Talk:Reading/Web/PDF Functionality/Flow

About giving feedback

Update: (15 July 2019) We’ve launched the new PDF renderer. We’re looking at feedback, but haven't so far seen any significant issues. We might incorporate some suggestions, but want to note that this is not an ongoing project with continuous development. In other words, now that it's deployed and proven to work, the new renderer is entering maintenance mode. This page won’t be abandoned, but it could take a while before anyone reacts, simply because everyone's got so much else to do.  

In terms of books, we've left it in the hands of volunteer developers and PediaPress. We'll be glad to reach out to them with questions, but we're not planning any involvement in terms of the technical implementation.

Obviously I have not used the Book Creator in a while, but I did find it very useful. I was getting ready to create a couple of books, only to find that this function has been removed. Is there any plan to allow book creation again in the future? And if not, why not? What is the problem to be solved? I understand that individual articles may be PDFed, but the Book Creator tool allowed much better organization. Thank you, --~~~~

It broke and was withdrawn. Attempts to replace it failed. A couple of those attempts remain available off-wiki. Depending on what you want, and especially if you are into tinkering with config files, you may get some mileage out of MediaWiki2LaTeX. For more of the history and some useful links, see wikipedia.en's page on Wikipedia:Books. Steelpillow (talk) 10:18, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for that link to the summary. I tried reading through some of the lengthy Talk discussions about whether or not to disable the book creator. Quite a mess there and hard to follow. It is still unclear to me why Books were deprecated, but what is done is done. I tried using mediawiki2latex wmflabs org but it did not produce a readable book with the article contents in it. IIRC, one used to be able to export the books to epub a while back as well. Really is a shame. And, removing the entire Book space makes it much less likely that anyone will work on renewing the function. But, if you know of anyone who is actively working on it, I would do what I could to support that.

It works reasonably well for me. The Book Creator is still functional at en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Book&bookcmd=book_creator and I save the books out in my user space. Then enter the full https web url of the book page, and select the Template Expansion "Book / Collection". Select EPUB if you want, I have only used PDF and ODT (for post-conversion tidy up). The conversion can take a long time, so don't brew your coffee until you have clicked Start! If you are into Haskell, I am sure there are many improvements still to be made.

Sorry, that was me. whatever happened to the global auto-login.

To eliminate the PDF functionality, without have a new version, don´t have sense.

Please activate the old functionality, and, if on the future develope a new PDf functionality, change the old for the new.

But now activate the old PDF functionality, It was very good.

OMG, I don´t understand, stop a functionality to implementate another better, but not development, this isn´t nomal.

The book generator has been remove from the English Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_176#Suppress_rendering_of_Template:Wikipedia_books

It has not been removed, but user interface links to it have been and notices with incorrect statements added to many pages.

Hi, here a French user asks for a bigger font size to download a PDF in French Wikipedia. Instead of Times New Roman 10 pt for the French version he would like a Times New Roman 12 pt, like in the English version of Wikipedia. PDF functionality allows him to customize the font size to his personal preferences?

This is not possible.

It's not possible to customize, do you meant? Alright, but why don't put the same size in differents wikis (e.g. 12pt as default in en.wiki and fr.wiki as well) ?

It is not possible to customise. They all use the same 'size' (the same print stylesheet), it's just that the renderer sometimes has to scale to make everything fit on one page. If the size is 'too small' it probably means you have something 'too wide' on the page.

Thank you, it's more clear for me now!

well with https://mediawiki2latex.wmflabs.org/ you can get the latex code and set the font size in the latex file, but you need to install debian linux and be familar with latex in order to do so. Otherwise you could choose A5 paper size and print on A4 paper with you printer, which has a similar effect

Hello, I have tried to copy the whole code of the French page of Wikipedia on the philosopher Michel Henry in my sandbox, in order to test suppressing the infobox (in the case where some "small" tag was not closed correctly in the generated code of the infobox). I have tested to dowload the PDF file of my sanbox copy of the whole article without any modification, and the default size of the texts font is correct, like in the Engish version ! Whereas it is very small and practically unreadable in the original French article on Michel Henry. The only differences between the initial article and my own sandbox copy are the "other informations" of the infobox that are not contained into the article code but automatically generated from Wikidata, as well as the { { Autorité } } and { { Bases } } informations that are automatically replaced in the "External Links" section, at the end of the article. Best regards. Phiippe Audinos.

Confirmed, it's definitely Autorité. It uses "nowrap" on each of the entries. In print, an entry is postfixed with its actual url. This combination creates very long unwrappable content. Avoid nowrap at all cost on anything that is not like a number + unit (say 10 characters or so). Definitely don't use it on anything that contains links because those expand in print. And if you have to use nowrap then specifically cancel it out with a specific print stylesheet.

The { { Autorité } } and { { Bases } } have been replaced by { { Liens } } in the French article on Michel Henry in Wikipédia, but the default font size in the exported PDF file is always very small...

