tried to automate our *own* (not INN-Reach) system to do various things. FWIW. Harvey -- === Harvey E. Hahn, Manager, Technical Services Department Arlington Heights (Illinois) Memorial Library 847/506-2644 - FX: 847/506-2650 - Email: hhahn(at)ahml(dot)info OML & Scripts web pages: http://www.ahml.info/oml/ Personal web pages: http://users.anet.com/~packrat
Re: [CODE4LIB] MARC for downloading
Hi, Karen. If I were viewing an OpenLibrary book webpage in my browser, and wanted to download the source MARC record, I'd want a direct link to the raw MARC (i.e. exactly the same results I would get by following the curl instructions in your link below). So the OpenLibrary site would simply need a script to run the curl request and output to my browser. The case of multiple source records may be a bit trickier, since the relevant records probably aren't adjacent in those massive .dat files at archive.org. So the OpenLibrary script would need to make separate curl requests, and join them together with the MARC record terminator character (hex 1D), before sending them back to my browser. (Of course, others might prefer MARCXML records, but that should be easy to add once the above is already in place.) Keith On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 11:49 AM, Karen Coyle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It appears to be possible to link from the Open Library "book" page to > the MARC record or records that contributed to the data. Right now the > display of MARC records looks like what you see here: > http://pharosdb.us.archive.org:9898/show-marc/marc_records_scriblio_net/part29.dat:504453:573 > > Since clearly some people will want to download records into their own > systems, I'm concerned that this display doesn't facilitate that. But I > don't know what library systems expect or can handle. So could any of > you advise me on this?
Re: [CODE4LIB] MARC for downloading
Yes, that's what I have in mind, but I need a practical definition of "downloads all of the records as MARC" ;-) kc Eric Lease Morgan wrote: On May 16, 2008, at 11:49 AM, Karen Coyle wrote: http://pharosdb.us.archive.org:9898/show-marc/ marc_records_scriblio_net/part29.dat:504453:573 This is very interesting. I can image a system where a user: * searches and browses Open Library * identifies items of interest * selects record keys * adds them to a list * runs a program that downloads all the records as MARC * ingests the MARC into their local system Fun! -- Eric Morgan -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234
[CODE4LIB] Code4Lib.conf 2008: Mashup
Hi all, If you are so inclined, please send me a note with your favorite moments / pictures from code4lib.conf 2008. I'll be making a mashup video before we get too far away from it all... Regards, Noel Noel Peden Pierce Library System Administrator [EMAIL PROTECTED] 541.962.3017 I have seen gross intolerance shown in support of toleration. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Re: [CODE4LIB] MARC for downloading
On May 16, 2008, at 11:49 AM, Karen Coyle wrote: http://pharosdb.us.archive.org:9898/show-marc/ marc_records_scriblio_net/part29.dat:504453:573 This is very interesting. I can image a system where a user: * searches and browses Open Library * identifies items of interest * selects record keys * adds them to a list * runs a program that downloads all the records as MARC * ingests the MARC into their local system Fun! -- Eric Morgan
Re: [CODE4LIB] Open Source Repositories
Generally, you won't find a credible site that would allow you to upload unvetted binaries of adapted versions of low-volume software. The obvious risks are just too high. My recommendation would be a personal webpage, hosted on a site that's associated with a real-world institution, and a real-world contact. - Godmar On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 10:24 AM, Carol Bean <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I probably should clarify that the friend is looking for a place to share > what she's already fixed and compiled to run on a low resource machine (both > in Windows and Linux) > > Thanks, > Carol > > On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 9:52 AM, MJ Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Carol Bean <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> > Done anyone know of open source repositories that have precompiled >> > software? (Especially low resource software) >> >> As well as their own, most of the free software operating systems have >> third-party repositories, such as those listed at >> http://www.apt-get.org/ for debian. >> >> Make sure you trust the third party provider, though! >> >> Regards, >> -- >> MJ Ray (slef) >> Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small >> worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ >> (Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237 >> > > > > -- > Carol Bean > [EMAIL PROTECTED] >
Re: [CODE4LIB] Open Source Repositories
On Fri, 16 May 2008, Brenner, Aaron L wrote: To add to Joe's OS-specific list: http://www.sunfreeware.com/ is the place for the Solaris version of what Carol's message describes. Sorry -- I got tied up in package manager type programs ... Aaron's right -- Sun Freeware is probably a better fit for what was specifically described. If we want to start getting into those sort of sites, I'd also add the following, which for the most part just serve (or just link to) binaries, but serve as catalogs of software: Download.com (Mac, Windows, PDAs, web-based)) Tucows.com (Mac, Windows, Linux, PDAs, Web-based services) VersionTracker.com (Mac, Windows, Palm) There's probably other stuff out there, too. I personally prefer downloading from the authoritative source, but if no one finds you, it doesn't matter how good your software is. There are some sites that just track specific types of software (eg, the former Happy Puppy, which had game previews & demos before they stopped & started redirecting to a search engine optimization company.) Or, for the type of stuff on topic here, oss4lib: http://www.oss4lib.org/ (again, some of these just link, more as a catalog, while others are repositories) I'm probably leaving out lots of other similar sites ... I'm just listing the ones that I've used in the past. (and most, I haven't used in years) -Joe
[CODE4LIB] MARC for downloading
The Open Library API currently returns bibliographic records with the
Open Library fields:
(snippet)
"subject_place":
"Venice (Italy)",
"lc_classifications":
"DG674.2 .S3 2005",
"latest_revision": 1,
"genres": [
"Juvenile literature."
