[Koha-zebra] Summary [long and includes references]

[Joshua Ferraro]

Hi everyone,

Here's the promised summary:

First of all, we have Indexdata to thank for developing and maintaining
Zebra and all the other wonderful software they've created. At their
request I've subscribed Sebastian, Adam and Mike to the koha-zebra list
and they've agreed to keep tabs on our progress and make suggestions
about how best to proceed.

So where are we in the process of integrating Zebra? ... I'll tell
you what I know.

1. IRC Meetings:
 We've had two of them to discuss searching. The latest was the most
 relevant, held on June 21 at 20:00 GMT. The complete log is here:
 
http://koha.org/cgi-bin/logs.pl?look=plain&startdate=2005062207:56:45&enddate=2005062210:06:45&search=Search

 The meeting notes are here:
 http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=12137992

2. Conversations I had with Sebastian and Mike (from Indexdata):

 The summary of our conversations is that Indexdata can really help
 out with the integration in two ways: 1. follow our progress and
 make sure we're proceeding in the best way; 2. further develop
 Zebra to better integrate with Koha (for example, improving the Perl
 API).

3. Paul's e-mail to koha-devel:

 http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=7651830&forum_id=2545
 http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=7654613&forum_id=2545

If you only read one of the above links, read Paul's email as it
outlines the whole process from his perspective (and since he wrote
Koha's current MARC support that's a good place to start :-)).

Regarding roles, we'll have to see how things develop but for now I've
spoken with the folowing folks who are interested in getting involved:

Koha Project Team:
 Chris Cormack          (Katipo) Koha 1.x Release Maintainer
 Mason James            (Katipo) Programmer and MARC
 Paul POULAIN           (Paul POULAIN) Koha 2.x Release Maintainer
 Henri-Damien LAURENT    (Paul POULAIN) Programmer
 Joshua Ferraro         (LibLime) Koha 3.0 Release Manager

Zebra Consultants:
 Sebastian Hammer       (Indexdata)
 Mike Taylor            (Indexdata)
 Adam Dickmeiss          (Indexdata)

Technical Advisors:
 Mike Rylander          (PINES) Lead programmer for Evergreen
 Thomas Dukleth         (Agome) MARC and library standards expert