@Philippe Audinos See the answer above: "If the size is 'too small' it probably means you have something 'too wide' on the page."

Many of the links in the references/footnotes are also wrapped with "nowrap" classes. As print expands the links to make them visible, that means you get very wide links in the page.

Thank you very much for these precious informations. In fact, the probem of font size appears in the generated PDF file when I add the identifier of the original article to my sand box copy on the "Liens", "Autorité" or "Bases" models. I think that your explanation is correct. This information has been transmitted to the "Autorité" model page in Wikipédia.

The rendering of charts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module:Chart) is problematic when the chart is near the bottom of a page. On the current version of https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sp%C3%A9cial:DownloadAsPdf&page=Insectivora&action=show-download-screen for instance, which includes a pie chart, the filling color starts as a square area at the bottom of page 3 while the circle is on the top of page 4 with the center of the circle where pie slices meet being shifted up, near the top of the circle. It is a bit hard to explain it with words (plus English is not my native language); just have a look to the PDF file rendered :)

No program code from foldings in articles with foldings https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Одиночка_(шаблон_проектирования). In PDF there are only headers left.

This issue is specific to the russian wikipedia, please contact the administrators of the Russian Wikipedia.

where shuold i contact to? Link for PDF bugs leads here.

I'm not familiar with russian wikipedia, but maybe someone on ru:Википедия:Форум can help you, or at least show you the way.

What are the obstacles to fixing this functionality? It seems to me like there should be sufficient demand for this feature to justify the cost of fixing it. The fact that it has been broken for so long suggests that there must be more obstacles to fixing it than just the technical issues.

I have friend with a PhD in history, who has written several books. I haven't seen them, but I believe they include substantive documentation to standards of modern historical research and include figures and tables to make it easier for people to read and understand. One in particular is a history of w:Robert Campbell (frontiersman)#Sublette and Campbell (1836–1845). He thinks the w:Campbell House Museum in St. Louis might like to sell his book as a fund raiser. He claims there is another "Campbell House Museum" in Northern Ireland, where the said Robert Campbell was born.

I've suggested he consider publishing his books on Wikibooks, where other scholars could potentially improve them.

However, an obstacle to that is how it could be converted into a PDF and printed. A PDF could be distributed via web sites associated with both Campbell House Museums and other interested organizations. A physical book could be sold to raise money for the museums.

I have other projects for which I'd like to be able to create PDF documents potentially from multiple articles with flexible options for font size, headers and footers.

How can I contact and perhaps join the volunteer developers?

Thanks, @DavidMCEddy

I presume you mean rendering whole books? This software package doesn't do that any more, strictly article rendering only (even if not as well as Firefox does it natively).

The official community has gone off the idea of book rendering. Neither the WMF who organise these things nor PediaPress who write the rendering software is willing to give it any kind of priority any more, it has just drifted for years now. The WMF tried to rewrite it and failed miserably, twice (which is why we only do single articles now), so instead they now say nobody used it any more so why fix it. Well of course not because it got so antiquated that we couldn't any more and it had to be withdrawn, but that logic is lost on them in favour of acid remarks about statistics and it's not their fault they can't do system design. PediaPress eventually knocked up a dodgy alpha of a replacement service but then left it to rot because they were too busy elsewhere.

Another guy did create an alternative, but in a coding language the WMF are frightened of so they won't support it on the grounds that he might do a runner. The logic that a service with one active developer is better than no service at all, is quite lost on them.

If you are able to contact the WMF's coding community, establish what languages they get warm feelings about and do some proper system architecting (I can help a little with that, if only with the occasional "I wouldn't do it ''that'' way after what happened last time), then we will all love you forever. All code is tracked on phabricator https://phabricator.wikimedia.org, but I don't know if that is an official point of contact. Steelpillow (talk) 21:33, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

I am the guy who wrote the alternative that you can use to render whole books https://mediawiki2latex.wmflabs.org/

At least it is available on the Germany Wikiversity in the menu as Multi Format export. Anyway create a tailored book according to the prerequisites of the learner in Wikiveristy is helpful especially when learners add content to the generated book and do not want to expose their private content to the public (i.e. the learning results). Books are standardized and aggregate article can cover individual interest on the learner or additional articles that meet his or her needs, all the best, Bert

Thank you Dirk for sharing the tool with the community https://mediawiki2latex.wmflabs.org/ and thank you for allowing the Multiformat export on the german Wikiversity.

have logged this bug task on a Village Pump (Technical) post here Gfigs (talk) 07:55, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

this is display problem with Infobox Template. see (Task T271288) Gfigs (talk) 11:42, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

posted request for fix on Template talk:Infobox Gfigs (talk) 00:17, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

I did read the warning at the top, but the update said it was working and deployed, so I went ahead and made a book.

