Talk:Reading/Web/PDF Functionality/2018/04

About giving feedback

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.

Update: (23 April 2018) PediaPress will take over the development of the books-to-PDF functionality. See Reading/Web/PDF Functionality for more information.

Updates: (24 February 2018)

- 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.

Page layout

Suddenly all my "download PDF" files are in landscape format! Someone has changed something, and I can find no way for users to set the layout 207.172.75.30 (talk) 18:15, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Widows and orphans rule

PDF export: Please include the widows and orphan rule. 212.185.85.78 (talk) 11:58, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

As far as I know, that rule is included (as it is in normal print). However, the behaviour of widows and orphans only works WITHIN a single paragraph. As Wikipedia pages often have lots of paragraphs and headers on the page as well as many floating images and other elements, the behaviour you expect might not be possible to achieve for the renderer.

If you have specific examples that go wrong, you are welcome to upload and share them with us, for evaluation. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 13:16, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

mediawiki2latex does respect the widows and orphan rule Dirk Hünniger (talk) 12:32, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

@Dirk Hünnigerthank you for this, but it appears that the mediawiki2latex demo site does not work. It does not produce the pdf when the process is finished 125.253.56.145 (talk) 13:40, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi,

I do get a result for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphism

The problem is likely that the page you are trying to process is too large. The server cancels every process after one hour. This is done to allow others to use the server too. The solution is to install the current version Ubuntu (possibly in a virtual machine) and run the mediawiki2latex command line application available for the Ubuntu package repository via apt-get install mediawiki2latex. If you want to process a large page you might need a lot of ram, possibly something like 32 GByte, but you will see by yourself. Yours Dirk Dirk Hünniger (talk) 20:24, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply @Dirk Hünniger. I do get a result for the page you provided, but when I try to render this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphibious_aircraft I can't. This is the example used by the new PDF renderer (read the main page of this article) and compare the results. 125.253.56.237 (talk) 11:38, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi,

I also get a result for the page you mentioned. It took about 10 minutes. So you should just have to wait some time.

Yours Dirk Dirk Hünniger (talk) 13:45, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

font size microscopic

When I download this web page, Defivations of Lorentz Transformations the pdf file has a size 4 font size. It is so small it is unreadabe. Printing the file produces a printed page with such a small font size that the printer cannot renfer it clearly. It is unreadable. Increase your font size by at least 300 % to make readable. 71.231.181.126 (talk) 05:12, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Pedia Press

Is there any open information on the Pedia Press initiative, such as on Phabricator or a wiki or blog or repos or whatever? What is their brief, will they be interacting with Wikimedia folks, where will the source be maintained, etc. etc? Steelpillow (talk) 17:30, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

I'll check with them (or point them here). One reason why there's little information elsewhere yet was that we wanted to post here as soon as possible, to give the community a heads-up, instead of waiting until everything was in place. Johan (WMF) (talk) 19:45, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

We started doing some software archaeology to figure out the best way to bring book rendering back to live. When coming back to a project you created 10 years ago that was more or less dormant for ~5 years, you have an instant reflex to throw everything away and start from scratch. Currently, we are digging into the old code and try to assess what can stay and what has to change. Our goal is to stay as close to the existing pipelines and processes as possible to facilitate the transition and minimize effort on the wiki side.

We already started to work on a new HTML-based renderer and have a working proof-of-concept. The next step is to setup a new test system which will allow us to do end-to-end tests from building collections (with the collection extension) to downloading PDFs. This will probably take a few more weeks. Once the process itself itself is sufficiently stable, we can start to set up a production environment that can be used by WMF projects. Refining PDF output can take an infinite amount of time but we will do our best to reach an acceptable base functionality (articles, images, tables, page numbers, footnotes, licenses) before opening up the production environment to live wikis.

We are not familiar with Wikimedia's current way of development and work mostly in our Github, which is at least partially public (https://github.com/pediapress/). Once things reach the stable stage we definitely need a more direct communication channel. As much as we enjoy doing this, we are only two developers with day jobs, families and limited time. Maybe you have a few suggestions what would be the current best practice for communicating efficiently with people interested in this project? Ckepper (talk) 08:52, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

I am just a simple user, although I have systems experience from elsewhere. For users, I think this main page is a good place to communicate. But you obviously need an early definition of your working arrangements with the integration/testing and rollout communities. Folks like Johan will know, but as far as I can tell their workstreams focus around Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org

I have strong opinions about requirements gathering and top-level architecting, but I will only say that I am pleased to see "evolution not revolution" creeping back into view. Steelpillow (talk) 10:13, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

I'd also recommend using this page, and should there be major news that should reach more users, we'll include a short item in m:Tech/News. Johan (WMF) (talk) 14:10, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Doesnt work

Chrome is just waitig for wikipedia.org to answer. Nothing happens. Doesnt work.<br>

German Wikipedia. Artikel Aquazoo Löbbecke Museum. Today. Just one minute ago. ~ Realwackel (talk) 07:02, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Noted. Johan (WMF) (talk) 10:17, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Maybe it as been blocked, you could use VPN. Linear D (talk) 02:17, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Font Size and Page Size

Your change to a smaller font size is not a positive for everyone, especially older readers. If at all possible, there should be a choice of font size.

Additionally, the PDF's are now rendered in A4 size. While much of the world uses that, the United States does not. Printing in "Letter" size reduces the page by 8%.

The combination of a smaller font AND the A4/Letter reduction really is a problem. 76.93.225.208 (talk) 19:14, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Noted. Thanks for reporting. Johan (WMF) (talk) 13:16, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

with http://mediawiki2latex.wmflabs.org/ you can choose between letter and A4 format among other formats Dirk Hünniger (talk) 14:30, 22 May 2018 (UTC)