Talk:Reading/Web/PDF Functionality/2018/09

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.

After a year of immediate download, long wait times once again

The title says it all.

It has been working well for me for a year since I raised the long wait time/timeout issue but for several days it has been happening again. Thx. 68.98.170.156 (talk) 00:54, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Noted. Johan (WMF) (talk) 10:30, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

tous les pdf se forment très lentement ou pas du tout

tous les pdf se forment très lentement ou pas du tout (02-03.09.18) 88.75.19.84 (talk) 21:45, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Chapters

The old book format allowed articles to be organised into Chapters. The current Book Creator tool provides an interactive GUI for doing this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Book

The current PediaPress print-on-demand book tool for Wikipedia books on their own web site also supports Chapters.

Yet we are told that chapters will not be implemented in the forthcoming Wikipedia PDF builder from PediaPress.

I believe that this is a grave mistake, as it will bork a great many existing books, users accustomed to downloading books in the old format will become very confused, and the Book Creator will need rewriting to remove the feature.

I do not believe that a tool which plays so badly with the legacy base should be rolled out live, I believe very strongly that this feature should be reinstated before the new PDF tool goes live on Wikipedia. Steelpillow (talk) 08:07, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

(This is just to say that the feedback has been noted and is not being ignored.) Johan (WMF) (talk) 01:08, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

:)

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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I don't have any problem.... What I want is just the writing in an Ordered way..and I hope the present pdf file format does this Job....

I would just Cheer up wikipedia for Presenting Collections of information on different Subjects/ fields :)

Plz keep doing this ..Wiki ") 223.231.76.176 (talk) 12:50, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

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

PDF Functionality use open standards?

In nowadaws, with CSS3-break and stable implementations, we can use the full ecosystem of open standards, centered in HTML5 and CSS3, and producing high quality PDF (also EPUB and others) with professional layout. It is important to consider the use of the modern ecosystem of open standards when expressing stylesheets and templates of PDF Functionality. Krauss (talk) 01:04, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

If it is HTML5 or ePub then it is not PDF, while PDF itself has been an open standard for a long time now. But yes, the original plan had been to provide a choice of output formats. As far as I know this is not forgotten, but it is best to take one step at a time and PDF remains the most widespread standard in use. Steelpillow (talk) 15:58, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi Steelpillow, sorry my English... The focus is not the final format (PDF of course in a "PDF Functionality"), but the process: not a specific professional tool like LaTeX (niche-specific non-standard and limited) or Adobe InDesign (patented system), ideal is to express here that is any tool that understands CSS3 and HTML3 specifications. Krauss (talk) 23:08, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you mean now. I am not sure that the CSS3+HTML5 ecology is complete and stable enough yet. For example MathML has proved poor as an intermediate format for PDF rendering. There must also be a question over the maturity of tools and libraries for CSS3 break implementation. Steelpillow (talk) 21:00, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Hum... Do you tested with a professional tool like Prince v12?

Please show me a Wikipedia's article with an equation that we can't translate (to MathML or mathjax) and render with Prince... And I show that it is used in only one Wikipedia's article ;-)

To compare LaTeX with "the open ecosystem" we need to compare all the potential pros/cons, not only exoctic equations... In the context of all featured articles of all languages. Krauss (talk) 23:43, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Prince appears to be a closed-source commercial tool. That takes control of rendering away from the free software community and is no better than LaTeX, probably worse. And LaTex is also free as in beer. Steelpillow (talk) 17:01, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Long pdf download times - Again/Still

"We're especially interested in what you need in the future that doesn't exist in the plans laid out there."

A definitive end to this frequent on-again off-again phenomenon of pdf downloads hanging or timing out, which I have noted for you here three times in the last year.

Thanks. 68.98.170.156 (talk) 21:31, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Problem noted. Johan (WMF) (talk) 21:50, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Good. And until it is fixed permanently I am not going to donate to Wikipedia during the donation season... 68.98.170.156 (talk) 00:48, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you مصطاوي (talk) 12:28, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

I love this sample book!!!

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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This book about amphibious aircrafts is fascinating! And really well written! 96.252.40.216 (talk) 14:32, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

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