It may appear that development of Libki has been stagnant recently. Rest assured, it is not! I’m working on a complete rewrite. While the current version is function, I want the new version to be beautiful. I want it to be a joy to use. To make this a reality, I have spent many, many hours thinking about how to accomplish this.

So far, I have the new Libki client half written. I have switched from PHP/Gtk+ to C++/Qt4. This brings many advantages. First, as it is compiled, start-up times should increase dramatically. Second, there will no longer any dependencies to install ( i.e. Gnope ). Third, there will be a simple Windows installer ( and .deb packages for Linux ). In addition, it just looks really great ( preview screen shots are available at my personal site ).

Both the client and server should be fully translatable for users whose primary language is not English.

The new server is planned to be written using the Catalyst Perl framework. This brings many advantages as well, API stability being the primary reason. The web interfaces will be completely AJAX enabled, powered by Jquery.

Here is the timeline as I have planned it:

Phase 1

• Functioning Server & Client
• AJAX powered web administration
• Only the most basic features will be included ( internal user authentication, all existing features ).
• Fix obvious issues from the current version ( the need to refresh the page, the ability to change passwords, etc. )

Phase 2

• Reservations System
• SIP2 User Authentication
• REST API for getting information from the server

Phase 3

• SIP2 Age Verification
• Configurable Time Warnings
• SMS User Notifications
• Cross-Platform Reboot/Shutdown
• Closing Time Logout/Shutdown
• Automatic Re-enabling of disabled users.
• Pre-assign a Kiosk to a User from the web administration inteface.

Phase 4

• Print Management ( most likely integration with PyKota ).

Phase 5

• Make reservations via SMS.
• LDAP Authentication

The official 0.2 release is now available on Sourceforge! The biggest noticable updates are the Clients view, and the troublemaker status.

Libki clients now register themselves with the server, so the clients view allows you to see all the available clients, and which clients have users logged in.

The troublemaker status is a way of tagging abused accounts. If an account is marked as a troublemaker, the accounts password is disabled nightly, forcing the owner of the marked account to have a libki admin reset the password each day before it can be used. In my library, we found that some teenagers were using their friends accounts to get extra time, sometimes 3 or 4 extra account numbers, this allows us to tag all those accounts.

Download Libki 0.2

Coming attractions:

More Koha integration.

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the Recent Activity feed on the front page, you’ve probably noticed there has been quite alot of work done since the first release. I’ve hoping to get a second release out soon, but I’ve been rearranging the directory structure which will slightly break older installations of the Libki Server. Fixing it will only require changing a symlink, so nothing serious. Still, I’d rather do these things early on, breaking it for a few people, rather than more later on. The server directory now contains the daemon and the and server, which has been renamed to app, the standard name for the directory containing a cakephp application. Many small bugs have been resolved as well. I new feature has been added to mark an account as a troublemaker. Accounts marked as troublemakers will have their password disabled nightly, forcing the troublemaker to see a librarian to reset the password so they can use their account for the day.

More updates coming soon,

Kyle

Download Libki Now!