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.

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 likely 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.

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.

Non 0 exit code after progress reaches 100%

I am trying to create a copy of this book (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Machine_Learning_-_The_Complete_Guide). I tried 3 times but the result is the same. After the progress reaches almost 100% the process fails with a non zero exit code.

May I know whether I can do something? Thanks. Sarmadys (talk) 20:07, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

I have been trying to download a book that I compiled and every time I try to download, when it reaches 100%, this pops- up "Generation of document file has failed. STATUS: Rendering the process died with non zero code: 1". I have tried this over a few times and the results are still the same. I hope this problem can be solved in the near future. 119.94.5.46 (talk) 12:31, 17 December 2014 (UTC) Maue Zamora

I am having the same error, progress reaches almost 100% then fails with: "Rendering failed \ Generation of the document file has failed. \ Status: Rendering process died with non zero code: 1". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.0.63.254 (talk) 03:58, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

There are more of us experiencing the same issue is there a size limit if so please let us know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rjdrescher (talk • contribs) 20:30, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Same problem: Rendering failed Generation of the document file has failed. Status: Rendering process died with non zero code: 1 Return to Book:Machine Learning – The Complete Guide — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.83.184.121 (talk) 17:48, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

numI have the problem with the code "Rendering process died with non zero code: 1" 
The link of the book is "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Michaelt1964/B%C3%BCcher/P%C3%A4pste"
 It is a more complex book with 20 chapters divided into 3 main sections. The error code appears after completion massage "100%". Thanks for response.

Kind regards Michaelt1964 (talk) 11:21, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I am having the same problem with "Rendering process died with non zero code: 1" after completion of 100% of rendering of a book to pdf. the book has about 40 articles/wikipedia pages and i made a table of contents with about 6 chapter headings. Some of the chapters have tables in them, (e.g. wikipedia articles in English on "Plant", "Green_algae", and "Bryophyte"). I've tried changing paper size (A4/letter), changing table of contents settings (auto, on, off), and changing columns (1, 2) but alway get same failure to render to pdf with above message. Thank you for any assistance. Here is the book saved on my wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SinkingCreek/Books/A_Survey_of_Plant_Diversity best wishes, Tim. Jan 16, 2015 "SinkingCreek" — Preceding unsigned comment added by SinkingCreek (talk • contribs) 00:02, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

HOW TO FIX ??? Same rendering error - Rendering process died with non zero code: 1. Most likely a heap size issue or generation issue on incompatible content. Why can't we get the detail errors listed as an option instead of the return code?

If this is a free service, why can't we get error feedback in the browser so we can edit or split the book to resolve the issue?

I don't think this is because your files are too big (although I suppose it could be), because this exact same thing is happening to mine, too, and it's just 14 articles, several of which aren't even that long. I just took each article found at https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/E-government and re-compiled it into a collection in the order of the book table of contents listed there. I wish some people would fix this issue as it seems to stretch at least as far back as 2014 October, or at least that's the timestamp for the first bug report shown here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SarahTehCat (talk • contribs) 00:31, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm having the same problem in April 2015. I'm not sure these Help pages are being monitored by anyone who can fix this problem. Pulamusic (talk) 13:54, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

This problem is persisting through late April 2015. Hopefully it'll get fixed, but looking at the history here, I doubt it. Harnessedsea (harnessedsea) 19 April 2015 — Preceding undated comment added 15:40, 18 April 2015 (UTC) I am getting the same error for almost third of the Wikipedia books I tried to download (computer science books) and the ones I tried to create (complexity problems and unsolved problems in computer science). Most of the times it happens both at size A4 and Letter. Sometimes it fails for one size but succeeds for the other. I prefer letter paper size (Canada) but sometimes I only was able to generate A4 and most times neither. These are the Wikipedia books listed under category computer science and also those under computational problems. This bug is marked as low. It should be raised to high. This is Apr 27 2015. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.245.234.120 (talk) 17:43, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

It is June 16, 2015, and the problem continues (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Folder1/Books/John_Barrymore). I attempt to save as PDF and get this error message:
→ Rendering failed.
→ Generation of the document file has failed.
→ Status: Rendering process died with non zero code: 1.
Well, yeah, I noticed. It's a simple book: 36 pages. Have tried adding/deleting articles, saving the book with a new name. The rendering process continues dying. Umpteen different "help" documents on Wikipedia about creating, saving, printing books; no answers in any of them. Have looked for answers on non-Wikipedia sites, without success. Does anyone at Wikipedia even care about this bug? It's like talking to air… Username: folder1 / Real name: Peter F 22:16, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

