Option to tile MARC records for side by side editing

[Justin Douma]

I want to be able to select an option in the staff client menu system that will open any tabs displaying Bib Records, and display them side by side in new windows on their MARC edit screens. This is so I can compare, contrast and edit the records. I would like to be able to tile these records either horizontally or vertically.

Working Repository Branch: user/catalystit/marc_edit_tiles

[Justin Douma (jdouma)]

Added Working Repository Branch: user/catalystit/marc_edit_tiles

[Pasi Kallinen (paxed)]

This is useful - or so I've been told - and our staff would use it.

Testing, the vertical tiling works just fine, but horizontal tiling puts all windows on top of each other, on the bottom (half, third, whatever) of the screen. Not sure if this is due to my window manager, or the patch.

One thing that feels a bit weird: Tiling a window with only one bib record open. Perhaps limit the tiling so it requires two or more bib records.

There's two untranslatable strings, both are alert("No Records to Display");

[Mike Rylander (mrylander)]

I wonder if perhaps expanding the entry points for the existing record tiling interface (look for bibs_abreast.js and bibs_abreast.xul, available since Fall 2010) might be more usable, from a cataloging perspective. To see the existing interface in action, just toss a few bibs in a bucket and select the "Merge these records?" action.

I suspect that vertical tiling could be added pretty easily by switching the orientation of the outermost hbox to vertical as "Stack subfields" does in the MARC editor, code re-use would decrease maintenance costs (BTW, looking into the internals of tabs and windows can be fragile, and break across XulRunner versions), and help drive general improvement to the feature as more folks use it.

[Kathy Lussier (klussier)]

I'm removing the pullrequest tag on this one and since the code has been sitting here for two years with no updates to address Pasi's and Mike's suggestions. I won't add a needsrepatch tag since any new work should probably be done for the web client.