Book tool/Feedback

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Question: Principal Authors

How is the list of principal authors computed? It looks as if any contributor is listed.

Currently there is no consensus on "who are the principal authors" in the community. Therefore all contributors are mentioned. --he!ko 19:19, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: Add a table of contents

There is a ticket for this issue.

Did you consider to add a table of contents at the first page of the PDF? I think this might improve usability of larger PDFs. --he!ko 15:57, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Question: Differences between printed books and downloadable PDFs

I created a book and downloaded the PDF. When I wanted to order a printed book with pediapress and looked at the preview I noticed various differences!?

The layout of printed books differs, as a technology more suitable for printed books is used to generate the PDFs. Printed books feature a Table of Contents, an Index, have a different size (A5 or 8.5×5.5in) and images and tables are layouted differently. The downloadable PDF looks ok when printed (A4) at home and can be generated within a reasonable amount of time. The PDF of printed books is optimized for print and its generation takes way too long to be a viable alternative for Wikipedia. --he!ko 19:56, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Bug: <poem/>-tag not supported

This issue should be resolved after the next software update.

It looks like the <poem/>-tag is not supported (example). He!ko 16:08, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Bug: License in the PDF looks strange

There is a ticket for this issue.

Any PDF created from an article on the French Wikipedia has two weird bits :

• Just before the license, a grey frame saying "Raccourcis [1]ées/Licence&hidetrans=1&hidelinks=1&hideimages=1 +"
• Juste after, the text "[1] http:/ / fr. wikipedia. org/ w/ index. php?title=Special:Pages_li" under the heading "Liens externes".

See for example the page http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Korrigan/bug1, whose PDF is here. (reported by fr:Utilisateur:Korrigan, moved here).--he!ko 19:09, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I should maybe add that the name of the license (GFDL) does not appear on the French Wikipedia, and maybe it is linked to this problem? le Korrigan →bla 08:26, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

The logfiles hint to [1] as being the license used, at least for de:. Need to investigate further. --he!ko 09:49, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Bug: PNG logo has a black background

There is a ticket for this issue.

On the article fr:Star Wing (PDF), on page 10, the logo is a PNG with a transparent background but is rendered with a black background. I haven't seen other images doing this. le Korrigan →bla 08:15, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately this is a bug in the PDF toolkit we are using. There is a ticket about that in our bug tracker, and the bug has been submitted to the PDF toolkit developers. -- Volker.haas 13:48, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Bug: Weird indent with bullet points

There is a ticket for this issue.

On the article fr:Star Wing (PDF), page 15, the section "Médias externes" is rendered with a weird indent, possibly caused by the templates. Note that if you know which template or which aspect causes this and it is a fr.wikipedia-specific issue I can maybe address it but so far I don't know. Thanks! le Korrigan →bla 08:19, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I added a ticket for that problem. -- Volker.haas 14:03, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Bug: Infoboxes take up all width

On most French Wikipedia articles with an infobox (such as fr:Star Wing PDF, page 1), the infobox takes up all the width. And the title of the infobox is on the left and not centered. I do not know whether this is something to be solved by you or on fr.wikipedia, any advice would be welcomed :-) le Korrigan →bla 08:22, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

This is a known issue and there is not much that can be done about that. Please see the FAQ for some limitations of this tool. --he!ko 14:52, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: localise "Contributors" and "anonymous edits"

I can't seem to be able to localise the texts "Contributors" and "anonymous edits" on fr.wikipedia. We should be able to do so. Thanks. le Korrigan →bla 08:25, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

These can be localized on betawiki --he!ko 14:54, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! le Korrigan →bla 19:32, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Bug: Two supplementary external links

There is a ticket for this issue.

On fr:Star Wing (PDF), page 19, a new section "Liens externes" is added, with two external links pointing to the English Wikipedia. I think they are caused by the banner "Featured Article" at the end of the article, which has two external links itself (however not the same ones). le Korrigan →bla 08:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: License and authors of images

There is a ticket for this issue.

