Mainly bug fixing.

There were a couple of outstanding unicode bugs that needed fixing (the rest were fixed the week before) such as in MetadataXMLPlugin. There were a few changes that had been made to GS3 which caused it to cease compiling properly which also required fixing. Finally, there was also the ticket where GS3’s List Users didn’t display all the details for a new user. That’s now been fixed too.

Most of the last two weeks were spent on making the final changes to the work Dr Bainbridge had already done to get Greenstone to work again if you have moved the Greenstone installation. It is now the case that if you relocate your GS2 installation that running the Greenstone Server Interface (GSI) will get the server successfully running from its new location, on both Linux and Windows. Underneath, there are differences (because the apache web server for Linux and Mac has its current location fixed into many of its files, which then need to be adjusted upon relocation), but the different operating systems provide the same “reset-gsdlhome” target in gsicontrol.bat and .sh, which is what the GSI calls whenever this application’s launch script is run. The reset-gsdlhome target can also be called from the command-line. The changes that needed to be made for this had the nice side-effect that gsicontrol can be run from any directory.

At the end of last week, we started looking at the GS284 bugs that Diego found.

Greenstone has a new macro that lets you share documents in social networks or email systems, using Addtoany tool . The new macro is called _shareme_  that belongs to package Global in document.dm. The macro accepts two parameters: _1_ is the title of the link, and _2_ is the link to share. For _2_, the [srclink] is the default option, but any other metadata can be used too. The only requirement is that the value of that metadata must contain a well-formed URL that begins with “http://”.

If _2_ is left blank, then the link will point to the Greenstone version of the document.

You have to edit your format statement and add something like this:_shareme_([dc.Title],[srclink])

and then you will see “Share+, Facebook, Twitter, Mail , LinkedIn” icons.

There is also a brief version called _sharemesmall_ that requires the same parameters and only shows Share+ icon.

The macro code is available with version 2.84. If you are using v.2.83 or earlier you have to edit document.dm file and add the following block:

**** Macro code - Begin ****

package Global

# Social network support
# Defined here in document, as the most likely place this will be used in
# within a document view, however its package is 'Global' because you
# might equally want this in a search or browse list

# _1_ = e.g. title
# _2_ = [srclink] or left empty.  If left empty, then it will share the internal GS document

<span style=\'padding-left:8px;\' class=\'a2a_kit a2a_default_style\'>
_sharemescript_(_1_,_2_)
<a class=\'a2a_dd\' href=\'http://www.addtoany.com/share_save\'>Share</a>
<script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"http://static.addtoany.com/menu/page.js\"></script>
</span>
}

**** Macro code - End ****

After last week’s bug discovery got fixed at the start of this week (there were issues with HTML files that had non-English filenames interlinking on a Mac OS), we went back to testing the Greenstone binaries on Windows, Linux and Mac. Finally, after uploading all the files onto SourceForge and adjusting the pages there as well as updating Greenstone.org’s own download page, we succeeded in releasing Greenstone 2.84 today!

To grab the Greenstone 2.84 binary for your operating system, visit the download page at Greenstone.org. This page also has the source distributions available in zip and tar.gz formats. Otherwise, you can always expand your binary installation with source code by grabbing the “source-component” archive files from the same download page.

The Greenstone 2.84 Release Notes contain installation instructions as well as details on how to use the latest Greenstone extensions like the PDFBox extension (for later versions of PDF) and OpenOfficeConverter (which can handle the latest Office docx format).

This week we tried to get Greenstone 3 to work on on Dr John Brine’s 64-bit Mac OS 10.6.6 machine (with Update 3) so that the Flax developers could make sure that Flax, which works with Greenstone 3, would run as well.

We didn’t have admin access on Professor Witten’s machine of similar specs, and therefore could not install the Java Developer Package which would contain the jni.h and other header files that had been relocated since Mac 10.6 Update 3 and whose absence prevented proper compilation on such Macs. However, on Dr John Brine’s machine, having admin privileges meant we could install this and get Greenstone 3 to compile on a Snow Leopard Update 3 at last. Running was  a separate issue: there were problems with the server. Sam discovered that the Java Developer Package (which contained JDK 1.6.0) would be 64 bit as well and found a flag to force Java to run in a 32 bit mode: -d32. Upon using that flag to launch the Apache web server, things ran smoothly on the server side of things. There are still issues with GLI opening collections and re-building collections in Greenstone which we will be returning to later.

Some configure and makefiles were updated to allow Greenstone to compile without compiling up wvware (since this had libiconv problems on the Mac 10.6.6, and compiling up gnome-lib on the machine has issues of its own). The –disable-wvware will allow us to temporarily bypass that and focus on other problems first.

In between, another staff member had moved his 3-year old Greenstone 3 installation elsewhere and his Greenstone web-service related application had stopped working. We got a new version of Greenstone 3 and made some configuration changes to get it all to work again.

Then it was back to testing Greenstone 2.84 to ensure that the important fixes Sam and Dr Bainbridge had made in the last weeks interacted well. I’m onto Mac testing at the moment. By Friday, we discovered that while documents with non-English unicode filenames were mostly working on the Mac, HTML files that interlinked (where the links referred to non-English filenames either directly or in URL-encoded format) did not. We started investigating this.

