Extension:DocBookExport

MediaWiki extensions manual

DocBookExport Release status: beta
Implementation	Parser function
Description	Lets you create DocBook from pages
Author(s)	Nischay Nahata (Nischayn22talk)
Latest version	0.0.0
MediaWiki	1.25
PHP	5.5+
Database changes	No
License	MIT License
Download	Download extension Git [?]: Download Git master browse repository (GitHub) commit history code review README
Parameters $wgDocBookExportPandocPath
Hooks used ParserFirstCallInit
Translate the DocBookExport extension if it is available at translatewiki.net
Check usage and version matrix.
Issues	Open tasks · Report a bug

The DocBookExport extension lets you create a DocBook from selected wiki pages. You can download the DocBook as an XML file. Other formats supported are ODT, HTML and PDF.

Installation

Make sure that you installed all required dependencies on your server.

• Download and place the file(s) in a directory called DocBookExport in your extensions/ folder.

• Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php:

  wfLoadExtension( 'DocBookExport' );
  

• Configure as required
•  Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.

Configuration

$wgDocbookExportPandocServerPath

Set the URL for the html to docbook script installed in your server. Eg. http://example.com/html_to_docbook

Dependencies

• Install the following dependencies on the same or different server, that would be used to handle the html to docbook generation:
  • "pandoc": See https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases for the latest version

For Ubuntu use the following commands, replace the version number as per the latest release

sudo wget https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases/download/2.2.1/pandoc-2.2.1-1-amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i pandoc-2.2.1-1-amd64.deb

• To download DocBook files in Zip format install the following software:
  • ZipArchive php extension: See https://stackoverflow.com/q/3872555/1150075
• To download DocBook in PDF format install the following software:
  • "xsltproc": See https://www.howtoinstall.co/en/ubuntu/xenial/xsltproc
  • "fop": See https://www.howtoinstall.co/en/ubuntu/xenial/fop
• Install html_to_docbook as per directions in the README file

• On the wiki, install the "Figures" extension - that supports defining figures in MediaWiki
• Install mpdf in your MediaWiki installation using composer using the following command:
  • composer require mpdf/mpdf

Usage

To create a book define the page structure using the docbook parser function or tag extension. See examples below.

Parser function example:

{{#docbook:
page structure=
? Bowling Introduction
* How I buy shoes
* Testing page
** Buying clothes intro,Buying shoes(title=Buying the right clothes,header=section header)
? Appendix
|title=My Guide to Bowling
|cover page=Cover Contents
|header=My Guide to Bowling
|footer=My Guide to Bowling
|index term categories=index terms(group by=Index has Group)
|index terms=shoe,clothes
|orientation=portrait
|size=A4
|columns=1
|timestamp=1
|margin-inner=0.5in
|margin-outer=0.5in
|margin-top=0.5in
|margin-bottom=0.5in
}}

On saving the page a link will be generated which directs you to a special page Special:GetDocbook. The docbook request is then pushed to the same or other server handling html to docbook generation. Once the docbook is generated, links will be made available on the Special page to download the DocBook: in XML, HTML, ODT and PDF formats.

The parameters shown can be customized as follows:

• page structure is used to defines the wiki pages that will be part of the docbook as cover, sections and chapters. The first line starts with a '?' and indicates the preface, * indicates a chapter and ** indicates a section of that chapter. Sub-sections can be defined using *** or **** and so on. The last line again starts with a '?' and indicates the wiki page to be used as the appendix. Sometimes you may want to merge contents of multiple wiki pages to one section/chapter. For that you can add a comma separated list of such pages as well. You can also customize the title of such a section by adding the following wikitext (title=) at the end of the line. Similarly you can customize the header for a specific section by using the (header=) syntax at the end of the line as shown in the example.

• title This parameter defines the name of the Docbook. This doesn't relate to any wiki page and is only used to name the files and the title of the docbook.
• cover page This parameter specifies the wiki page to be used as the cover page.
• headerThis parameter specifies the header to be used for every page of the docbook.
• footerThis parameter specifies the footer to be used for every page of the docbook.
• index terms This parameter is a comma separated list of terms that should be indexed.
• index term categories If you have wiki pages for all your index terms you can add them to a category and mention it here.
• orientation Lets you customize the orientation of the output format.
• size Lets you customize the size of the page.
• column Lets you customize the number of columns.
• margin-* Lets you customize the margin for each side of the page.
• timestamp=1 Adds a timestamp on the bottom-right part of the cover page with the following text: Produced from <wiki URL> on <timestamp>.

DocBook supports figures which are images or other media that can be referenced elsewhere in the document. A separate list of figures is also prepared. To define a figure you need to use the Figures extension.

Grouping of indexes is possible as well. To use this feature add the following wikitext to the index term page (create if required) specifying the group name:

{{#docbook_index:grouping=Group_name}}

Another approach to add grouping is by specifying a Semantic MediaWiki property which contains the group name, this can only be done for index term categories and can be specified using "group by" parameter as follows:

|index term categories=index terms(group by=Index has Group)

While styling in wiki pages is easy using CSS, the same styling is not carried forward to the Docbook. This can be a problem with tables which sometimes should have different widths for different columns. To solve this you can specify a class with the following format: colwidth-80-20, the extension will then convert it to the following Docbook XML which ensures that the column width is maintained in the Docbook:

   <colspec colwidth="80*" align="left"/>
   <colspec colwidth="20*" align="left"/>

Similarly, for a three column table specify the class as "colwidth-80-10-10"

Credits

This extension has been written by WikiWorks.

Development and Help

You are welcome to submit bug fixes in Gerrit and bug reports and feature requests in Wikimedia Phabricator under phab:tag/mediawiki-extensions-docbookexport.

Please also feel free to contact the author or WikiWorks for consulting on further developments, feature requests or bug fixes on this extension.

See also

• PDF export - summary of all PDF export extensions