Help talk:Books/Archive 1

WikiProject Wikipedia-Books

To ensure organzied community participation around this great new feature: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals#Wikiproject_Wikipedia-Books. --Cerejota (talk) 19:48, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Price

How much does it cost to order a printed book? Mollymoon (talk) 01:53, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

FAQ. - Erik Baas (talk) 11:31, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Failed to render Chu Nom and Tibetan script

Example page: Chu Nom & Ladakh --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 06:02, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

This seems to be fixed for Chu Nom, but not yet for Tibetan script. I'll create a ticket.

Scheduled for 4 May?

Please update: today is 5 May. Was it released? Is it now stable? --Robinson weijman (talk) 12:10, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

We've updated the backend code last week, which seems to be holding up OK. There are some changes to the front-end code, and we're currently in discussions with PediaPress about whether we're ready to roll these out. This is delaying the full scale deployment a bit further but we should able to sort it out soon: sorry for the delay.--Eloquence* 22:40, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

The Alphascript-Amazon-Wikipedia book hoax

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#The Alphascript-Amazon-Wikipedia book hoax (permanent link here).
-- Wavelength (talk) 14:38, 10 June 2009 (UTC) [I revised my comment. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:54, 21 June 2009 (UTC)]

titled or entitled?

My grammer is getting the best of me. This page mentions pages entitled "thus and so", etc. I'm at work, and can't research effectively right now. Should this be pages TITLED "thus and so"? Farfromunique (talk) 22:18, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

It should be "titled" not "entitled". Anomalocaris (talk) 18:50, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

See [1]. Interchangeable 23:17, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Can't find export to ODF format

The Help:Books page talks about being able to download a user-created book in either PDF format or the OpenDocument Format used by OpenOffice. I am unable to find any link or button to do the ODF download. Is it an unimplemented feature? Am I missing something obvious? -- WillWare (talk) 04:26, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, if you go to Book:Pollution for example. Click "load book". On the right side of the screen should be a section "Download" with a drop menu. You can select ODT format there. Does this clarify? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 05:20, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The permanent link and date of rendering should be included in the pdf

IMHO the generated pdf should also include the oldid number or permanent link for the version of the copy rendered and the date of rendering. It could precede or succeed the free license. Is this feature already present? AshLin (talk) 13:15, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

eWikipeida?

With the growing proliferation of ebook readers, should a readily downloadable/updateable complete version of Wikipedia be made available in a variety of formats? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.169.173.110 (talk) 08:21, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

You might want to read this. --Elitre (talk) 13:41, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Namespace Help?

Why is it possible to add pages from the ns Wikipedia to a book, but the creator does not show up on Help namespace? --Elitre (talk) 18:20, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Some namespaces are excluded from the book creator because they are usually irrelevant for books. In the case of the "Help" namespace, I think it was because many people were looking for help while using the book creator, and included help pages in the book when they didn't mean to. So it was disabled (likewise for templates). If you really want to include help pages (or any page from any namespace) in your book, you can always edit the book manually. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:46, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Excluding content in print

Hi there. I am looking for a workaround on it.wiki to avoid copyrighted/non-free images to appear in PDF or PediaPress books. We have this template but it does not solve the problem. Any suggestions? Thanks! --Elitre (talk) 11:48, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I was under the impression that such things were removed automatically. Next time I come across Headbomb, I will let him know about this question, as I am not 100% sure about this. Sven Manguard Wha? 15:24, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Copyrighted and non-free images are excluded in the PediaPress printed books. Fair use is allowed on the English Wikipedia, so the downloadable PDFs will render them. I have no idea what goes on with the Italian wikipedia, so I would ask either there or at meta:Book_tool if I were you. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:05, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Fair use is not really allowed on it.wiki. This means that we do have some "fair use" images (if their authors explicitly authorized it.wikipedia to host and display them), but all of them must be excluded from print. At the moment instead you can find them on both the downloadable PDF and the PediaPress preview version. Actually the template I was talking about does work, but it's impossible to tag pictures one by one with that, and I'm told there might be difficulties with images which are into a template, so, any suggestions about how we could deal with this is really greatly appreciated, and I'll read the Meta page in the meantime. If you think about it, once I create a book for myself and get it printed, it is very unlikely that someone will knock at my door to complain that I am reading it, but our mission should be spreading free contents (that should be fully re-usable), and in this case we are in the odd situation where we can't do it because we don't know how to get rid of non-free content! --Elitre (talk) 17:28, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Well these images should most definitely not appear in the PediaPress version of books. On the English Wikipedia, all files contained in Category:All non-free media (which is populated through various templates) are excluded the from the PediaPress version. There should be an equivalent for this on the Italian Wikipedia (although I have no idea what that equivalent is, being unfamiliar with the Italian Wikipedia, and not speaking Italian myself). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:04, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Answersniped! I was going to say the same exact thing. Here's a step by step though, if only to one-up Headbomb :)

1) If it does not exist already, create a category Category:All non-free media.

2) Make every non-free copyright status template a member (so, on enwiki, {{non-free logo}} would be a member, etc.)

3) There should be a category something along the lines of Category:Exclude in print on your local wiki. Infoboxes and other things not useful in printed books are already or should be members of that category. Place Category:All non-free media into Category:Exclude in print. If my understanding is correct, that's enough to make sure that no non-free images appear in printed books. (If not, this one-up is a failure, as Headbomb will have to swoop in and correct me.)