It's my opinion that Wikipedia ceased to be a vibrant community of responsive editors years ago, when the tide turned towards Deletionist trolls, and every article had to be defended against ad hoc standards of notability. Since then, the enormous body of knowledge we created in the early years has been degraded, becoming less and less usable. That's why I stopped editing. Ok, climbing down off my soap box. Yes, I'm having the same problem generating a book. Nathan McKnight -- Aelffin (talk) 20:39, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

I am having a similar problem and can't seem to find a solution to my problem anywhere, which is, attempting to download book as a PDF, during rendering it stops at progress: 36.67% status: creating attribution page (wiki page: enwiki:[Parsoid]) and it freezes here. I try refreshing the page as is suggested and it only reloads to exactly the same page in the same spot. I am not able to progress any further. I tried the back button numerous times and each time the rendering stops/freezes in the exact same place every time. I would really like to download my book could anyone please help me with this problem??? CuriouslySeeking (talk) 16:38, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Infoboxes and tables do not appear in PDFs

I wonder why the infoboxes and tables do not appear in the PDF version of articles, after rendering. I tested a few articles in Wikipedias in English (en) and Portuguese (pt), and the problem persists in both versions. Thanks in advance! Fúlvio (talk) 22:41, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Same problem on my Mac 10.6.8. PDF rendering worked fine till a couple of weeks ago, then consistently leaves out infoboxes and tables. Have I accidentally changed PDF preferences? Djbcjk (talk) 10:53, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

As you say, it doesn't work currently. There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 131#Download as PDF does not print infoboxes. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:08, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Now when I go to 'Downland as PDF' it returns a message 'Book rendering failed'. What on earth is going on? Is anybody fixing this mess? Djbcjk (talk) 11:32, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Looks like it went to village pump technical and got a kiss-off. Apparently they changed the software or something and are now hoping for magic volunteer genies to fix what WMF broke. But as I said there, this still a problem. The tables and infoboxes are still not appearing. I tried this on two different featured articles, and as anyone can see if you do a "download as pdf", critical information is omitted. On Appaloosa, where the breed infobox and a critical illustrated chart of coat color patterns is omitted, and on California Chrome the pdf version omits the infobox and a chart of all his racing statistics (material that is really not easy to render in a simple bulleted list.) I'd say that if WMF broke it, they need to fix is and not wait for volunteers to do it. Montanabw^(talk) 20:19, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Tried rendering List of mountains in Seoul and the table (the whole reason for this article BTW) did not appear. Both tables and info boxes play a big role in the book I am putting together on Korean mountains. Kellnerp (talk) 06:28, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Since it looks like it's been a few months since anyone said anything about this, I just thought I'd mention that tables and infoboxes still don't seem to be showing up on the PDFs even now. Alphius (talk) 20:53, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

bump --Trödel 21:12, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Download as ZIM and/or EPUB??

I just don't get why you guys removed the feature of downloading an article/book as a ZIM. It's so disappointing, bring it back for god's sake. PDF files are so large in size, takes Megabytes of size for one little article!! You say wikipedia is available offline as ZIM, then why remove it? Bring it back I beg you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sree has it (talk • contribs) 03:38, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
yes for me too.it will be very nice if zim feature is available so that we can use it on kiwix.but why you people removed that??? please add this feature The Help:Books page says that the option is enabled but is not true and I think it is necessary for all those who do not have internet access 24 hours.

ZIM has been disabled. Thanks for pointing out the obsolete information at Help:Books. I have updated a caption.[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2014-September/000955.html says: "As part of this change, we will disable ZIM and EPUB export for the time being."

Template talk:Saved book#Template-protected edit request on 10 October 2014 says: "The ePub, ZIM, and Pediapress entries in this template should be commented out (since there is a chance these features will reappear)".

That's all I know. I don't work on the software. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:23, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Can anyone please contribute a little more substantial information on why something immensely useful is silently removed just like that? Better yet,instead of justifications or blunt statements let's hear somethings constructive, like "feature is scheduled to be re-enabled on ... ". The current behaviour is not just disappoting, it is a damned nuisance and appears to result from the ever-growing distance, nay - alienation - between WP bureaucrats and the technical&user community. Any comments?? -- Kku 10:12, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

If you want to see this feature back, please subscribe and give a token to this feature request. Kelson (talk) 11:28, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

@Kku: I agree, completely. This is, IMO anyway, the exact antithesis of what Wikipedia—nay, the Wikimedia Foundation—is supposed to stand for: transparency, being composed of the users by the users for the users. >:( We shouldn't have to file a feature request just to get answers...