As far as I see there is a link to the commons page for an image, which might be fine as long as the pdf is still in the computer. But the license and authors for images should be shown after printing it too. Can it be a list after the contributors? /Ainali 17:23, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

PDF Download doesn't run

This issue should be resolved after the next software update.

Hello.

In this book, when I want to click on "Télécharger en PDF", it doesn't run. --ComputerHotline 12:10, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I notified the tech team but got no response yet. You may try to bother them also on IRC #wikimedia-tech. --he!ko 16:55, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

"no space [was] left on device". Should be working again. --he!ko 13:38, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Bug: "ref name=" causes problems with some templates

This issue should be resolved after the next software update.

When a template accepts an unnamed parameter (in the form {{template|parameter}} instead of {{template|parameter=value}}, and if the parameter value contains a sign equal ("="), usually the template doesn't work and returns {{{1}}}, this is standard MediaWiki behaviour. However this doesn't happen when using <ref name="something"> : it works fine on MediaWiki, but causes problems with PDF export. See fr:Utilisateur:Korrigan/bug2 and corresponding PDF export.

Thanks, le Korrigan →bla 19:58, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

(should be fixed with this changeset)

Thanks, le Korrigan →bla 19:04, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Bug: formatnum: doesn't work

{{formatnum:}} doesn't seem to work, or at least doesn't take into account localised settings. See fr:Utilisateur:Korrigan/bug3 for expected and actual PDF output. This means that French-specific output isn't obtained, and it can cause confusion as we use the comma for decimals instead of the dot.

Thanks, le Korrigan →bla 20:07, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Bug:Unwanted link with fr:Template:Date

This issue should be resolved after the next software update.

For some reason, a link is created in the PDF to the page fr:octobre 1970. It has been noticed on fr.wikipedia using the template {{date}}, but I have made some tests on fr:Utilisateur:Korrigan/bug4 and I can't find the cause for it. Sorry. le Korrigan →bla 20:23, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

This is somewhat confusing. Can you give a minimal example where this links appears in the PDF although it should not appear? --he!ko 18:48, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

This completely puzzles me. If I put just the wikilink in a page, there is no link created in PDF (see fr:Utilisateur:Korrigan/bug7). If I expand the "date" template then no link is created either (see fr:Utilisateur:Korrigan/bug6). But if I put the "date" template, then it does create a link in PDF, whether it is before or after other wikilinks (see fr:Utilisateur:Korrigan/bug5). The code {{date||octobre|1970}} is responsible for that. And actually it happens with any page (see fr:Utilisateur:Korrigan/bug8), so it is clearly this syntax which causes the problem. I'm afraid the "date" template is a complex one with a lot of parser functions... so I can't really debug that. le Korrigan →bla 19:03, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing that, but can you explain what caused it? Out of curiosity. le Korrigan →bla 16:04, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Extension Tags and other not printable code

We are using some extensions which are not supported. So tags like: <googlemaps></googlemaps><DynamicArticleList></DynamicArticleList> are not parsed correctly. It would be nice to have an option in Collections to exclude these tags and also other wiki-texts which are not printable. 15:21, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Which site are you talking about? If you run your own PDF-server you can easily implement this in tagext.py. --he!ko 18:44, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: have a better link at the end

Currently, when producing a PDF, there is a link at the end leading to the printed version (eg http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.php?oldid=XXXXXXX).

• The first problem is that this link is not clikable currently, it probably should be.

This should be fixed with the next update. -- Volker.haas 14:17, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

• The second problem is that this link is a bit "obscure" to the average Wikipedia reader, maybe a second link should be added, pointing to "the current version of this article", leading to the usual http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article, so that the origin of the article is more clear.
• Maybe the PDF generation date can be printed as well? Or maybe the date / time of last article revision? I know this may be already in the PDF metadata, but 1) it is not easily accessible to beginners, and 2) there may be different "last revision dates" when several articles are put together, so saying how old is each one can be useful?

