Extension:Collection

The Collection extension allows a user to organize personal selections of pages in a collection. Collections can be
 * edited and structured using chapters
 * persisted, loaded and shared
 * rendered as PDF (see Extension:PDF_Writer)
 * exported as ODF Text Document (see Extension:OpenDocument_Export)
 * exported as DocBook XML (see Extension:XML_Bridge)
 * ordered as a printed book at http://pediapress.com/
 * exported as ZIM file (see Extension:Collection/openZIM)

See the press release Wikis Go Printable for more information on this project.

Documentation & Support
The documentation for the collection can be found at http://mwlib.readthedocs.org/en/latest/collection.html

There is also a Google group for support and discussion of mwlib, mwlib.rl and the Collection extension.

mwlib developers have also been spotted on the pediapress IRC channel:
 * Server: irc.freenode.net
 * Channel: #pediapress

A detailed guide on how to prepare your wiki (templates, help pages, categories) if you setup the extension is available at meta.wikimedia.org.

Screencast
There is a screencast demoing the basic functionality available at youtube (in German) (2:45 minutes).

Creating cross-wiki article collections
It's best to use http://pediapress.com/collection/ for this purpose, see ticket 408.

Installation
Please also read the included for detailed configuration instructions of the extension.


 * Howto: Installation on Debian or Ubuntu

Configuration
Since version 1.6 (r113740) the extension offers the variable   that is used to define available providers of the print-on-demand service.

By default it uses PediaPress service: It is an array of elements, every of them will be listed as a possible print-on-demand provider. The parameters are:
 * name: short name of the provider
 * url: URL to point for more information if there is no information page
 * posturl: URL of the actual printing web service
 * infopagetitle: MediaWiki system message name (as visible in the MediaWiki: namespace) that contains page title of the page that will be used to shortly describe the provider. The default (for PediaPress) is MediaWiki:Coll-order_info_article, which defaults to Help:Books/PediaPress order information. If this page exists, it is used to display information about PediaPress book printing service.

It is also possible to disable print on demand altogether by setting:

Please see bug 33536 and commit entry for more information about this feature.

You can also configure which file formats are available:

See README.txt for more configuration options.

User rights for saving books
To allow users to save books in both their user space and the community space, add the following lines to your :

Add the links at another place
If you want to add the links at another place, e.g. in the menu "Personal Tools", you can do that by adding them into the according portlet. For example, in the Vector skin you can do that by adding to the file skins/Vector.php so that it looks like this:

You can still modify the order of the links in the portlet by modifying $personalTools directly before the foreach loop is executed.

The above implementation has the drawback, that the two newly inserted links do not show their tooltip. A solution for that is still outstanding and would be greatly appreciated.

Setting book prefix
To change the default prefix for book name edit the message MediaWiki:Coll-community book prefix

Generating PDFs, OpenDocument- & DocBook-Exports
It's easy to enable PDF (ODF, DocBook) support with this Extension. It is configured by default to use the server http://tools.pediapress.com/. Therefore (low traffic) sites that are accessible from the internet don't need to install their own PDF Server.

Simply install and configure the Collection extension using the default value  http://tools.pediapress.com/mw-serve/  for $wgCollectionMWServeURL (see for instructions) and make sure the MediaWiki API (api.php) is enabled on your MediaWiki installation.

No installation of Python, ReportLab, mwlib etc. required! Note however, that in order to use this service, your wiki must be accessible from the internet and must be either accessible for non-logged-in users or login credentials are configured (see for instructions).

If you either have a wiki which is not accessible from the outside or your site has high traffic, you need to install your own render server. The server is included with mwlib and can be used as a stand-alone HTTP server (which is the default protocol) or as FastCGI or SCGI server or as a CGI script.

Have a look at the [[Media:Solar system final.pdf|Solar system, example article]] from the English language Wikipedia, rendered as PDF using this technology.

Setup your own render server
For documentation on how to do this on Ubuntu 12.04 look on Setup a render server on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

For documentation on how to do this on OSX Mavericks look on Setup a render server on OSX. There are useful tips for localhost installations for other systems too.

Performance
Performance of Collection is...

Cache
Recent versions store rendered "books" in a cache. Collections which have been previously exported by users should be available for download almost immediately, rather than after several minutes of rendering; the cached version can be updated by following a link offered in the download page.

Help improving the extension
If you want to help to make the extension better, you can:


 * open a ticket for a bug or feature request in the bug tracker (use MediaWiki Extensions/Collection as component name),
 * please also test BugTriage-Collection and BugTriage-mwlib;
 * fix and add translations using translatewiki.net.

Printed Books with PediaPress
PediaPress is a service that offers printed books based from wiki content. This service is seamlessly integrated in this extension (can be disabled).

Related

 * Extension:PDF_Writer
 * Extension:XML_Bridge
 * Extension:OpenDocument_Export