[OPEN-ILS-DEV] OPAC (was: Planning for Evergreen development, post 2.0)

[Sharp, Chris]

Has there been much momentum in the direction of making the OPAC more of a modular piece?  I'm just wondering if since there is talk of redevelopment if there might be an effort towards developing an API for plug-and-play OPAC/discovery layer functionality?  Basically, I'm wondering if making it possible/easy to plug in pieces like VUfind or Blacklight would be a benefit that could come out of a redesign effort.  I'm not a developer, so I'm not aware of how complex that would be.

That question aside, I think an optimized built-in OPAC would be a big improvement.

Chris Sharp
PINES Program Manager
Georgia Public Library Service
1800 Century Place, Suite 150
Atlanta, Georgia 30345
(404) 235-7147
csharp at georgialibraries.org
http://pines.georgialibraries.org/

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dan Scott" <dan at coffeecode.net>
> To: "Evergreen Development Discussion List" <open-ils-dev at list.georgialibraries.org>
> Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2011 9:27:38 AM
> Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-DEV] OPAC (was: Planning for Evergreen development, post 2.0)
> <snip>
> 
> On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 03:44:32PM -0500, Bill Erickson wrote:
> 
> > >    User impact: Changed user interface means some relearning.
> > >    Speed
> > >    boost should be significant.
> > >
> >
> > I've been beating my head against the OPAC a lot lately and it's
> > probably
> > created some obvious bias ;) This would be a big project, of course.
> > There
> > is quite a bit of functionality in the OPAC (more than I can
> > remember,
> > sometimes). In my opinion, though, such a change, if done right,
> > would be a
> > major victory for Evergreen and one of the most important
> > requirements for
> > wider adoption of the software.
> 
> An implementation thought, to avoid a period of destabilization, would
> be to replace the SlimPAC with the TT2-based OPAC. (The SlimPAC could
> still live at the same URLs as before to satisfy those hordes of
> people
> who bookmarked them, of course). Then, when the appropriate amount of
> functionality has been developed in the TT2-based OPAC, it could
> replace
> the main OPAC (and the need for a separate "Basic Catalogue" should
> have
> disappeared).
> 
> I'm already dreading trying to map the dynamic OPAC URLs to a
> TT2-based
> OPAC (we promised they were persistent URLs, right?), but I am looking
> forward to cleaning up the URL structure. You had mentioned in IRC
> that
> you were already working on a prototype, is this something you can
> share?