],
"title": "This is Venice",
"languages": [
{
"key": "\/l\/eng"
}
],
It appears to be possible to link from the Open Library "book" page to
the MARC record or records that contributed to the data. Right now the
display of MARC records looks like what you see here:
http://pharosdb.us.archive.org:9898/show-marc/marc_records_scriblio_net/part29.dat:504453:573
Since clearly some people will want to download records into their own
systems, I'm concerned that this display doesn't facilitate that. But I
don't know what library systems expect or can handle. So could any of
you advise me on this?
Thanks,
kc
--
---
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
Re: [CODE4LIB] Open Source Repositories
To add to Joe's OS-specific list: http://www.sunfreeware.com/ is the place for the Solaris version of what Carol's message describes. -AB -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Joe Hourcle Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 10:44 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Open Source Repositories On Fri, 16 May 2008, Carol Bean wrote: > I am being a little lazy here, hoping someone else might have already > "been there, done that." > > A friend wrote: > > "many of the Open Source applications I tried to build needed lots of > little bug fixes from the original source code to get them working. > I'm guessing the big Linux distributions usually have everything > tested out so it compiles without issues (most of the time) once you > have all the tarballs... With all these Open Source sites, there isn't > a site for distributing Open Source executables (plus required > source), is there? I don't want to start a whole project on > Sourceforge for orphan Open Source projects, just find a place to > share precompiled Open Source programs (and source/patches) I like > with some friends or anyone else who wants a copy." > > Done anyone know of open source repositories that have precompiled > software? (Especially low resource software) The problem is, you have to deal with OS, architecture, etc. When you don't have an audience of millions, especially if you're making changes more frequently than your user base refreshes their versions, it's often not worth the trouble. MacOSX : fink Debian : aptitude Solaris : SysV Red Hat : RPM ...etc. For MacOSX alone, if you're going to support 10.3 to 10.5, there's actually 7 builds: 10.3 : PowerPC 32bit, PowerPC 64bit 10.4 : PowerPC 32bit, PowerPC 64bit, Intel 10.5 : PowerPC 64bit, Intel (assuming you didn't do multi-architecture support, but even then, you need 3) ... What I'd suggest doing instead is using the various OS specific source distribution systems, where you give a package description w/ where to get the source from, a checksum, and the necessary patches for that platform to get it to compile. Ones that I know of include: FreeBSD : FreeBSD Ports OpenBSD : OpenBSD Ports MacOSX : MacPorts (formerly DarwinPorts) (I have no idea what the equiv. are for Linux, Windows or other OSes) ... And in some cases, there are language specific package managers ... CPAN for Perl, PEAR for PHP, RubyGems for Ruby, etc. ... One of the advantages of using these package managers is that they'll often recursively get dependancies, so you don't have to have some 10 page INSTALL file telling them where to get everything from, and how you expect it to be configured & installed. -Joe
Re: [CODE4LIB] CDL releases eXtensible Text Framework (XTF) 2.1
I've used it quite a bit. It isn't an opac replacement though. It is designed for publishing tei and ead documents, and it does a very good job at that, but I don't see how it could adapt easily for marc. It's very good, though... we've integrated it into blacklight for presentation of the tei in our fedora repos. Bess On 13-May-08, at 5:09 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: Anyone have any experience with this product, anything else to share? Would it possibly be suitable for use as an OPAC replacement, do you think? Jonathan Lisa Schiff wrote: **This announcement is being sent to many lists; apologies in advance for duplication.** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Lisa Schiff California Digital Library University of California, Office of the President 415 20th St., 4th Floor Oakland, CA 94612 (510) 587-6132 [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/xtf/ California Digital Library Announces New Release of the eXtensible Text Framework (XTF) Oakland, CA, May 12, 2008 - The California Digital Library (CDL) is pleased to announce a new release of its search and display technology, the eXtensible Text Framework (XTF) http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/xtf/> version 2.1 (http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/xtf/ ). XTF is an open source, highly flexible software application that supports the search, browse and display of heterogeneous digital content. XTF offers efficient and practical methods for creating customized end-user interfaces for distinct digital content collections. Highlights from the 2.1 release include: * Extensive interface improvements, including new search forms, built-in faceted browsing, and a new look and feel. * Increased support for document and information exchange formats. * XHTML and OAI-PMH output * NLM article format indexing and output * Microsoft Word indexing * Streamlined