Drop Down not appearing

[Stuart Bligh]

Hi - we're having an issue with ATOM when linking a record to a physical location using the `more' tab. 

When we're logged in as an administrator a drop down appears in the container box (see below) to pick from but when we're logged in as a volunteer the drop down doesn't appear? The only permissions the volunteer role doesn't have are to delete and publish and volunteers have previously been able to see a drop down menu when linking physical storage.

Any suggestions gratefully received!

Stuart 

Stuart Bligh

Archive Advisor

Mob: 07949377526

Max Communications Ltd.
2-3, Gunnery Terrace
Cornwallis Road
London SE18 6SW

www.maxcommunications.co.uk

www.royalwarrant.org/company/max-communications-ltd

[Dan Gillean]

Hi Stuart, 

This is a known issue, fortunately which should have a fairly basic solution. 

AtoM's permissions module supported in the user interface does not cover all modules and entities in AtoM, and physical storage containers are one of the entities for which there is not a direct interface to configure via the module. Instead, AtoM has some default permissions rules based on user groups for a number of these other entities, which are managed by security configuration files. You'll find general information on this, and how to edit them, here: 

• https://www.accesstomemory.org/docs/latest/admin-manual/customization/config-files/#security-configuration-files
  

We have a section specifically on the physical storage module permissions here in a subsection on the same page.

Because Volunteers is a custom group, you will need to edit this security configuration file and add the volunteers to each of the available permissions you want - there's a mention and example of doing this for custom groups in the introductory text to the section linked above. 

Finally, keep in mind the Important admonition at the end of the section's introduction - while you can use the config file to, for example, give your volunteers permission to access the Physical storage browse page, access to the Manage menu itself is currently hardcoded to the default groups (editors and admins, if I recall correctly). Therefore if, in addition to using the autocomplete, you ALSO want your volunteers to be able access the page at Manage > Physical storage, but they don't currently have the ability to see/access the Manage menu, then there's a bit more to do. 

The easiest workaround is to simply use the Administrator's ability to edit menus (via Admin > Menus), and move the (or create a new) link in a menu they can access, such as the Add menu. Otherwise, if they have the URL bookmarked, they can access the phyiscal storage browse pages directly once permissions have been granted via the config file. 

Cheers, 

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

he / him

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[Stuart Bligh]

Great thanks Dan 

Stuart Bligh

Archive Advisor

Mob: 07949377526

Max Communications Ltd.
2-3, Gunnery Terrace
Cornwallis Road
London SE18 6SW

www.maxcommunications.co.uk

www.royalwarrant.org/company/max-communications-ltd

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ica-atom-users/CAC1FhZ%2BPo9HXXADOGS87tyXMQQH%2BWcUbEGgeoyvQCT7JV-HHbg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stuart Bligh]

Hi Dan

Hope you're keeping well. Can I check whether there is a known issue when generating finding aids ie pdf versions of catalogues. We are finding that where apostrophes/single quotation marks are used what looks like unix code is inserted instead - see example below

Thomas Robinson of York, gent, to John Beckett of York, spurrier, a messuage divided into several tenements in St Saviourgate in the tenure of the said John Beckett. Term. 41 years. Conson: 50s. Rent. £3 p.a. The lessee was to perform all necessary repairs ‘excepting casualties by fyre, by grenadoes or cannon bulltees’. Signed and sealed by John Beckett. Endorsed: Lease of St Saviourgate house.

Thomas Robinson of York, gent, to John Beckett of York, spurrier, a messuage divided into several tenements in St Saviourgate in the tenure of the said John Beckett. Term. 41 years. Conson: 50s. Rent. £3 p.a. The lessee was to perform all necessary repairs ‘excepting casualties by fyre, by grenadoes or cannon bulltees’. Signed and sealed by John Beckett. Endorsed: Lease of St

Would be grateful for your thoughts .....

