As in previous years, the big user meeting was held in Göttingen again this year. Nevertheless, we were still able to achieve a lot this month.
Core
Conversion to Java 17
We have changed the source code of Goobi and the plugins from Java 11 to Java 17. This is not a major change for the time being because we are still compiling the source code with compatibility for Java 11. This means that the application can still be used in the tried and tested infrastructure without having to make any major changes. However, we will soon have to carry out a major update for Java 21 in order to be compatible with Tomcat 10. We will tackle this at the beginning of next year
New interface for the journal
We have completely redesigned the interface of the journal, which is part of every process. Instead of working with different colours as before, a classification of the individual messages is now recognisable by the icons. This allows for much better accessibility.
As before, the journal can be switched to an expanded mode and is therefore much easier to read, especially with a lot of content, without having to scroll within the box.
And, of course, we have designed it in such a way that all areas of Goobi worklfow that use the journal benefit from it and therefore utilise the same internal components and therefore the same design. This applies, among other things, to the journal in the accepted tasks, in the projects and among the users.
Plugins
Processing user orders
Together with the Zentralbibliothek Zürich, we have created a very flexible plugin for handling user orders. This allows information provided by users when placing an order to be recorded and processed for billing purposes. On the one hand, this involves the possibility for users to be informed about their orders and to receive a delivery note.
However, it was also important to ensure that order details that have an influence on the composition of costs can be processed and then made available to the accounting department.
Extension of the mail plugin for attachments and variables
For some time now, there has been a plugin that allows Goobi to send e-mails with flexible content during the workflow. What was missing, however, was the ability to use information from the process properties to specify recipients. This was necessary for sending messages to the senders of a user order.
In this context, the plugin has also been extended to allow attachments to be added to emails. These can also be defined very flexibly using variables from properties, metadata or paths of the process.
PDF generation extended
The plugin, which can be used to flexibly generate PDF files in the course of workflows, has been significantly revised. The configuration of the plugin now allows even better control of where the PDF files should actually be generated from. On the one hand, this affects the specification of the directory from which the image files are to be used for the PDF files. On the other hand, it also affects the control of how the PDF is to be assembled. You can now specify whether individual pages are to be generated as PDFs or whether an overall PDF is to be generated. You can also control how the composition is to take place, so that, for example, an overall PDF is to be assembled from individual pages or controlled by the page assignment of the METS file. The location to which the PDF files are to be exported can now also be granularly controlled.
Extensive documentation work
We are currently working very intensively on developing the documentation. On the one hand, this includes maintaining the actual documentation and configuration, including installation instructions in German and English. However, it also includes explaining the plugins in digests whenever there have been relevant changes, publishing them on Github and ensuring that they have an up-to-date readme file that guarantees a link between the reader-friendly documentation and the source code.
For the following plugins, there were either extensive updates to the documentation or new documentation was created:
There have been changes to the README files for the following plugins this month:
The current version number of Goobi workflow with this release is: 24.09.9. Within plugin developments, the following dependency must be entered accordingly for Maven projects within the pom.xml file:
