Contribute to the DSpace Development Fund

The newly established DSpace Development Fund supports the development of new features prioritized by DSpace Governance. For a list of planned features see the fund wiki page.

Date

Discussion (combined Angular UI & REST meeting)

Attendees

Notes

  • Discussion/Feedback of Search UI Mockups from Atmire: Search Mockup

    • All attending agree they like the design overall.
    • Minor feedback: If multiple filters have been checked, the display of each checked filter under different filter types/headings may be confusing / less than ideal.  Should we also display the currently active filters under the searchbox as tags?
      • Art will update the design to have tags under the searchbox, as this makes the current enabled filters more prominent
    • Overall, very positive feedback. Work based on this design should commence
      • As with other mockups, we encourage the work to be done in small "chunks" / feature sets, so that we can have an ongoing feedback loop regarding the search UI.  We don't want to see this come in all at once, but would rather see it built out over several smaller PRs (which will hopefully be easier to review and accept quickly)

  • Updates on PRs:

    • https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/142 : Ready to merge post mtg. Fixes 404 status

    • https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/143 : Needs other testers / feedback
      • Giuseppe will review/test this next week.  Tim can also do a quick build just to verify it's working at a basic level
    • Selection of Form component for DSpace 7 UI: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues/133
      • Art and Giuseppe both don't like the large amount of code that we have to copy into our codebase in the proof of concept at https://github.com/4Science/dspace-angular/tree/forms
      • Art proposes still using ng2-dynamic-forms library, but building our own implementation of the store (since there's no other module/component available for us to use)
        • Giuseppe agrees and will start to look into this next week. Will contact Art via Slack if he needs feedback or runs into issues
    • https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/127 : Fixing the Collection display issue
      • Andrea added a comment today. He and Giuseppe noticed a larger issue here
        • Our Angular-UI isn't using all the features of HAL Format.  We are hardcoding the URL in too many places, and not taking advantage of the HAL format's ability to provide the next links.
        • At the same time, we cannot make our UI completely generic...it has to know about certain types of objects (communities, collections, etc). But, ideally we don't hardcode links to these endpoints into the Angular UI itself.
        • Instead, Andrea suggests we consider a new followLink() method in the data.service.ts.  This method could take in a link name (e.g. "collections") and the current object, and return the resulting HAL doc. This would allow the Angular UI to only make assumptions based on the name of the link, and then use HAL format to obtain the actual URL.
        • Art will look into this a bit, and get back to us on whether this would be achievable.  Tim agrees this seems like an ideal way to work with links, as Andrea notes, it'd mean the REST API endpoints/URLs could even change over time, as long as the link names are what the Angular UI requires them to be.

  • Question about engaging other new developers on this project

    • We are looking to get others involved, and are open to feedback on how to best do so.

    • Current process is to send them resources for training/getting up to speed, and try and find some smaller sized tickets to help them get started (once they are ready)
    • We should look to create some "low hanging fruit" tickets that let new developers jump in more easily (and get a quick win)
      • Art will look into this
      • Art also mentioned the idea of creating a notification service for the new UI (to notify on all pages of the site, etc).  This is a good task that touches all parts of Angular, and would help folks learn it, but it may not necessarily be a "quick win".  Will create a ticket for this too.
  • Pascal Becker had good feedback on DSpace 7 install process. Said it was very easy/smooth.
    • He's getting up to speed for the upcoming German DSpace User Group meeting, starting on Sept 20
  • Notes from DSpace Steering Meeting yesterday regarding new "entities" in DSpace data model.
    • Discussion from Joao Moreira (RCAAP) on finding ways to add additional entities (e.g. person, institution, etc) into the DSpace data model, similar to DSpace-CRIS.
    • Steering Meeting has asked RCAAP to create a new DSpace Entities Working Group (name still pending) to discuss this topic and start to develop a roadmap for how DSpace could begin to support new types of objects.
      • We know already that RCAAP, Edinburgh, 4Science and Atmire should be involved, but a call for interest will go out to lists.
      • End goal of this group would be to analyze the DSpace-CRIS work (especially around managing additional entities), and develop a roadmap to either adopt that work, or build new code based on what has been learned with DSpace-CRIS (it's too early to tell what the result would be here)
    • The output of this Working Group is unknown, and how quickly they get started is unknown (though they hope to get started soon, in next month or so)
    • While members of the DSpace 7 team are encouraged (and likely) to be involved on this other Working Group, the DSpace 7 team should still concentrate our development on the current plan..simply a new Angular UI and REST API (with no assumed data model changes).
      • Obviously, as we build DSpace 7, we should keep in mind the work of this working group. It's likely we'll want to support additional entities in the future, so we should keep it in mind.
      • As the working group efforts progress, there will be more discussions regarding whether any of this could be considered part of DSpace 7, or if it's all planning for DSpace 8.  As of right now, we are going to assume this is planning for DSpace 8, but we'll track this closely to see if there are any quick wins here.
  • Should we continue on Google Hangouts?
    • Yes, we seem more productive on Hangouts versus in the Slack chat meetings. Let's drop Slack meetings for now, though we'll still use Slack for day-to-day discussions, meeting reminders, and as a backchannel for sharing meeting links.
  • Next meeting on Sept 14 at 15UTC via Google Hangouts

All content on the LYRASIS Wiki is licensed under the CC BY (Attribution) license, unless otherwise noted.