XSLT stylesheets for simpler deployment and adaptation. * Updated documentation that has been moved to the XTF project wiki http://xtf.wiki.sourceforge.net/> , allowing XTF implementers to share solutions with entire user community. * "Freeform" Boolean query language, offered as an experimental feature. * Backward compatibility with existing XTF implementations. A complete list of changes http://xtf.wiki.sourceforge.net/changeLog_2.1> is available on the XTF Project page on SourceForge http://sourceforge.net/projects/xtf/> , where the distribution (including documentation) can also be downloaded. Since the first deployment of XTF in 2005, the development strategy has been to build and maintain an indexing and display technology that is not only customizable, but also draws upon tested components already in use by the digital library and search communities - in particular the Lucene text search engine, Java, XML, and XSLT. By coordinating these pieces in a single platform that can be used to create multiple unique applications, CDL has succeeded in dramatically reducing the investment in infrastructure, staff training and development for new digital content projects. XTF offers a suite of customizable features that support diverse intellectual access to content. Interfaces can be designed to support the distinct tools and presentations that are useful and meaningful to specific audiences. In addition, XTF offers the following core features: * Easy to deploy: Drops directly in to a Java application server such as Tomcat or Resin; has been tested on Solaris, Mac, Linux, and Windows operating systems. * Easy to configure: Can create indexes on any XML element or attribute; entire presentation layer is customizable via XSLT. * Robust: Optimized to perform well on large documents (e.g., a single text that exceeds 10MB of encoded text); scales to perform well on collections of millions of documents; provides full Unicode support. * Extensible: * Works well with a variety of authentication systems (e.g., IP address lists, LDAP, Shibboleth). * Provides an interface for external data lookups to support thesaurus-based term expansion, recommender systems, etc. * Can power other digital library services (e.g., XTF contains an OAI-PMH data provider that allows others to harvest metadata, and an SRU interface that exposes searches to federated search engines). * Can be deployed as separate, modular pieces of a third-party system (e.g., the module that displays snippets of matching text). * Powerful for the end user: * Spell checking of queries * Faceted displays for browsing * Dynamically updated browse lists * Session-based bookbags These basic features can be tuned and modified. For instance, the same bookbag feature that allows users to store links to entire books, can also store links to citable elements of an object, such as a
Re: [CODE4LIB] Open Source Repositories
On Fri, 16 May 2008, Carol Bean wrote: I am being a little lazy here, hoping someone else might have already "been there, done that." A friend wrote: "many of the Open Source applications I tried to build needed lots of little bug fixes from the original source code to get them working. I'm guessing the big Linux distributions usually have everything tested out so it compiles without issues (most of the time) once you have all the tarballs... With all these Open Source sites, there isn't a site for distributing Open Source executables (plus required source), is there? I don't want to start a whole project on Sourceforge for orphan Open Source projects, just find a place to share precompiled Open Source programs (and source/patches) I like with some friends or anyone else who wants a copy." Done anyone know of open source repositories that have precompiled software? (Especially low resource software) The problem is, you have to deal with OS, architecture, etc. When you don't have an audience of millions, especially if you're making changes more frequently than your user base refreshes their versions, it's often not worth the trouble. MacOSX : fink Debian : aptitude Solaris : SysV Red Hat : RPM ...etc. For MacOSX alone, if you're going to support 10.3 to 10.5, there's actually 7 builds: 10.3 : PowerPC 32bit, PowerPC 64bit 10.4 : PowerPC 32bit, PowerPC 64bit, Intel 10.5 : PowerPC 64bit, Intel (assuming you didn't do multi-architecture support, but even then, you need 3) ... What I'd suggest doing instead is using the various OS specific source distribution systems, where you give a package description w/ where to get the source from, a checksum, and the necessary patches for that platform to get it to compile. Ones that I know of include: FreeBSD : FreeBSD Ports OpenBSD : OpenBSD Ports MacOSX : MacPorts (formerly DarwinPorts) (I have no idea what the equiv. are for Linux, Windows or other OSes) ... And in some cases, there are language specific package managers ... CPAN for Perl, PEAR for PHP, RubyGems for Ruby, etc. ... One of the advantages of using these package managers is that they'll often recursively get dependancies, so you don't have to have some 10 page INSTALL file telling them where to get everything from, and how you expect it to be configured & installed. -Joe
Re: [CODE4LIB] Open Source Repositories