Thanks, le Korrigan →bla 19:07, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Question: Templates "Hide from print" and "Only in print" ??

Here I read about templates "Hide from print" and "Only in print", but I can't seem to find out what the contents of these should be. Is there a description or example available somewhere ? - Erik Baas 21:33, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Erik, I did not set this template up on en.wp since we changed something in the software. Somehow MW is not yet updated to the the new SW. I'll care about this issue once the new version is active. "Only in print" is explained here (last paragraph). --he!ko 16:42, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks, I'll wait for it. Meanwhile, I created a (temporary ?) solution with en:Template:Only_in_print plus en:Template:Only_in_print/style (and it works). - Erik Baas 02:40, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Bug: table headers in wrong column

There is a ticket for this issue.

The PDF for the enwiki Mount Hood has all the issues (mentioned above) related to tables and templates. In addition, the table on page 4 has five columns which mostly render okay, but the heading has those for columns 2, 3, 4, and 5 all in column 2's header. It has the !! present too (see below), so maybe the parser isn't the usual one, and doesn't understand some of the more recent extensions to wikitable markup? Or maybe the embedded citations are confusing it?

Area[22]
millions of ft² !!
Volume[22]
billions of ft³ !!
notes !! GNIS
location[23]

EncMstr 22:20, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Bug: { {main} } which displays Main article: <article name> disappears

On Mount Hood on page 6 it successfully contains the Climbing accidents section, but omits any reference to the main article, which appears due to the wikimarkup : {{main|Mount Hood climbing accidents}}. I can understand why a printed version might omit article links, but then shouldn't it remove the whole See also section? EncMstr 22:24, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The Main Template was added to the Exclude in Print Category which prevents the templates content to appear in the PDF. This is intentional. If you think the Main Template should be printed this should probably be discussed. -- Volker.haas 13:24, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Thai alphabets showed as boxes in PDF

It seems that Thai alphabet rendered incorrectly. It shows Thai alphabets as boxes when rendering in PDF format; Thai language rendered in ODT format works fine. I tested rendering in other Asian characters such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean. They are rendered fine except Thai. --Manop 21:39, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Appearance: Article titles

The article title appear at the top of all pages. This looks bad on the first page because there's a small title at the top and a much bigger title underneath. One of them needs to be removed from the first page.--Patton123 13:07, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Bug: Image alternate text

Alternate text for images, which is visible when someoen has images turned off or uses a screenreader, appears instead of the image caption in all articles that use alternate text, including the "alt=" bit. (Example article)--Patton123 13:11, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Appearance: Wikitables

Wikitables, which are almost always necessary because htey contain information that isn't in prose, don't appear very well in many articles. (Example table)--Patton123 13:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Bug: Icons

Small 17x17px icons such as File:North.svg show up HUGE, taking up whole pages and throwing the text out of line.--Patton123 13:16, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Can you please give an example article? I just checked w:List of sovereign states which features 250+ small SVG images and did not see any problems with them. --he!ko 15:28, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I could track the problem to the (protected) w:Template:Geographic Location. Setting the width attribute for the images would fix the problem. But since this is a navigational template it should rather be added to w:Category:Exclude in print. --he!ko 15:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Bug: External links

External links show up as typed out URLs instead of the link name or nothing at all. (Example article)--Patton123 13:17, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: Date and/or version of contents

I think the exported PDF, as well as the printed book, should contain the date of printing and/or a version number; in small print, in the footer of the first page. - Erik Baas 21:30, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

The version number (oldid) is already included, and the date has been suggested above in #Proposal: have a better link at the end. le Korrigan →bla 21:53, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Bug:Chinese

see [2], chinese "，" can't display.--Shizhao 12:16, 2 March 2009 (UTC)