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Please add your ideas and feature requests to this page.
i'd like to generate book from my wiki (2000 articles) and update collection every month, then open in word, edit styles, table of contents, index of terms etc.
i'd like to reload my saved collection every month once i put articles in order, but i would like to know somehow that there are new articles (not included into the collection), and see articles that were changed. in that way i can copy and paste only articles that were changed into my book. it is important when i had to spend a lot of time creating INDEX OF TERMS.
filed as bug 29236: Extension:Collection should copy the book title automatically to the stored "book page" input field
When you load an existing book, the book name should be included in the appropriate "Save and share your book" field. You then can simply click the "save book" button instead of figuring out the old book name ;)
Include SVGs as vector format in PDF, for better print quality and lower file size.
This would require a lot of work in the writers. Also the image fetching would have to be changed. Furthermore I believe that in many cases the file size would actually increase: there are many articles where lots of flag icons are used - the resulting png images are approx. 20px wide and should be a lot smaller than the svg images. Volker.haas 13:19, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Some Checkboxes that influnce the Output:
GFDL: Yes/No
Images: Yes/Gray/No
external Links: link/In-text/bottom of page/end of chapter/end of book/no (at least yes and no)
Directly save resulting pdf at commons/wiki (that you don't have to generate it every time new!)
Rendered collections are cached until they are removed by some external cron job. The advantages are: (a) The PDF writer and other software is being constantly improved and all improvements will be incorporated in PDFs that are re-rendered from time to time. (b) The articles themselves change. If an article collection is saved as wiki page and re-rendered on a later date, the newest revisions of the contained articles are used. (There is a ticket that addresses the problem that older revisions should be used explicitly instead) Jbeigel 14:13, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Name the resulting file as the collection was named instead of collection.pdf/odf
This can be problematic, as almost any valid Unicode character is allowed in the (optional!) title of a collection and every OS/filesystem has some restrictions regarding filenames. I think it's not too hard to rename the resulting file. Jbeigel 14:16, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Translate the standard-texts into local languages (I would o for german):
Texts like the above inside the PDF can now be localized. The localizations should soon be available at http://translatewiki.net/Volker.haas 13:36, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
As of changeset cd35710572e7, l10ns for de, fr, hu, it and pl are avaiable. More will be included as soon as the integration with translatewiki.net is finished. Jbeigel 14:16, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
I wish to use some templates (header / footer, first page, logo, ...) before exporting my book. If it is possible, every user could choose in a list of template before launching the output process. Thanks. Chris33 - 26/10/2010.
I am also looking for this functionality. Corresponding to the book, a template could be choose before the render. Manuel - 25/06/2014
I like the UI to add pages then output as a collection! But PDF as an output format is so 1990s. Can it generate a static set of HTML pages with a TOC? That would be more useful, lighter weight, and with latest CSS, equally attractive. -- skierpage 20:28, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
It seems like the [b:Help:Print versions Help:Print versions] at Wikibooks. HTML would be a good option to add to the current list (PDF, Open Document). [/w/index.php?title=User%3AHeldergeovane Helder] 11:46, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
Output of HTML would be a nice feature, as wiki text can be made available both as readonly web text and PDF/ODF-documents.--Even Thorbergsen 13:55, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
Is it possible to have the option to output the contents of a collection to a ".tex" file? If that could be done, someone (mathematician) could do some changes in the final tex file, or to use it into another document, and make a output (maybe a pdf) direct from the LaTex compiler... [/w/index.php?title=User%3AHeldergeovane Helder] 11:54, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
Currently we do not plan to offer LaTex output. -- Volker.haas 10:16, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
There is a generator that writes LaTeX output and compiles it to PDF [1] [b:de:User:Dirk Huenniger b:de:User:Dirk Huenniger]
Wikibooks on the beach ! It could be another open e-book format. But EPub is IMHO a fairly good and open standard. Contents are basically XHTML + CSS. An epub file then "only" needs packaging and metadata information in XML format to be generated. (EPUB, Mobileread wiki). - Daniel K. Schneider 07:52, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
These days the number of e-book readers is constantly increasing. As the book export feature of MediaWiki is meant to make reading the pages offline--mostly meaning on paper--possible, it is quite natural that more and more people want to use their reader for that. However, e-book readers do not display ODT and most of them also do not render PDF correctly.