I can't choose a download format (greyed out), so I can't d/l a pdf (also greyed out).

And I can't save all my work to my user location of User:Gemlog/Books/ nor to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:PrefixIndex&prefix=Book:

Both produce an API error.

[Xb@-swpAIC4AALGGnJMAAAAS] 2019-11-04 06:05:39: Fatal exception of type "ApiUsageException"

I can, of course, give money to PediaPress. That link works perfectly and the books look amazing.

It would be a wonderful thing if the pdf worked like the July 2019 note says though...

any rendering functionality of books or collection to any downloadable format has been decommissioned. Any funds for any development of a replace or repair of any such functionality have been withdrawn. To say it the German language used by the miners in the area I live in: "Et is im Aasch". I try to develop a free alternative in my free time without any funding. https://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org/ Good Luck

Thank you very much for replying me!

The note to the right of this page is extremely misleading to say the least. Well. Now I know not to bother.

However, I may have just learned of a new tool! So there's that :-)

KDE Neon can't find wb2pdf with apt, but I'll find it.

Thanks again!

The page pdf renderer has been updated and deployed, the Book pdf renderer has been decommissioned. On a Book page this can be misleading, as the "Download as PDF" link only downloads the page and not the whole book. On the other hand, it should not be greyed out and you should also be able to save your new page to your user pages or the Book: namespace as desired.

If your experience differs from this, can you give more precise details?

Another volunteer is writing a new Book pdf renderer and says they will release it as open source for us, but we have been waiting a long time.

Hi,

I pasted the errors I received into the first post I made ;-)

Also, I see that the misleading box on the right of this page that I was referring to is now gone, so... yay :-)

Still we need more precise information. I cannot find a book "PDF Download" option you say is greyed out. Can you give the url of the page you see it on? Or, is it the "Download as PDF" Print/export option in the lefthand menu (which is for article download, not whole books)? Was it perhaps in the strange misleading dialog that vanished? If you do not tell us accurately where it is, we cannot diagnose it for you!

Again, when you received the error message you pasted, was this in the Book Creator when you tried to save the book? I just created and saved a new book and it all worked fine. Did you add any extra code to your book, such as chapter headings or meta-information? If you post a list of the articles in your book, I can try to see if it will work for me.

In Book Creator, there is a "PDF Download" option in a box to the lower right that is greyed out and cannot be used. There is really no simpler way to explain it.

Do you you mean the "Download" box which offers several formats besides PDF? In English, quote marks indicate exact wording. Yes, as I explained above, that is meant to be greyed out.

Otherwise, please post or email me a screenshot to show the option I am not seeing on my PC.

In English, superfluous pedantry is insulting. Please insert that in your "Download" box. Thank you.

My apologies, no insult is intended. I suppose that my approach to problem diagnosis is highly pedantic, but I get better results that way. May I take it that you have no problem with this software which remains to be diagnosed.

This recent edit to the page suggests that there will be an option to export Wiki markdown instead of PDF. Is this correct? Steelpillow (talk) 17:16, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

If Wiki authors that want to create tailored Open Educational Resources especially generate from Wikiversity or Wikipedia can be very helpful as learning resource (see https://pandoc.org/try ) how the cross-compilation works. Client-side conversion based on wtf_wikipedia.js

So this appears to be about an alternative way for a client to import and convert raw wikitext from individual articles, that is wholly unrelated to the PDF export service and, as far as I can tell, from markdown as well. Steelpillow (talk) 09:43, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

It just shows an option to create the PDF on the client side due to problems of PDF generation on the server side. Of course this work around enables the export of even more formats. If that is not appropriate as recommendation in this discussion, excuse me for being off track.

Gracias! Comprendido.

Felicidades

With Wiki2Reveal there is a rapid prototype for converting the wiki markdown on the client side. See an example:

• Source Article in Wikiversity
• Same Source Article as RevealsJS presentation but converted on-the-fly on the client side by the browser with Wiki2Reveal.

If you want to create PDF on the client side, you can read the wiki markdown and start converting in the browser as runtime environment with existing libraries like https://github.com/MrRio/jsPDF This reduces the load on the server, because just the wiki markdown and the embedded media must be transfered to the client. The server side implementation is available on wmlabs by Dirk Hünniger http://mediawiki2latex.wmflabs.org/ that generates the PDF on the server and delivers the generated PDF to the user. Wiki markdown is converted in LaTeX (that can be done even in the browser) Costly in terms of performance is LaTeX conversion into the PDF. So why not allow the user to perform the final step - if he/she really wants to have a PDF document and the online-wikibook is not possible due to constraints of internet availability in remote areas and e.g. humantarian organisation want to create a tailored WikiBook for capacity building and need to deploy that offline (see tailored WikiBooks for Risk Mitigation) best regards and many thanks for discussing this topic and allowing offline use of Wikipedia and Wikiversity content under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.