[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Tags and labels in bib records, shortcut keys in staff client

[Jason Etheridge]

Hi Linda,

> Is there a way to make (customized) textual descriptions of MARC fields
> visible - instead of the usual tags?

It'd take some programming however you slice it.

> If one opens the staff client, chooses an item from the menu and then the
> subitem, in some cases some letters are underlined and that letters (in each
> case a single letter) are a part of the shortcut key. My questions is this -
> how are these letters chosen? As we use both the native English and the
> translated Czech version of the staff client, this would be a very useful
> piece of information for us...

They're not chosen programmatically, but by hand.

So for example, we have a file containing "entities" like this:

<!ENTITY staff.cat.opac.menu.accesskey "A">
<!ENTITY staff.cat.opac.menu.label "Actions for this Record">

And the label is what gets displayed, and the accesskey is what gets
underlined.  These are defined initially in English, and then
translated.  There are a few principles that we (or maybe I) try to
adhere to when choosing the accesskey, but they're not explicit, and
we're not consistent.  I have no idea what translators do and whether
they test their choices for usability. :(

The principles:

Try not to collide with the access keys from the top-level menubar (we
fail at this a good bit, but for the next principle below).
Incidentally, F10 can always get the keyboard focus near the menubar.
Generally, if access keys collide, the ones closest to the current
keyboard focus (the text entry cursor, caret, etc.) will grab the
keypress first.  If a menu is open, the access key for a given entry
can be used without Alt to reach the entry.

If we're going to allow colliding/conflicting access keys, try to do
it if the inner most widget with the access key is more useful for a
given context (e.g. alt+C for the Check Out pane in the patron
display, rather than the top-level Circulation menu).

Try to be consistent with common elements (e.g. Actions for Selected
Items).  We're not always consistent here, but partly because I have
multiple entities with the same label for different contexts (on the
chance that they might be translated differently for different
contexts).  For example:

<!ENTITY staff.circ.checkin_overlay.actions.label "Actions for Selected Items">
<!ENTITY staff.circ.renew_overlay.actions.label "Actions for Selected Items">
<!ENTITY staff.circ.copy_status_overlay.sel_items.label "Actions for
Selected Items">
<!ENTITY staff.cat.manage_multi_bib_items.actions.menu.label "Actions
for Selected Items">
<!ENTITY staff.patron.items_overlay.actions_for_selected_items.label
"Actions for Selected Items">

There's a way for the end-user to redefine some hot keys (for example,
how F1 behaves), but I'm not as familiar with the functionality there
(under Admin -> Workstation Administration -> Hotkeys in EG 2.1 and
later).

I hope this helps!

-- 
Jason Etheridge
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  jason at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com