Thus to add to the importance of an export function into EPUB. -- [/w/index.php?title=User%3ABonwit Bonwit] 14:05, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
Just coming there because I'm trying to send a book to my ipod touch to get some content for offline access, think epub support would be fine ! Symac 13:01, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
I wrote something and I hope you'll find it useful: EPubExport. Nahsh 19:35, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
This should somehow be integrated in this extension. --he!ko 13:46, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
I think the EPubExport extension is stable enough to be integrated with this extension. I don't really know how. Nahsh 10:20, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
What needs to be done, to add support for EPub to Wikibooks site? [/w/index.php?title=User%3AHns Hns] 01:11, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
You may want to take a look at bugzilla:29023. [b:pt:User:Helder.wiki Helder] 11:55, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
See Luciwik for EPUB 3 export and OPDS catalogue for articles. Discussion page as final chapter. Possible to export single article or select a set of articles.
Images should have a white or transparent background. Transparent images' backgrounds appear black. Done
I'm still seeing this issue with gradient backgrounds that fade to transparent. Gradients are set to black. Pluke 23:00, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
The equations in the math environment are embedded as bitmap. Since the latex source is available they should be embedded as vector graphics using a math font. (wish of [b:de:User:Dirk Huenniger b:de:User:Dirk Huenniger])
unfortunately this is currently not possible because there is no feasible way to do this with the reportlab toolkit that is used to generate the PDFs Volker.haas 13:08, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
I wish it would build a Table of Contents in the beginning with page numbers. Ideally these would link to pages in the document rather than to the internet. Done
I second this. I'd also like to have the PDF understand the TOC as well (so viewers that understand TOC sections can show them)
I with there were an option for links to pages that are in the pdf actually link to the pdf rather than back to the wiki online
The pdf that is generated looks good and with the usability improvement it makes it even better. Is it possible to take the title of each article, subtitles etc. and generate bookmarks?
The PDFs should already contain bookmarks. Chapters, Articles and all Sections should be listed in the bookmark section of the PDF viewer. Volker.haas 13:15, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
This is only true when you export a single article. With the book creator, however, the bookmarks etc are removed. Is there a solution for this? /Martin
And a Table of Content (the Special:Book page should have the beginning/end/no option) [/w/index.php?title=User%3AFrViPofm FrViPofm] 16:35, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
There is a ticket for that issue. -- Volker.haas 10:22, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
Instead of external images being referred to as a footnote, an option to include the external images into the rendered PDF would be quite handy.
The main title is not very sexy ;-) (bad justification of first page, would be better centered) Is it a way to record some style in User:Me/Collections in a <collection:title>some stuff</collection:title><collection:h3>...</collection:h3> [/w/index.php?title=User%3AFrViPofm FrViPofm] 16:35, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
It is possible to center title and subtitle in the first page by modifying customconfig.py render configuration file. Unfortunately, seems to be impossible to introduce an image...
Wish to have links to the anchors inside the PDF --[/w/index.php?title=User%3ALeSurHumain LeSurHumain] 00:08, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Wish to have an option to embed fonts into PDF [/w/index.php?title=User%3AVlsergey Vlsergey] 13:01, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Would like to see the hyperlinks inside the PDF document from the rendered pages
I think they are brought across, external links only though. And they're not clearly hyperlinks until you hover over it Pluke 23:00, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
I'm creating a book that uses a lot of code examples and using the <syntaxhighlight> tag, but this doesn't render in pdf Pluke 23:00, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
--[/w/index.php?title=User%3ATischda Tischda] 10:38, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
I think first the properties and so on should be displayed correctly in PDF and ODT Output, by know there are this ugly Property::Value things in the PDF or ODT
Second the Output of semantic queries should be displayable in PDF or ODT.
