wishlist: enhanced MARC editor rewrite

[Andrea Neiman]

This work is funded by King County Library System.

Equinox will be rewriting the Enhanced MARC Editor in Evergreen and addressing a few related bugs along with the rewrite. The main goal of this rewrite is to make the Enhanced MARC Editor more accessibility- and usability-friendly.

The rewrite will affect the MARC Editor wherever it appears in its current Angular form, including Acquisitions and Serials.

Development will proceed according to the approved specification, here:
https://yeti.equinoxoli.org/dev/public/techspecs/enhanced_marc_editor_rewrite.pdf

[Stephanie Leary (stephanieleary)]

https://git.evergreen-ils.org/?p=working/Evergreen.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/user/sleary/LP2006969-enhanced-MARC-editor-rewrite

Here's the branch for the revision of the MARC rich editor. This is a significant rewrite that uses standard form inputs and textareas instead of contenteditable divs, and comboboxes instead of contextual menus for tags, indicators, and subfield codes.

Fields may be rearranged using drag and drop; the move button also supports up/down arrow key movement.

Keyboard behavior is somewhat different. When navigating by keyboard, subfields are treated as a group. When a subfield group has focus, the right arrow key moves the cursor into the subfield code for editing and the tab key advances to the subfield value. An additional button to insert a new subfield appears. Pressing Tab again moves focus to the next subfield group.

The rich editor now has a gray background based on user feedback regarding eyestrain with the white background in 3.6+.

The Help button toggles the display of inline MARC references for fields 1xx-8xx as well as the keyboard shortcuts at the top. Fixed fields and control fields do not currently display inline help, but fixed field labels have tooltips to help users decipher the abbreviations.

Updated tag table data is essential for populating the combobox choices and displaying the inline help. Alas, the upgrade process is somewhat onerous, since tag table data resides in the browser storage rather than the server.

To use the updated tag table data:

1. Use psql or another Postgresql client to execute the SQL script located at Open-ILS/src/sql/Pg/961.data.marc21-tag-tables.sql in the git repository. This file will also be incorporated into the final upgrade script during the final merge to main for automatic inclusion at upgrade time.

2. In your workstation preferences, go to Stored Preferences and delete all of the following:
  * Everything beginning with “Ff” or “FF”: FfCRADTable, FfCRADTable_BKS, FFPosTable_BKS, FFValueTable_AUT, FFPosTable_REC, etc.
  * Everything beginning with “current_tag_table”

3. Log out and log back in.

4. Go to a record’s MARC Edit tab. It will take a while to load each record type the first time.

Step 2 of this process will have to be repeated on each individual workstation.

Note that the Cataloging > Create New MARC Record menu item and some links from Acq still go to the AngularJS MARC editor. We will address this in a follow-up.

We anticipate revisions to this based on your feedback. We are eager to hear what you think!

[Stephanie Leary (stephanieleary)]

Additional bugs addressed in this branch:

Bug #1925090 MARC Edit - colour contrast has disappeared
Bug #1857058 Consistent fonts in cataloging screens in web client
Bug #1746025 webclient: MARC editor missing tooltips
Bug #1780493 Authority MARC editor should have fixed field dropdowns

[Andrea Neiman (aneiman)]

This is available on public test server https://festivus.evergreencatalog.com/ (admin / demo123 ; Concerto data).

[Stephanie Leary (stephanieleary)]

Everyone, I've just updated this branch to fix an issue with the help display that we spotted during Hackfest yesterday. I had to rebase due to a merge conflict; apologies to anyone who had checked it out.

Once the tag table data has been refreshed, help should look like the attached for 1xx-8xx.

[Beth Willis (willis-a)]

I have tested the new enhanced MARC editor screen and it looks really great. I typically prefer the plain text editor to the enhanced editor and don't use the latter very often. But, with these enhancements, that may change.

--I really like the gray background colors.

--The Help button is awesome, especially the inline help for the MARC fields. This is really helpful! Is there a reason that this button is situated on the far right side of the screen? I'd prefer it next to the "Validate" option.

--I really like the option to drag and drop fields and the addition of the move button is also great. I am sure many users are happy with the existing keyboard shortcuts, so I am glad that those are still available as well.

--I also like the way that the tooltips for the fixed fields are control fields display the current value at the top of the list. This makes it easier for staff to verify that the values are correct. Some of the tootip feedback is incorrect, however, indicating that the existing value is unknown even though it is a valid value and displays on the list of available values. But, maybe this is a configuration issue or database issue? Please see attached screenshots.

Overall, I think the new and improved MARC editor is fantastic. Thanks for all of your work on this, Stephanie.

[Beth Willis (willis-a)]

I have tested the new enhanced MARC editor screen and it looks really great. I typically prefer the plain text editor to the enhanced editor and don't use the latter very often. But, with these enhancements, that may change.

--I really like the gray background colors.

--The Help button is awesome, especially the inline help for the MARC fields. This is really helpful! Is there a reason that this button is situated on the far right side of the screen? I'd prefer it next to the "Validate" option.

--I really like the option to drag and drop fields and the addition of the move button is also great. I am sure many users are happy with the existing keyboard shortcuts, so I am glad that those are still available as well.

--I also like the way that the tooltips for the fixed fields are control fields display the current value at the top of the list. This makes it easier for staff to verify that the values are correct. Some of the tootip feedback is incorrect, however, indicating that the existing value is unknown even though it is a valid value and displays on the list of available values. But, maybe this is a configuration issue or database issue? Please see attached screenshots.

Overall, I think the new and improved MARC editor is fantastic. Thanks for all of your work on this, Stephanie.

[Stephanie Leary (stephanieleary)]

Thanks for reviewing, Beth! We've realized that we don't have a good way to handle the suggestions for fixed fields like "Ills" that involve multiple values in specific positions. I hope we'll be able to support suggestions for each character individually in the future, but for now my best workaround is to simply turn off suggestions for those fields, which we had already done for time and date.

The current list of fixed fields where suggestions are disabled is now:

Cont
Date1
Date2
Ills
Time

Please let me know if there are others I should add to that list.

I confess that I don't remember why I had placed the "Help" button all the way to the right! I have moved it next to the others.

Festivus has been updated to reflect these changes and some updated fixed field data based on feedback from the Cataloging mailing list.

I see that the authorities fixed fields are not showing their tooltips or suggestions correctly, which has been an issue we've seen in previous versions of these enormous tag table updates. If the dev team is happy with the rest of the branch, we can follow up on that later along with the Create New MARC Record menu item.

Testers, you'll have to wipe out your stored preferences and log out / back in again.

Devs, note that the branch has been squashed and rebased again. https://git.evergreen-ils.org/?p=working/Evergreen.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/user/sleary/LP2006969-enhanced-MARC-editor-rewrite

Thanks for the ongoing feedback, everyone! I'm glad you're liking this feature!