Bug 20413

Summary: Remove the "template" system preference
Product: Koha Reporter: Gaetan Boisson <gaetan.boisson>
Component: Staff interfaceAssignee: Bugs List <koha-bugs>
Status: CLOSED INVALID QA Contact: Testopia <testopia>
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: P5 - low CC: chris, fridolin.somers, gmcharlt, jonathan.druart, julian.maurice, katrin.fischer
Version: Main   
Hardware: All   
OS: All   
Change sponsored?: --- Patch complexity: ---
Documentation contact: Documentation submission:
Text to go in the release notes:
Version(s) released in:
Bug Depends on:    
Bug Blocks: 20396    

Description Gaetan Boisson 2018-03-14 16:39:54 UTC
This was meant to allow us to have different templates on the staff interface, but this will probably never be used. Could we get rid of the system preference?
Comment 1 Katrin Fischer 2018-03-18 00:54:15 UTC
This also allows for local customization. I see no reason to kill it.
Comment 2 Katrin Fischer 2018-03-18 00:55:04 UTC
More so, we have even one library using the feature displayed on Hea.
https://hea.koha-community.org/systempreferences
Comment 3 Fridolin Somers 2018-04-05 14:56:58 UTC
(In reply to Katrin Fischer from comment #1)
> This also allows for local customization. I see no reason to kill it.

Staff templates are highly complex.
Customization can be made but with CSS and JS or patch on source code.
Comment 4 Katrin Fischer 2018-04-05 15:41:47 UTC
Yes, but if someone really wants to do it, this is a clean way and it's obviously used by a library right now. IIRC you can even just add a few changed templates and it will use the others from the standard template.
Comment 5 Gaetan Boisson 2018-04-06 10:49:56 UTC
I'll admit i'm not good enough with the technical aspects here, but i think that having separate templates will make your upgrades quite difficult. I am not sure having the system preference makes it that much more simple than managing this with git, and if you're going to have your own templates, you should definitely be using git.
Comment 6 Katrin Fischer 2018-04-06 10:56:43 UTC
I would say that the library does, where git does not necessary mean a git installation, but can also be self built packages. With the option to switch to standard templates anytime, it's a cleaner and less dangerous way. Also less conflicts. Why are you so set on killing it? The library can not even break something accidentally with it existing? And it will make it much easier if we ever want to implement new templates for Koha as we did with the OPAC.
Comment 7 Julian Maurice 2018-04-06 11:07:22 UTC
(In reply to Katrin Fischer from comment #4)
> Yes, but if someone really wants to do it, this is a clean way and it's
> obviously used by a library right now. IIRC you can even just add a few
> changed templates and it will use the others from the standard template.

I'm not sure about that. I tested it recently and it seems you have to copy at least all static files (js, css, images, ...) for the new theme to work
Comment 8 Chris Cormack 2018-04-06 14:09:49 UTC
We have clients using it, so this negates the it will never be used reason to remove it. So there's no real reason to remove it so please don't.
Comment 9 Gaetan Boisson 2018-04-06 15:35:06 UTC
Well i'm not set on killing it, i'm only trying to see if we could prune Koha from some of it's 500+ system preferences, it sounds like this one is not a good candidate after all. I'd be curious to see exactly how this is put to use though.
Comment 10 Fridolin Somers 2018-04-10 09:33:30 UTC
Why not move to koha-conf.xml ?
There is already related infos like opachtdocs, intrahtdocs and includes.
Comment 11 Katrin Fischer 2018-04-10 11:54:24 UTC
Because there is value in being able to switch quickly for testing. And it being a pref means easy statistics with Hea. I don't think we win anything by moving it apart from hiding the feature further.