I think this is more important then generating Collections from Queries. --DaSch 17:10, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
I use a workaround for properties: Create a template with [[Property::{{{value}}}| ]]{{{value}}} --[/w/index.php?title=User%3ATischda Tischda]
But thats not really a good solution. And adding a proper handling to collection should not be that difficult. --DaSch 21:33, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
As mentioned in the previous thread: Collection should render SMW inline queries like
{{#ask: [[Category:Building Block Type]]|format=count}} -- (which should yield a number)
{{#ask: [[Category:Working Area]]|?Owner=Owner}} -- which should give an SMW-generated table
{{#ask: [[Category:Working Area]]|format=template|template=TableCell}} -- which will render a table from a template
On german Wikibooks, we use book own templates with the form “Bookname/ Template:Templatename”. I would like it substitute with a alternative template with name “Bookname/ Template:PrintTemplatename”. Please add substituting for templates in this form. --Prog 17:30, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
To be more precise, template substitutions should work with at least two Namespaces - NS-TEMPLATE and NS-MAIN. We use NS-MAIN for bookspecific-templates, which we include via {{: - mechanism. This is for different reasons. Either to create different versions of a book - Think of different types of a single book - one book with solutions and the other without them. We use our NS-TEMPLATE in a different way and with other project-specific policies and would like to continue to do so. -- [/w/index.php?title=User%3AThepacker Thepacker] 19:48, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
All images now link to their origin in the wikipedia/commons. This is not quite the same as the above proposal, but I believe, that way licenses and image contributors can be checked quite easily. Volker.haas 13:12, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Is it possible to start a new page for every article in the collection? Now the articles are all appended into one 'big' article and then exported to PDF, what I would like to see is that every single article is exported to a new PDF page in the same document (like the chapter function).
This in controllable through options to mwlib.rl, but it would be nice to have it as an option in Collections.
Is it possible to open (load) a once saved collection?
Yes of course, just go to the page of the saved collection and click on the "Load collection" link in the sidebar Jbeigel 09:43, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Where did this feature go? In the current version of the extension I cannot really load books anymore. Of course I can open the saved page, but I cannot edit the book any longer.
I had the same problem and fixed it with this hack (use at your own risk!):
Create a template called Template:Saved book
(In my case pages in the Books category had a link to this template but it was missing.)
Place the following text in the Template:
<span class="plainlinks" title="Open this book using MediaWiki's book editing tool. The Book Creator allows you to easily add or remove articles, create or remove chapters, download and print PDF and ODT versions, and more.">[{{fullurl:Special:Book|bookcmd=load_collection&colltitle={{FULLPAGENAMEE}}}} Open in Book Creator]</span>
In my case, this fixed the missing template problem and gives me a way to load a page from the Books category to the Book Creator page.
The Template:Saved book page as listed on Mediawiki has much more code but it broke my wiki pages. I found just this one link gave me the critical missing functionality. I may have omitted critical error checking. User beware!
I do not see a portlet in my sidebar, I think it is due to the fact that my urls are different. My urls look like this: http://www.mysite.com/index.php/Categorie:CatName. If I port my installation to another server it works, here the url links look like: index.php?title=ArticleName.
How is this possible?
