Help:Books/Feedback

How to report issues	How to escalate issues
please check whether this issue is already known provide a link to an article that is affected by the issue report only one issue per section select a descriptive title consider to prefix the title with Bug, Proposal, Question, Comment, Task ... remember to sign your post with ~~~~ consider to warn readers of the problem by placing |bug=... in the {{saved book}} template of relevant books	There is a central page at meta.wikimedia.org gathering all major issues with this extension. Issues that can't be solved and are not yet covered on the page at meta should be added there. For obvious bugs the issue tracker is the preferred place to directly issue and check tickets. At IRC #pediapress some immediate support might be available.

Links in PDF Table of Contents

The table of contents in generated PDF files looks nice but it doesn't link to the articles in the book. I'd create a user page and basically copy the book page, remove the semicolons and colons, then use that in my book as a table of contents. That way I'd have a table of contents that I could click on and jump to the articles in the book. I can't disable the generated table of contents as far as I know, so that would suck having two TOCs in a book. It would be really cool if the generated TOC preserved the relative links in the same way that links inside articles do.Matthew Kastor (talk) 03:03, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like an awesome idea...any progress after 4 months? Please see my new entry below regarding an Index.--Graham Proud (talk) 02:32, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

I do agree: the Table of Contents should have clickable links in the PDF.

Book Splitting

Wikipedia clearly warns new editors that the Book Creator does not support large books with more than 500 pages. However, an alternative option is to fork a book just prior to the 500 page limit, by saving it under a unique title (or revision), prior to proceeding to adding more pages and subsequent topics, although later saves of the book may fail. Again, as already indicated, this method is highly like to error out for many users and is not recommended. This is not a problem with technology, it is a problem with editorship.

For instance, most users cannot plan their book out in advance, such that each saved volume contains 500 or fewer pages (give or take), because most books grow in an utterly random fashion similar to the Bell Curve of a pile of dung dripping from a cave ceiling, but with a tail that skews to the right. In other words, book size (as number of pages) grows non-linearly as a function of numerous random variables, including the grow of semantic topics included in the book. Perhaps the correlation closest to a linear relationship is the growth RATE in pages, against the growth RATE of topical scope, although this would be difficult to operationalize. Thus, central topics fill more pages added, in early-stage book growth, with topical scope widening at a fast rate, then narrowing again at a slower rate (of pages added per change in scope). Additionally, more fringe topics tend to fill in gaps between central topics, at a nearly steady rate per click throughout the process of book creation, but represent very nearly the ONLY added pages, near the final stages of book creation.

It is significant to note here that most users [whether planned or not] alphabetically organize their books, as a last step before saving them, although almost half of all books do not get saved permanently, and another smaller percentage of books never even get saved. This is theorized to represent compensation for lack of organization of the book. However, a much better method for compensating for lack of organization, is to actually organize the book, which might require segmentation into more manageable chapters and volumes first. Thus, for a typical non-linear, poorly planned, and unpredictable 'non-central growth' model and given the likelihood that few pages will be deleted from most created books, either as drafts or in a final pruning or quality control stage, editors can save lower quality final works as multiple volumes instead of higher quality single volumes, and still retain the option of future refinement, without any immediate compromise in total pages included.

The best approach to content splitting (for the average editor) is to save a work-in-progress multiple times (under 2 titles), and then delete pages from each volume accordingly, prior to adding pages to each volume. By such a method therefore, a multi-volume book might grow indefinitely through iterative splits. For example, at 500 pages, one could save one's book with the title "Big:Volume 1", and then immediately save exactly the same book again as "Big:Volume 2" (still, with exactly the same 500 pages). Next, the user would delete pages 250-500 from Volume 1, and delete pages 1-250 of Volume 2. Then the user could proceed (once again) with the task of randomly surfing and "filling in" their book with accidentally discovered candidate pages for each of the two volumes (technically, now two separate books), via the navigation patterns of click-through behavior documented by web analytic research. Of course, an even superior method (albeit unlikely) would simply be to plan one's editorial work out in advance, in terms of topical coverage, order, audience, goals, etc., and use an iterative PAGE-DELETION methodology with at least two drafts, thus excluding less critical pages and creating a final piece of higher value.