After a lot more testing, discovering bugs, fixing bugs and further testing, we’ve finally generated our 2nd release candidate for Greenstone 2.84. This time, there’s also a binary for the MacOS (tested on Leopard).

Most of the bugs this time round (after Release Candidate 1) had to do with dynamically linked libraries on the MacOs, getting the new document plugins from Greenstone Extensions to work when the Greenstone server is on a remote machine, Imagemagick processing JPEG2000 images on Linux machines, and fixing some issues around installing Greenstone on Windows in a path containing spaces.

Things seem to look good so far (but we’d appreciate independent confirmation of it), so if you haven’t already, do grab a copy and try it out. And tell us about your discoveries: any difficulties, bugs or other insights, so that we can make the final release of Greenstone 2.84 perfect.

Greentone 2.84 has cool new features, including the long-awaited ability to process docx and other new Office formats, as well as recent versions of PDF documents. These features are available as extensions to Greenstone, for which the details can be found in the Release Notes.

Download the Greenstone 2.84 RC2 from the Snapshots page.

The Greenstone wiki page 2.84 Release Notes has information on installation, running, where to get the new Greenstone extensions and more.

We are pleased to announce that an overview of results from the 2009 Greenstone User and Developer survey is available online at: http://greenstonesurvey.wordpress.com/greenstone-user-and-developer-survey-results/.

Through the survey, we were able to gather information from a geographically dispersed group of organizations and individuals who use Greenstone Digital Library Software. A primary component of the survey focused on how support resources are used and how current resources meet user needs.

The overview includes results from all major sections of the survey, which were the following:

• Background information (modes of use and basic use demographics);
• User Satisfaction;
• Support Mechanisms and Resources;
• Organizational Contexts;
• Technical Environments (Version Use and OS);
• Collections and Audiences; and
• Developers.

We’d like to thank respondents for participating in the survey and sharing information about their Greenstone experience!

Please take the Greenstone User Survey!  10-15 minutes of your time can help us learn more about Greenstone software users and developers. With your help, we will gain a better understanding of Greenstone software and support resource use and satisfaction; in what ways Greenstone users interact with and use the software; and the organizational and technical environments in which Greenstone software is used.

If you work with Greenstone to:
•    Develop digital library collections;
•    Teach about digital libraries;
•    Learn about digital libraries;
•    Develop language interfaces for Greenstone;
•    Develop other functionalities or code for Greenstone;
•    Disseminate or otherwise support use of Greenstone,
You are eligible to participate in this study.

How to participate:
Read information about the survey and your rights as a participant at:
http://greenstonesurvey.wordpress.com/infosheet/.
Then click the link at the bottom of the survey information page to continue to the survey.

In addition to the online survey, a pdf version is also available.
Contact Laura Sheble at sheble@email.unc.edu for a copy of the pdf survey.

Want to do more?
Help us distribute the survey:  Inform other Greenstone software users
and developers about this survey by posting a link to this blog entry
or by sending an email with the information above. Thank you for your help!

The Southern African Greenstone Support Network (SAGSN) consists of many libraries developing digital collections with the aid and assistance of a number of National Centres of excellence. To date the Network has National Centres at libraries in Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. The Support Network would like to include more countries in and beyond the Southern African Region through the establishment of a number of new National Centres. In countries with an eIFL.net presence National Centres usually work closely with their national library consortium.

This Call invites libraries (or related organisations) actively engaged in digitisation efforts and digital libraries who are interested in the possibility of becoming a National Centre, to contact the SAGSN Regional Coordinator, Amos Kujenga (amos.kujenga@eifl.net), for further discussion.

The closing date for the Call is Friday the 12th of June 2009.

As guiding documents the National Centre Terms of Reference and a Call for Participation are available as downloadable PDFs. The Terms of Reference are the present and future Centres’ touchstones. 

I am very pleased to announce that the University of Waikato has been awarded US$50,000 for the Greenstone project within the Third Annual Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration (see http://matc.mellon.org/press-release). This competition is meant “to recognize important organizational contributions to open source projects which currently or potentially provide significant benefits to at least one traditional Mellon constituency (higher education, especially the arts and humanities; libraries; museums; arts organizations; and nature conservation).” We understand that the committee was primarily impressed by Greenstone’s impact in the developing world as testified by many users who supported our candidacy online, thanks to all of you who contributed recommendations.

The University intends to use the award to further the Greenstone community of developers and users, particularly in developing countries. This will involve improving the documentation, making tutorial videos, and stimulating the development of Greenstone capabilities and user groups in developing countries.

As part of this effort we invite proposals from the Greenstone community in developing countries for small grants (US$1000 to US$5000) which will be awarded in 2009 according to the following criteria:

* one-time assistance (not a continuing subvention) for a project which will lead to sustainable follow-up: examples of activity could be organisation of user meetings or training workshops, expert missions for training and advice (particularly exchange of expertise within a given region or country), institutional exchanges or user services;
* priority to regional networks and to countries and institutions in greatest need (normally grants will not available to individuals, but there could be exceptions);
* priority to projects which are partially self-funded or partially funded by third parties.

Detailed proposals should be addressed to John Rose , Research Associate, University of Waikato, who will correspond with the submitting parties as needed to refine their proposals. Awardees will be expected to submit a detailed evaluation report at the conclusion of their projects.

cheers
ian