First of all: This is neither a support forum (preferably use the mailing list for questions), nor a bug tracker, but a feature wishlist. See http://code.pediapress.com/ for more information. Regarding your question: Displaying the portlet does not depend on the URL format, e.g. Wikibooks sites use the short URLs and the portlet is displayed just fine. Did you follow the steps described in the README.txt of the Collection extension? Jbeigel 14:29, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
On my wiki(http://www.wecowi.de) (I'm using Semantic MediaWiki) the pages I create with Collection are not nearly like the page. For example CSS-Styles like display:none are not used, and the semantic Links with property::page are taken into the generated PDF and so on. Another think is that the formating of tables is not right, they all go over the whole page. So please make the pages look a bit nicer. At the moment the usebility for my wiki tends against zero and thats very dissapointing. --DaSch 19:44, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
It should be possible tot exclude extension-tags which, for now, are not supported. Tags like: <googlemaps></googlemaps><DynamicArticleList> </DynamicArticleList> or <pageby>
Currently any registered user can create a book (community collection) in the project namespace (see [Wikipedia:Wikipedia:books Wikipedia:Wikipedia:books]). Is it possible to limit this ability to autoconfirmed users? Ruslik0 20:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
Would it be possible to change pagination? I explain myself: My pdfs get rendered with two nearly blank pages at the end: one for the sources and contributors and another one for the link to the license. Can I fix it somehow to avoid printing unnecessary pages? Thanks, Paucabot 21:24, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
It would be appropriate as we do add your feature there by pushing traffic to you so it would only be fair to offer us 'other' wiki members with the same treatment your provide to wikipedia, a small portion of the proceeds. Thank you, --iWiki 02:56, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
My generated pdfs start with a page that only contains the title of the collection. I would appreciate it if I could enhance the content of the start page (e.g. with a picture or text). Maybe this is already possible, but I've found no clue on how to achieve this. --[/w/index.php?title=User%3ASebastian.Dietrich Sebastian.Dietrich] 06:57, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
The most serious deficiencies of the PDF-transformation are probably due to an apparent one-pass process. To accomodate link-enabled table of contents and PDF-internal links for wiki-internal links, a two-pass (or more) handling is necessary.--Even Thorbergsen 14:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
I "retract" this wish, as it seems to have been implemented after the 1.1 version, the one I have tried.--Even Thorbergsen 09:49, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Problem: many people are confused by how to upload files in Mediawiki because it is geared towards having a flat attachments space so that attached files can easily be shared on multiple pages. But this leads to confusion because people have to manually copy/remember the attachment name (a multi-step/multi-page process) to paste into the page they really want to upload it to.
Proposed Solution:
Create a new template for doing attachments from and make an Upload-to-page link. When this link is invoked, it will note from which page it is called (for use in step 2).
Once the file is browsed and uploaded, the user is returned to the page they uploaded from (instead of to the attachment page) and in edit mode. There will be a small box at the top of the page which will contain the link information they need to copy paste into the page at the appropriate location. There can still be a link to the uploaded attachment page in case the user wants to go there.
Not sure if this can be accomplished through the Extensions framework. --[/w/index.php?title=User%3ANewMexicoKid NewMexicoKid] 17:53, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Solution:
Created an extension that addresses the problem presented. Please see Extension:PageAttachment -- Aldrin 05:29, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Thank you! --[/w/index.php?title=User%3ANewMexicoKid NewMexicoKid] 15:57, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
The current state is, that licensing and source information about pictures in the article/book are in one large list at the end of the exported document, it is ok. The problem is, that it is usually very dificult to find out which info is for which image and vice versa, there should be some kind of labeling similar to references. It should work with any thumbed image.
For pictures which are not thumbed I propose following:
if the picture is in a template (like infobox), there is not much to do, just count it as labeled in the list but not adding any label text to picture
if picture is outside any template and is in similar size to thumbed images, render it as thumbed
if the picture is of small size, especially when it doesn't have any title text, allow user to exclude these images from rendering into the book
Add an option to modify the font-size, to be able to make books for older people, kids or people with bad eyes. -- MichaelSchoenitzer 20:50, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
This extension ignores font sizes, ___no title____ extensions, ignores line breaks, puts borders around images without me asking it to, and pink fonts render incorrectly. It basically starts ending up totally different than the original article. I'm doing a special translation project and all the above are important. If you need examples i'd be happy to send some.--Bluesoju 15:27, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
Render quiz format. We use quizzes, for example, at [v: Wikiversity]. However, the quiz syntax just shows using the collection tool. -- Jtneill - Talk 13:43, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
You can use the system message "coll-savedbook_template" to define a template which is transcluded on top of saved collection pages.
I would like to have (a system message to define) a template which is transcluded on top of a generated PDF pages (to show a logo, or an administrator defined text before the main article starts).--[/w/index.php?title=User%3AJBE JBE] 08:07, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
A better way for "Print/Export" in sidebar to be displayed
"Monobook" and "Vector" work fine, but when using "Cologne Blue" or a custom skin, like "GuMaxVN" it shows "Print/Export", but no options underneath it. Not sure if this is a bug or by design.
[/w/index.php?title=User%3ALynxcub Lynxcub]
I would be handy if there was an easy way to see the column headers of a table when you're looking at rows down near the bottom.