Stuart

Stuart Bligh

Archive Advisor

Mob: 07949377526

Max Communications Ltd.
2-3, Gunnery Terrace
Cornwallis Road
London SE18 6SW

www.maxcommunications.co.uk

www.royalwarrant.org/company/max-communications-ltd

On Thu, 7 Sept 2023 at 13:40, Dan Gillean <d...@artefactual.com> wrote:

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[Dan Gillean]

Hi Stuart, 

I can see straight from the sample text that you pasted into this email that the problem character in question is not standard UTF-8 - it appears instead to be one of those custom curvy ("smart" as Microsoft tries to brand them) quotation marks that some applications like MS Word like to use in plae of the standard, straight, UTF-8 characters. 

Is it possible this text was copied from a non-UTF-8 source and then pasted into AtoM? If so, I suspect this will be the cause. If you try manually deleting the character in question, and typing the apostrophes back while in AtoM's edit page, save the record, and then generate the PDF again, I think the issue is likely to be resolved. 

Just to confirm my suspicions, I did quickly create a test record full of special characters, and did not see the issue reproduced. I am attaching it here for your review as well. 

Cheers, 

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

he / him

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[Stuart Bligh]

Many thanks Dan - much appreciated!

Stuart Bligh

Archive Advisor

Mob: 07949377526

Max Communications Ltd.
2-3, Gunnery Terrace
Cornwallis Road
London SE18 6SW

www.maxcommunications.co.uk

www.royalwarrant.org/company/max-communications-ltd

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ica-atom-users/CAC1FhZLZVzYFFdprTneFyEXtysyxAojT8%2BhxauA5X9LhLitzyw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stuart Bligh]

Thanks Dan - that has worked. Presumably there will be many cases when these non-standard UTF-8 codes have been used or imported into ATOM? They work/appear fine in ATOM it's only when a finding aid is generated that there is this problem/corruption?

Have you got any thoughts on whether adjusting the process of generating the finding aid/odf could take this into account? Could code be adjusted to look out for non-standard UTF-8's and deal with them as part of the process? 

Presumably anyone using ATOM could have this issue ...

Thanks

Stuart

Stuart Bligh

Archive Advisor

Mob: 07949377526

Max Communications Ltd.
2-3, Gunnery Terrace
Cornwallis Road
London SE18 6SW

www.maxcommunications.co.uk

www.royalwarrant.org/company/max-communications-ltd

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ica-atom-users/CAC1FhZLZVzYFFdprTneFyEXtysyxAojT8%2BhxauA5X9LhLitzyw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Dan Gillean]

Stuart, 

You could spend a LOT of time considering how to support multiple character sets and how to detect which is being used in each case, and what fallbacks to try in cases where the default character set does not render as expected. Of course, many of these rendering errors are subtle and cannot be easily detected by a machine, so you need a way for a human to try out different character sets if one doesn't work, etc.... Pretty soon you've got different character sets used in different descriptions, and then all kinds of new problems, like needing to choose a char set before export, and developing a mapping and fallback table when converting... and suddenly your end users need to KNOW about character sets. In my opinion, it gets messy fast. 

In 2.7 we have included the CSV validator, which includes a couple best-effort attempts to check for non-UTF-8 content. Turns out that this is not an easy thing to do - it's certainly not easy to detect in advance what char set is being used in a file if you don't know in advance. 

If you really wanted to add something on the import side, it would be much easier to add an import option for an XSLX file (as opposed to a UTF-8 encoded CSV), where you can assume the character set used is windows-1252, the most renowned source of those infamously incompatible curvy "smart quotes" and such. 

As for finding aid generation, it's all based on XML - which CAN work with other character encodings, but is certainly not guaranteed to do so. On the other hand, per the W3C: 

All XML processors MUST be able to read entities in both the UTF-8 and UTF-16 encodings

Meaning when it comes to reusing external libraries and tools, and thinking about ongoing maintenance and cross-compatibility over time, using a well-established encoding standard that is already THE de facto standard for web applications makes everything much easier. 

In most cases: if you can convince your users NOT to use Microsoft products for cutting and pasting and preparing imports, I suspect that 90% of these types of issues will disappear, since most other companies / products made the switch to something unicode-compatible a long time ago.  

That said, these are just my highly biased opinions, and please remember I am not a developer myself! 

Cheers, 

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

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[Stuart Bligh]

Really useful information .... thanks Dan

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