I probably should clarify that the friend is looking for a place to share what she's already fixed and compiled to run on a low resource machine (both in Windows and Linux) Thanks, Carol On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 9:52 AM, MJ Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Carol Bean <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Done anyone know of open source repositories that have precompiled > > software? (Especially low resource software) > > As well as their own, most of the free software operating systems have > third-party repositories, such as those listed at > http://www.apt-get.org/ for debian. > > Make sure you trust the third party provider, though! > > Regards, > -- > MJ Ray (slef) > Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small > worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ > (Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237 > -- Carol Bean [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [CODE4LIB] Life after Expect
Hello there: Yes, AutoIt is really cool, but according to my experience AutoIt cannot read the Millennium client screen, which is a real drag. A body is able cut keystrokes with it but you do have to babysit the process. Now, what AutoIt does really well is interact with OCLC's Connexion client because you can include the Connexion objects right into your script. Just a note about Expect-- If you're more comfortable with Perl (as I am) there is a function called waitfor in the Net::Telnet module which does the same thing as Expect. As with AutoIt, Perl scripts can be converted to executables and thus be used on any PC. Charles Ledvina http://infosoup.org http://chopac.org Walker, David wrote: Going back to the original topic here a bit . . Is their any hope for those of us who rely on our Expect-monkeys in III? There are, of course, a number of marco-type programs out there that can emulate key strokes and mouse clicks in order to interface with the Millennium Java client. You could probably use these to achieve the same automated tasks your Expect scripts were performing. I don't really do this stuff myself, but one of our ILS admins here uses a free application called AutoIT to automate loading of data into Innovative by way of the Millennium Java client. --Dave --- David Walker Library Web Services Manager California State University http://xerxes.calstate.edu From: Code for Libraries on behalf of Ken Irwin Sent: Wed 5/14/2008 4:02 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Life after Expect Is their any hope for those of us who rely on our Expect-monkeys in III? My most important Expect scripts use the create-list function, and I hope that'll stay around for a while. But I'm sure they'll eventually go away too. Has III shown any interest in building in their own macros/automation features to do the sorts of tasks for which we rely on Expect? Ken Kyle Banerjee wrote: Last week, III announced that they are removing a number of circulation functions from the telnet menus in a software update that became generally available this month. From what I've been able to surmise, functions that will be removed include placing holds and checking things in or or out. Removing these menu options will break scripts that have been in use for years at institutions in our consortium, and lots more staff time will be required to perform certain tasks after some systems are upgraded. Apparently, III recently discovered that a bug involving holds was caused by the character-based system, but it is also related to a desire to port everything to Millennium. Based on the reasoning behind the announcement, future updates are likely result in other mission critical scripts breaking as other character-based functionality is deprecated. Just a reminder of the risks of relying on automation that depend on interfaces that are losing vendor support. kyle -- Ken Irwin Reference Librarian Thomas Library, Wittenberg University
Re: [CODE4LIB] Open Source Repositories
Carol Bean <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Done anyone know of open source repositories that have precompiled > software? (Especially low resource software) As well as their own, most of the free software operating systems have third-party repositories, such as those listed at http://www.apt-get.org/ for debian. Make sure you trust the third party provider, though! Regards, -- MJ Ray (slef) Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ (Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237
[CODE4LIB] Open Source Repositories
I am being a little lazy here, hoping someone else might have already "been there, done that." A friend wrote: "many of the Open Source applications I tried to build needed lots of little bug fixes from the original source code to get them working. I'm guessing the big Linux distributions usually have everything tested out so it compiles without issues (most of the time) once you have all the tarballs... With all these Open Source sites, there isn't a site for distributing Open Source executables (plus required source), is there? I don't want to start a whole project on Sourceforge for orphan Open Source projects, just find a place to share precompiled Open Source programs (and source/patches) I like with some friends or anyone else who wants a copy." Done anyone know of open source repositories that have precompiled software? (Especially low resource software) Thanks, Carol -- Carol Bean [EMAIL PROTECTED]