Examples could be to show a column header on hover (over a cell), on hover (over/near a horizontal cell boundary), automatic insertion when a table is longer than the screen height, ... other ideas? [/w/index.php?title=User%3ADrevicko Drevicko] ([/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ADrevicko talk]) 05:19, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
This page used the LiquidThreads extension to give structured discussions. It has since been converted to wikitext, so the content and history here are only an approximation of what was actually displayed at the time these comments were made.
Suggestion: add subpages to a saved book /configure for options and a list of terms the index is generated from (concordance list)
With Dynamic Page List extension it's easy to have an image gallery page. You just add a category for a image and a short Dynamic Page List code add it to a wiki page. It would be nice to include this page in Collection pdf. 188.238.203.223 10:58, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
Notes and references seems to be omitted which are very important in some books. Ideally they should appear in the same way they appear in a Wikipedia article (as links between references and endnotes). If links are tricky, I would accept unlinked numbers (eg. [13]) and endnotes. Iantresman (talk) 22:25, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
I too would love to see reference output appear the same as they do in a MediaWiki installation rather than just a URL.
I'm having additional problems too. As it stands right now with version 1.6.1 installed, the only items appearing in "References" are those URLs NOT wrapped by the <ref> and </ref> tags. An example on our wiki: http://www.limswiki.org/index.php?title=Informatics_%28academic_field%29 Only the "Further reading" and "External links" URLs are getting captured under the "References" section of the Collection output. None of the inline references (wrapped in "ref" tags) are being captured. Lostraven (talk) 21:17, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
Some articles include external links, and these are helpfully marked with an external link icon. These are lost during the creation of an ePub book, and I suspect other formats too. Iantresman (talk) 22:33, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Don't know if this is a bug, but colour SVG images convert to monochrome thumbs. Clicking on one shows the correct colour version, but often just a segment of entire group of SVG vectors. See for example the Japanese soccer Kits and colours. Iantresman (talk) 22:44, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Tables in Wikipedia articles are often too wide for ePub mobiles. Be nice to be able to convert these to single columns (Display td: block). I suspect that this is a css issue. Iantresman (talk) 22:46, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
The list of articles should show article titles with normal links (not the icon in the left column, next to trash).
While book articles can be sorted alphabetically, would be nice to be able to sort them manually into my own logical groupings. Iantresman (talk) 10:51, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
If I save the book into my account space, I can manually edit the order of the list of articles, by editing the page. Iantresman (talk) 11:11, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
According to Book Help, I should be able to Collect articles if I "hover over a link for a few seconds". This does not work for me. I have "Navigation popups" enabled, though disabling it makes no difference. I'm accessing Wikipedia (Vector theme) with MediaWiki 1.24wmf7 (b8870ae) with Collection v. 1.7.0.
Perhaps Wikipedia articles that are part of a book, could have their links styled differently? Iantresman (talk) 11:01, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
This now seems to be almost working, the pop-up appears, but is almost illegible (see image). The green add icon is just visible, but that's about it. Could be just a CSS issue. Iantresman (talk) 13:08, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
On the "Manage your book" page, when I select "Save and share your book" into my user space, my book title and subtitle are not saved. I'm using Wikipedia (Vector theme) with MediaWiki 1.24wmf7 (b8870ae) with Collection v. 1.7.0. Iantresman (talk) 11:22, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia category pages show the Book creator header, with the option to "Add this category to your book", but on clicking the link, nothing happens. Would be useful. Iantresman (talk) 18:33, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
It seems that when you click "Add this category to your book", it adds all the articles in the category, rather than the category page itself. Both are useful. Iantresman (talk) 18:35, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
There was an error while attempting to render your book
Have just tried generating a 400-page ePub book, but get the error message "There was an error while attempting to render your book". Unfortunately there are no more details provided. Tried it in Firefox and Chrome. In both cases, it reached just over 73% while "generating epubfile" (having successfully completed Fetching and Rendering).
During Fetching, it reached about 90% before changing to Rendering. Could it have missed 10%? Iantresman (talk) 22:43, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
Done
