EPrints 3.4.2

This page contains information about the provisional EPrints v3.4.2 tag and release on GitHub scheduled for the end of June 2020.

A release candidate for EPrints 3.4.2 can be found on GitHub.

Provisional Release Notes

New Dependencies

Dependencies can be installed as RPMs (yum install PACKAGE), DEBs (apt-get install PACKAGE) or CPAN (cpan MODULE). Perl's Text::Unidecode module is now needed to better order browse views.

• Perl Text::Unidecode module
  • RPM: perl-Text-Unidecode
  • DEB: libtext-unidecode-perl
  • CPAN: Text::Unidecode

Also see new dependencies for EPrints 3.4.1 if you are upgrading from 3.4.0 or earlier.

Changes Since 3.4.1

New Functionality

• Capability for enabling caching of citations to improve page load times, particularly browse views.
• Provides HTTP PATCH functonality to support incremental metadata changes. (Particularly useful for Symplectic Repository Tools 2 integration).
• Provides facility to define custom handlers for integration with third party applications.
• New DOI import plugin using UNIXREF that provides a richer source of metadata.
• Allows access records to be saved and processed from disk rather than a database table (requires manual enabling / still experimental).
• Supports embedded HTML5 video blocks including subtitles.
• New MetaField for case insensitive IDs, useful for usernames and email addresses.
• New MetaField for keywords. Backwards compatible with text and longtext fields but more accurate at matching individual potentially multiple word keywords.
• New MetaField that provides word count addition to long text fields (requires jQuery to be installed in archive's javascript/auto/ directory)
• Allow certain countries not to have to provide a successful Recaptcha for requests (e.g. in China ReCAPTCHA is blocked).
• Render function to allow publications with long creators/editors listed to neatly truncated.
• Script for generating XML sitemaps for use with tools like Google Search Console

Security Improvements

• Prevention of offsite redirects after login.
• Logs out all sessions on password change.
• Rate limits number of password reset emails that can be sent.
• Ensures document full texts are reindexed to add or remove depending on changes to document security.
• Blocks JavaScript in uploaded HTML documents from potentially performing malicious actions as the logged in user.
• Restricts get_tables call for database to those in the current repository.

General Improvements

• Improves Accessibility of EPrints user intefaces
• Allows subject line of RequestCopy emails to be customised by the user (in case item being requested has no title set).
• Better parsing of BibTeX for import.
• Better error and warning colours for command lines tools.
• Better formatting of person name strings.
• Allows server-wide specification of EPrints flavour (rather than just archive level).
• New functions for ordering various types of MetaField or for sanitising ordering. Ensuring (person) names are consistently ordered.
• Enables multi-lingual support for templates, tooltips and workflow headings.
• Removes any remaining use of full URLs within default template and static pages that can cause a multitude of issues including http/https interoperability.
• Comprehensive review and addition of missing phrases.
• Allows "epadmin create" to allow an organisation name to be set as a phrase.
• Improves compound multiple field table rendering to not display lots of UNSPECIFIED if a column has no row with a value set.
• Better support for read-only MetaFields.
• Provides EPrints Script test for whether one string contains another.
• Provides checking for individual user roles within a workflow.
• Allows data objects other the EPrint to have revision histories.
• Improves Xapian indexing checking.
• Additions to index tokenizer mappings.
• Removes Text::Unidecode Perl module as this is better provided by Linux package repositories.
• Allows user-defined sort functions for browse views.
• Adds user-definable get_item method for ItemRef MetaFields so fromform method can be used with this type of field.
• Adds classes for option list HTML elements to make it easier to apply CSS styles.
• Adds HTTPS support for SWORD deposit client.
• Improves functionality of Itemref MetaField allowing user-defined get_item and render_item functions.
• Generally reduces the use of full URL (with protocol) when absolute/relative path would be more appropriate.
• Makes "Remove Item (with notification)" appear on actions bar when item is in live archive to make it consistent with "Remove Item".

Bug fixes

• Fixes typo effecting position of Review page's move to archive button.
• Fixes error that broke JavaScript for expanding dl tree elements.
• Fixes broken epm command line tool.
• Fixes bug with feeds for latest_tool page
• Fixes bug causing update_triples event queue tasks to fail.
• Fixes bug with 404 error when attempting to access RequestCopy page.
• Fixes some general encoding issues in export plugins.
• Fixes bug to again allow "epadmin test" to be run without an archive specified.
• Fixes bug with warning of missing brief citation for event queue.
• Fixes issue with MySQL no longer allowing creation of a MySQL user on granting of privilges.
• Allow DOI to be Endnote exported for any publication type.
• Fixes bugs with HTTPS everywhere configuration breaking some URLs in OAI-PMH and eleswegere
• Fixes substring out of bounds error when there is no icon URL for a document.
• Fixes hard-coding of entry UID for History iCal export.
• Fixes lack of link for non-specified year items in year browse view menu.
• Fixes issue with use of EPrints::Sword::Utils.
• Fixes check for whether a browse view is a list based on prefix of view's ID.
• Various fixes to image and video conversion through changes to convert and ffmpeg parameters.
• Fixes duplicate event queue tasks being created by resetting to waiting instead.
• Fixes issues access Bazaar behind a HTTP proxy.
• Removes hard-coding of EPrints filesystem path where possible.
• Removes hard-coding of site_lib in EPrints include path and all other references.
• Removes TeX::Encode::BibTeX and TeX::Encode::charmap Perl sub-modules as these come as part of TeX::Encode that should already be installed as a dependency (since EPrints 3.4.1).
• Fixes case-sensivity on document type guessing when file extension is in upper case.
• Fixes fuzzy matching on browse view causing generate_views to generate more views than expected.
• Fixes typo for epm sources configuration option.
• Better parse pageranges that include page numbers with hyphens.
• Fixes typo in index tokenizer's apply_mapping function.
• Fixes issues with Storage Manager when CSRF protection is enabled.
• Fixes broken add and edit phrase functionality when CSRF protection is enabled.
• Fixes "insecure connection" bug when exporting from Actions tab.
• Adds most basic default workflow for files to fix viewing of files through Manage records.
• Tidies up robots.txt generation.

Planned Development

See EPrints 3.4.3.