Extension talk:PdfBook/Archive

Media wiki blank screen fix
I have have installed htmldoc on fedora c 4. Then I installed the Pdf export extension and then mediawiki fails to run at all. I just get a blank screen. Which direction should I take?

Empty file downloaded
Greetings Nad,

I have been trying to use your PDFBook Mediawiki extension since it may be a great solution to an issue I have.

I have installed HTMLDoc under "c:\pogram files" and can use it on its own to create PDF Books. I have also included the "PdfBook.php" in my "Local Settings.php" file.

The issue I am having is that when I select the link to export my category as a book and select to save or open the pdf file it has 0 bytes. So, the file is created with the correct name but with no data.

Is there something else I must do to ensure HTMLDoc.exe is actually being called by your extension? Is there a required directory that it needs to be in?

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!
 * You have to make sure that htmldoc is in your executable PATH so that it can execute from just typing "htmldoc" without needing to supply the full pathname no matter what current directory you're in. Another thing to check would be to comment out the "@unlink($file)" line and after saving a pdf, check if it's left a tmp file in the root of your images directory, which is the data sent to htmldoc. --Nad 00:35, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Invalid PDF File
Nad,

Thanks for your quick response!

However, I am still having issues. The File is being created and has size to it....but Adobe Reader gives me the following error."

"There is an error opening this document. This file is damaged and cannot be repaired".

HTMLDoc seems to be quitting during the conversion job.

If I add the ".html" extension to the temp file and run HTMLDoc from the command line I can convert the temp html file manully over to a PDF file.

I then compare in Notepad the one I generated and the one your script creates and notice the PDF your script creates quites after pocessing a certain amount of lines.

I have your PDFExport Extension working just fine...so I was wondering what else it could be.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
 * How long is it taking to generate the PDF before quitting? 30 seconds? if that long it could be reaching max execution time? and how large is the PDF before it bails? --Nad 20:29, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Nad,

It only writes about 18 lines to the .pdf file and takes a couple seconds for the file to generate. It doesn't appear to quit, it saves the file like it normally would however when I edit the file in notepad it is not complete (Stops after ~18 lines with Wordwrap on)

Like I stated before, I'm using your PDFExport Extension and it works great.

Let me know what you think      --136.182.158.153 21:29, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * When you run htmldoc manually passing the generated tmp file to it, are you using the exact same command and parameters that the extension uses? --Nad 21:51, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

continued...

Nad,

It only writes about 18 lines to the .pdf file and takes a couple seconds for the file to generate. It doesn't appear to quit, it saves the file like it normally would however when I edit the file in notepad it is not complete (Stops after ~18 lines with Wordwrap on)

If I change this line;

$cmd = "htmldoc -t pdf --charset iso-8859-1 $cmd $file";

to

$cmd = "htmldoc -t pdf --charset iso-8859-1 $cmd $file > test.pdf";

Then I get a test.pdf in my mediawiki root folder which works perfectly


 * You could try changing the htmldoc command to use passthru like Extension:Pdf Export - I had it like that on mine but had problems with the gzip encoding, but it may work better like that for you --Nad 21:55, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

images
Is there any possibility of getting images displayed in the pdf Book as well?. would be a fantastic improvement. Any workarounds? Martin
 * I'm working on it, I just can't get them to work currently. I'm checking out some of the solutions at Extension talk:Pdf Export too as that one uses htmldoc as well. --Nad 12:39, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Same problem as section 2
I'm on Ubuntu Linux with Mediawiki 1.10. Htmldoc is in /usr/bin. I commented out the unlink command, and the temp file is empty (0 length).

I checked to be sure that my Apache user can run htmldoc -- it can. Unsure what I should try next.

By the way, your single-page export plugin works perfectly (even for images). So I know that htmldoc is not at fault here.
 * I didn't write the single page one, but the code seems pretty similar. I'll just have to see what differences there is in the code between this one and the single-page one. --Nad 22:28, 14 September 2007 (UTC)