Comments Section of Signpost (and other Signpost issues)

The Signpost books include the comments section of each article, which ought to be excluded. Is there a way to mark a section of an article for exclusion from the books? Additionally each article should ideally begin on its own page. Is there any way to set the book renderer to do that? Zell Faze (talk) 15:01, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

@Zellfaze: I tried Book:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-02-26, and, yes, the comments sections are included in the PDF. That's odd, because they are included via Wikipedia:Signpost/Template:Signpost-article-comments-end, which is in Category:Exclude in print. If no one else comments here, I suggest you raise this at WP:VPT. I don't know the answer to your second question. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:15, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Index builder? Suggestion

Clearly, as noted above, the Table of Contents MUST have clickable links in the PDF. Similarly, I would like to raise a suggestion for an Index Builder. A book should have a list of index words, much the same as it works with Microsoft Word and other word processors. With Wikipedia we have an opportunity to do something really out of the box here. In much the same way as the Book Creator already scans the book's pages to create a Suggested Pages list, could I suggest that an Index Builder could scan the pages for important words and Statistically Improbable Phrases to create the first-draft index word list?--Graham Proud (talk) 02:37, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

An example is available from PDF Colony--Graham Proud (talk) 02:45, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Cc-BY-SA

Images used in the Book will be referenced with the username of the uploader but not attributed to the creator if they differ. Agathoclea (talk) 11:13, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

How to download "List of ..." as book?

How would one go about downloading a list of something, including the referenced articles? e.g. List of aircraft of World War II with the links to all planes, without actually having to click and add each individual link? Billiauk (talk) 12:27, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Template:Nihongo give something unrelated and lengthy...

for example, see Book:Reki Kawahara C933103 (talk) 02:15, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Problem with Adding pages without visiting them

Seems to not be working. I've tested this in the latest release of Firefox in Win 7 as well as previous versions on a few different PC's... Wamnet (talk) 17:27, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

The same here. Tagt The Spellcaster (talk) 12:46, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

"Create Chapter" and re-order functions no longer present

The instructions list a couple features that don't seem to work when I try to make the book. Referencing this on the help page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:05_manage_book.png Here's what I'm seeing in 4 different browsers: http://i.imgur.com/SzSJnU6.jpg As you can see, the "Create Chapter" field/button is not present. Nor is the ability to re-order the entries. Twohlrab3 (talk • contribs) 11:49, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

I noticed that too.--Fred Bloggs (talk) 05:37, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

The same here. Tagt The Spellcaster (talk) 12:45, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

And the rendering doesn't work, so it is impossible to create new books, nor does the "Save" function. It is impossible also to assign a title to a book. The book creator seems dead, in fact. Tagt The Spellcaster (talk) 12:52, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Can create wikibooks as EPUB files, but cannot download wikibooks as EPUB files?

Resolved

 – SiBr4 kindly has extended the edit-protected template Saved book so that users can now conveniently download books in the EPUB format. – Tobias Bergemann (talk) 19:52, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

When working on a wikibook with the book creator, I have the options to download the wikibook that I am currently working from the "Manage your book" page in the following formats:

• "e-book (PDF)",
• "word processor (OpenDocument)",
• "Kiwix (OpenZIM)", and
• "e-book (EPUB)".

When viewing a wikibook in the web browser I have the following options:

• "Download PDF",
• "Download ODT",
• "Download ZIM",
• "Open in Book Creator", and
• "Order Printed Book".

I.e., here is no option to save the wikibook as an EPUB file. Of course, I can use "Open in Book Creator" instead, and then I can download the wikibook as an EPUB again, but that seems unnecessary complicated. What am I missing?

– Tobias Bergemann (talk) 08:00, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

I have re-opened the existing change request to the edit-protected template Saved book. See Template talk:Saved book#Edit request on 19 January 2013. – Tobias Bergemann (talk) 19:38, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Can't find the way to include pages from different languages in one book

(I'm sorry if this should be reported elsewhere but I couldn't find this information neither in FAQ nor in Help pages). I'd like to include Wikipedia pages from different languages to single book, but it seems that Book creator is always initialized independently for each language and pages are added independently as well - does it mean that there is no way to combine such pages? Maybe it's worth to include the answer to the FAQ. Thanks.

When I download a book I only get the title page

Download this book: Book:Maya_Angelou_autobiographies. When I download as a PDF, it's just one page, yet it should contain all of her works. This was on the main page a few days ago, which is how I came upon it. --101.171.85.85 (talk) 23:53, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Book Creator Box Inside Hidden Sitenotice

The book creator box won't show for me and I checked the source and the site notice is hidden which includes this box in it.

Curiouscrab0 | talk | contribs

02:19, 17 August 2014 (UTC)