[OAI-general] EPrints-2 Alpha-2 released

[ePrints Support]

EPRINTS-2-ALPHA-2 released (09/01/2002)

EPrints is free software for creating large web-based archives 
of papers (or whatever you want) with the metadata stored in an
SQL back end. 

EPrints v1 is in use by a number of sites (see eprints.org)
for a list. Using our own ideas and feedback from users we have
created eprints-2. This is only an alpha release so not all the
features work yet (that would be beta), but the main parts of 
the system are complete. 

EPrints-2 new features:
  - multilanguage support (site in french & english if you 
      really wanted), option to have multilingual metadata - 
      eg. the title and abstract in english & french and 
      presented in the language of the user viewing.
  - XML configuration files rather than ASCII - a bit harder
      to get started but ensures no ambiguity and lets you
      have non-ASCII characters.
  - OO design. Although the functions are not fixed in stone
      the system has been built to be strictly OO (well, as
      strict as PERL will let it be) and it will be possible 
      to build your own scripts to process the database without
      having to start using SQL.
  - The phrase files used for internationalisation are also 
      useful to customise the interface without having to hack
      the code.
  - Much of the website look and feel is done with style-sheets,
      again to avoid the need for hacking the code.
  - Support for other authentication methods eg. LDAP using 3rd
      party modules currently available.
  - Abstraction of the SQL.
  - configurable searches (what fields do you want to be
     offered as user search pages?)

A couple of notable features which are not yet implemented:
  - alerts - users can configure a once-a-week (or whatever)
    search and be mailed if any new items appear in it each
    week.
  - OAI support. This is very important to us, but is not on
    the critical path to making the software work. It will be
    added in a later version. 

If you really can't wait the software is available online from:     
http://www.eprints.org/files/eprints2/eprints2-alpha-2.tar.gz
But you should be aware that it requires apache with some
configuration options to run effiently + some other freely 
available software such as MySQL. Install info is included in
the .tar.gz in the docs dir.

I welcome and look forward to comments, abuse, praise, bug-
reports etc.

The EPrints.org 2 server is being developed at the University
of Southampton. Mostly by me, Christopher Gutteridge, with a bit
of help from Mike Jewell. 


-- 

 Christopher Gutteridge                   support@eprints.org 
 ePrints Technical Support                +44 23 8059 4833