After having just emailed Wikipedia suggesting they add a download as epub option (and admittedly, I couldn't fathom why this was not already an option), I now see that this option already existed and has been removed. Is there any official explanation for this bizarre move, anywhere? Strictly speaking, PDF is not technically an "ebook" format at all. It is a fixed-pagination, portable document format. Ebooks require fluid pagination. InspiredLight

As of 16/07/2015 still no zim/epub download facility. No transparency at all, very sad and depressing. I guess there are political reasons, possibly to ensure that everyone only accesses wikipedia online. I wonder why... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.233.93.4 (talk) 18:11, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Tables and info boxes not reproduced in PDF

Creating a PDF version of an article to download is entirely useless for most articles. Most biographies and descriptions of places contain info boxes these days, they are completely missing in the PDF; tables, large and small, are all over the place, sometimes to force layout, but tables and all the information they contain are missing from PDFs too. This is a significant bug and should have been spotted before the facility to produce PDFs was made available. Are things tested first?Emerald (talk) 10:02, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Hear, Hear! I am about to post some articles containing tables, and was looking forward to printing them out as decent PDFs. This must be something recent as I have earlier versions of my work produced perfectly. Whom might we prod to get it fixed?Apwoolrich (talk) 17:23, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

See earlier thread this page 'Infoboxes and tables do not appear in PDFs". They're just not listening. Djbcjk (talk) 00:48, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

There is currently no one working on this feature. Volunteers are welcome —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:52, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Equations occasionally get clipped

Try the N-sphere page - page 4... Wamnet (talk) 00:20, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Delete sections

I haven't found a way to delete sections of some articles, and I think it's a feature that would be very useful. I'm planing a road trip and I have already booked the places where I'll be sleeping, and it would be helpful if I could print a book without all the "Get around" and "sleep" sections. Otherwise, I find that 50% of my book is useless. RR (talk) 15:07, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Cannot upload to PediaPress

PediaPress stops uploading my book at "Fetching resources - 44.1%" What is going on?? Now I cannot upload my book. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.111.32.96 (talk) 15:25, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

Bug: math-tags do not print any more

Some previous bug-reports and FAQ items indicate that it did work at some point, but currently math-tags are not printed without any warning, i.e. the sections simply stay empty, e.g. see en:Predicate transformer semantics and resulting PDF

--Centic (talk) 18:44, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Please make it possible to have a "Save Paper" mode

I want a button or two were I can change setting so that less paper is wasted! Who needs an empty line between Sources. And furthermore I don't need sources always. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.171.251.210 (talk) 11:32, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

A5 Page Option

Please add an option for A5 size paper. The idea is to have a page which fits a tablet device better (and for those of us with less than perfect eyesight). A4 is too large (or to put it another way, the text is too small) and scrolling around two column A4 is tedious. At present A4 puts about 117 characters on a line. Reducing this to A5 would make it about 72 characters per line, nearer the ideal for readable lines of text. Tom Worthington (talk) 09:41, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Once again... non zero code, non-responsive Wikipedia Comment

Another day, another "non zero code" message. Users keep reporting this problem. Nobody at Wikipedia responds.

Transparency here is non-existent. Wikipedia is 100% opaque. No replies, no fixes for this long-term problem, no "sorry, we're looking into it", and nothing to indicate that the power-wielders at Wikipedia care. They love/live to revert pages seemingly at random, to send confusing messages with unexplained finger-wagging; they are classic Freudian arrogant head cases with big-fish-in-a-small-pond syndrome: "Hey, boy, I'm the sheriff in these here parts, and I'm keepin' an eye on you." When there is an actual problem that is affecting many users, they are silent and useless. Why?

Yes, believe it or not, I'm pissed off. Wikipedia asks users for money and simultaneously disrespects them. Is this what Jimmy Wales had in mind? I doubt it. How about a response to the people struggling with these "non zero code" and other errors? How about any indication that anyone is listening? Stop hiding behind your usernames and come out for air.

I've donated, I've bought "product", I've done (mostly minor) edits on pages to correct errors. As Roberto Duran once said, "no más". I've volunteered at brick-and-mortar organizations where people have said "thanks"; it kept me returning. In other places, people have said nothing, and that soon kept me from returning. If this treatment of Wikipedia's users ("give us money and go away"), the future of Wikipedia will be the words, "Well, it was a good idea...".
Username: folder1 / Real name: Peter F 09:27, 5 August 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Folder1 (talk • contribs)