Talk:Reading/Web/PDF Functionality/2017/12

About giving feedback God of

Please read Reading/Web/PDF Functionality and comment on the plans we lay out there, to tell us what you need from the PDF service. We're especially interested in what you need in the future that doesn't exist in the plans laid out there – if there's a bug with something that should work right now (e.g. you get an error message when you try to create a PDF), we need to fix it, of course, but that would have been on the agenda.

Updates:

- Kerning and spacing issues (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T178665): there has been a few reports on spacing issues within PDF rendering. The readers web team is currently looking into a solution. We will first be updating the fonts for PDFs (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T181200) over the week of November 27. This will resolve some but not all of the spacing issues. We'll be looking further into the remaining issues after the initial fix.

- Update on the book creator. We're still in the process of performance testing the new renderer (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T178278). Once this stage is complete, we will be able to provide more details on its capacity to render books.

Few issues with PDF rendering of an article

I noted a few issues with the PDF version of the following article w:en:Statistical classification

Few issues I noted

1. A space is missing between "of" and "pattern recognition" at the end of the first paragraph.

2. The words "or" and "distance" overlap at the end of the second paragraph

I'll attach a screen if required. Kaartic ^[talk] 08:17, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

These are known issues, currently being tracked at phab:T178665. Thank you for taking the time to report them however. It is much appreciated. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 13:02, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Print is too small.

The PDFs that are produced have too much whitespace and the print is TOO SMALL. It is hard to read.

Also: the PDF and the browser print feature are now the same. I like having the variety. 129.132.210.133 (talk) 13:38, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. Johan (WMF) (talk) 07:04, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Error

I was trying to print https://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=47319206 as a pdf, however I was presented with an unknown error while doing so (Note that the source page will be deleted in 7 days span so it'd not be reproducible after that) C933103 (talk) 19:18, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

egypt sir Armstongsangle (talk) 21:54, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

You cannot currently print an old version to PDF, so while the print succeeded for me this time, I got the deletion log or something that is now on the current version of that page.

Not sure what was wrong before. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 10:39, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

humm whn I opened the issue, i was not able to get any pdf file, instead I was simply given a line of error in the browser screen. Now that the error no longer appear and bit can generate a deletion log pdf, I guess ot can be seen as "cannot be reproduce"? Or was there any known problem to the server when I was posting the question? C933103 (talk) 11:03, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

C'est plutot contraignant mashallah 195.221.251.184 (talk) 13:42, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

GG boys, great job 195.221.251.184 (talk) 13:43, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

PDF

Por favor, voltem com funcionalidade de poder descarregar em pdf, era uma ferramenta muito boa e uma opção a mais com as pessoas que não querem utilizar os artigos em formato livro 2804:D4B:4494:EE00:B558:4C15:F820:385 (talk) 23:18, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Funktioniert bei mir einwandfrei. - No problems during convertation. 93.227.74.109 (talk) 08:40, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Can you please change the font of the text? It is not interesting at all to read. 218.248.4.101 (talk) 10:42, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

naaaaoooo

Por favor..Não acabem com essa função. Ela é super útil! Em que os "livros" seriam mais úteis? Nunca consegui usá-los...Mas falando a verdade também nunca entendi COMO usá-los ;p 179.241.201.19 (talk) 11:38, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not need a PDF output function. It needs a "print ready" display function.

The tech for creating PDFs from HTML is well established and in the hands of web browser users.

Microsoft, Apple, Linux and Chrome OSs have apps and browser extensions that enable print to PDF.

Just two things are needed from Wikipedia to make this a seamless process:

1. a link to a page that describes how to print to PDF from each kind of OS.a function
2. a function to display the content of a WIkidepia article as a single frame.

With those two rather basic things, information and a standard website function, the users of WIkipedia can produce high quality PDFs from WIkipedia, if and whenever they need them. 2601:246:4201:5FE0:EDCD:4729:14BB:2A30 (talk) 15:13, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes, having that function as well would be good. Yes, we know that there is a print/save-to-pdf in browsers these days, but that approach is not always adequate, even with a single-frame format. Repeating from 4 months ago when someone 'splained the same point:

The generic save-to-pdf capability of browsers and operating systems often results in a substandard output when applied to pages with nontrivial layouts such as wikipedia pages with tables, displayed equations, etc. You may also get different results on different computers because of local settings variations. Also the generic systems sometimes have subtle fatal glitches: For years the Google Chrome save-to-pdf function was, on some systems, producing pdfs that contained no searchable text because of how they dealt with the font specification. It took years of reporting that bug before it was fixed properly. You could view such a pdf and think nothing was wrong, but it would never show up on a search for files on your computer containing the text it appeared to contain. Gpc62 (talk) 18:55, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the challenges here are not so much creating a PDF file as making sure the article is PDF/print friendly (there is a "Printable version", just under the PDF download version in the sidebar). I think that we shouldn't underestimate how difficult navigating technology can be for some Wikipedia readers. As soon as we need to write down instructions, we've made it past what some readers can handle. Johan (WMF) (talk) 06:28, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Talk:Reading/Web/PDF Functionality

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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No problem on my pc. 120.61.28.229 (talk) 10:39, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Translation diesn’t match

T:93 and other sentences under “Introduction” seems not showing in ja even if I save translation. Any delay? Omotecho (talk) 14:14, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Works now? Johan (WMF) (talk) 06:38, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, @Johan (WMF), confirmed. Regards. Omotecho (talk) 07:24, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

PDF Functionality

I don't use the PDF generator very often, but as of 12-20-2017 it seems to work just fine. Thank you for continuing to offer the "Download as PDF" option.

- Ed Sylvis 68.2.109.39 (talk) 18:55, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Tolino

It appeares a window whitch says "This file is 'defekt'".WuffiWuff2 (talk) 12:20, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Choosing Fonts

現在的英文字體菱角明顯，希望可以多一點字體供使用者選擇，謝謝。 140.112.213.194 (talk) 14:56, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

繁體中文

phab:T167603, stalled due to Parsoid and RESTBase tasks (phab:43716 and phab:159985) status

用繁體中文瀏覽，點擊PDF下載，有時會變成簡體中文，希望能fix這個問題，謝謝。 Shaochitz (talk) 15:01, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

@OVasileva (WMF), you might want to take a look at this one. Johan (WMF) (talk) 06:32, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

@Shaochitz: 谢谢你的报告. Johan (WMF) (talk) 06:35, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

@Shaochitz and Johan (WMF): This issue is tracking at/此问题现追踪于/此問題現追蹤于 phab:T167603 Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 14:29, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Not working

Can't even format an item for printing. I hope this gets fixed soon! 171.97.172.84 (talk) 23:19, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Recent article changes aren't reflected in the PDF

I made a few basic formatting changes to the table on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_idioms

When I downloaded the PDF, the changes weren't there. Maybe a caching issue?

Thanks for looking! 12.17.169.218 (talk) 22:09, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Sounds likely, yes. Johan (WMF) (talk) 06:29, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

TVL roaming

Vyl 1.46.171.159 (talk) 03:56, 15 January 2018 (UTC)