We're a couple months past the previous update that said we've have a launch date soon. Can anyone provide an update on what's holding up the launch, if help is needed in some area, etc.? It seems we've been more than a year without .pdf book capabilities.
Topic on Talk:Proton
Proton will not deliver book capabilities after all, it will only replace the Electron single-page service.
PediaPress are working on a new book service for us, which they call Collector. It is also running later than anticipated, but they do have a visible test service up at https://pediapress.com/collector Some more information can be gleaned from Talk:Reading/Web/PDF_Functionality.
There is also an independent service at http://mediawiki2latex.wmflabs.org/
The truth is, the WMF refuse to spend any resources on this project because "nobody is using the service". Quite how or why they expected us to use it, when it was so broken it had to be turned off, is beyond me.
Forgot to say, the progress of the single-page product is tracked on Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/2960/ Bottom line: although nominally "finished", testing keeps throwing up bugs and until that stops it will keep getting thrown back to triage. No cash = no timescale.
.pdf book capability is huge IMO, for parents and educators world-wide. I'm unfamiliar with the organizational structure of the foundation, other than the requests for donations I've responded to over the years. As a donor, who does one speak to at the foundation about the lack of funding for this project?
The WMF are rather elusive. They have a governance wiki at https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Home
However the only real reaction I ever got was when I posted on founder Jimbo Wales' Wikipedia talk page almost three years ago now. I later moved that conversation to here.
Perhaps some others closer to the WMF can advise?