Cheers, Sven Manguard Wha? 21:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Category:Exclude in print is for templates only, so placing Category:All non-free media would have no effect at all on books. Category:All non-free media is excluded by the rendering software directly. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 22:06, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh. Sven Manguard Wha? 22:12, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

So let's recap: on it.wiki we have this. It contains subcategories, not the actual files. Is this ok? How or who could we ask for it to be excluded from print? The last question is: some images might still be ok for printing (i.e. some non-free CC licenses still allow personal use), how could we force the system to include some of them singularly once their category is permanently excluded? Thanks. --Elitre (talk) 12:04, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify: we are only talking about images here, right? Let me briefly explain how images are excluded: we try to find out the license of an image by looking at the templates on the description page of an images. Example Image. The templates on the image description page are the following: {{GFDL|migration=relicense}}, {{cc-by-sa}}. We maintain a list which maps templates to license information. This list also contains the information if the image has a free license. Currently we do not remove images at all from the downloadable PDFs - only from books. But on the german wikipedia there where also some concerns about that. So I guess we'll exclude these images in the downloadable PDFs as well in the near future... If you see images in PDFs/books that don't belong there let me know - I'll update the list. --Volker.haas (talk) 12:35, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. As I said earlier, there are non-free images that can be downloaded and even printed, if it is for personal use (i.e., Creative Commons NC and/or ND). Other images should only be displayed on the online version of the article. Let's take this image, which is not on Commons, and is not under a free license. Should we ask that similar images are excluded? What about free images like this which is released in the public domain but displays a registered mark? It is ok under the copyright aspect, but there are other restrictions that might allow simple, personal use (maybe). I am not an expert, I don't really know :/ --Elitre (talk) 14:09, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

OT, I just noticed that the print preview version excludes footnotes (which are OK in the downloadable PDF), so I guess they would not show up in the book. This should not happen. --Elitre (talk) 15:43, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Footnotes in the book/printed version are printed at the end of the book in a separate section. Unfortunately in the preview this section is not shown. This might be a little confusing, but in the final book all footnotes will be present (as endnotes). --Volker.haas (talk) 09:19, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the licenses: I am neither a lawyer, not an expert about image licenses. Therefore I can't really say anything on that topic.--Volker.haas (talk) 09:21, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

My Wish List

• Suggest pages

• All “See also” pages
• All linked Wiki-word pages
• List “similar” books which has similar pages in collection

• Book format

• pdf, epub, mobi, odt, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.159.144.57 (talk) 05:44, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

• Book page size and layout

• Page size: A4, Letter, iPad screen, Kindle screen, 7” screen, 5” screen, 4” screen
• Margin size: 0 – 10 pt

• Book management

• Download directly
• Send to a validated email address
• Attach with user profile
• List hot books
• Keep generated books in Amazon cloud

• Book properties for Wiki page

• A list of books that contains this page

I think you should ask PediaPress directly for this. BTW I agree with most if not all of them. --Elitre (talk) 11:30, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

trouble getting changes to my book to "stick"

When I bring up a book in Manage My Book, I add articles, move things around and add chapter titles. When I Save the book. the rearrangements are not saved. The chapter titles I created are not saved. Ineternet explorer 6 does not even show the gloved finger when I mouse over to the article list. Firefox 3.6 at least appears like this working in that I can drag and drop. but when I save the book, all of those drag and drops are not being saved. The recalled book looks just like it did before I made the changes. Hitting refresh as suggested by a FAQ I found, does not help. the changes never appear.

I find that the problem does not seem to show up on small book projects, say with a dozen or so articles. It looks like a browser problem based on my efforts so far. I cannot find anything in the browser IE 6 setup that would do this.

I sure would like to figure out what is going on. Can you help me out?

I do not have enough information on this problem when I Edit the page using that tab in the upper right part of the screen. Sometimes the system never completes a save. the browser just sits there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zangobob (talk • contribs) 04:02, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean but remember, each book works exactly like a Wikipedia page. Let's take User:Zangobob/Books/Fundamentals, if you want to add an article to that book, just add the wikilink to that article, if you want to "rename" an article, use piped links, if you want to move articles up or down, copy and paste the name of the articles where you want, and so on. So if you are not satisfied with your book just save it because you can work on it later and then download or order it. You might also want to request deletion for the books you created as a test. As you seem a new user, you might want to read Help:Wiki markup first, and trace your contribs here. --Elitre (talk) 17:36, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Books time out?

I'm logged in, and compiling a list of articles to add to a PDF to use as a resource at work. I go tend to my cat, make some lunch, and when I come back it's completely empty. Is this a glitch or is there actually a time-out on the feature? If so, it needs to be an awful lot longer to not be infuriating. (Luckily I had a few articles saved, and nav'd back to copy the list as text.) - BalthCat (talk) 16:34, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Books keep disappearing

I concur with the comment above. When this feature was first implemented, I found that the books would clear before I finished adding to them. It was infuriating, to say the least. This just happened to me AGAIN, months later. So I don't know what the cause of the glitch is, or if books are supposed to time out - in which case the period is frustratingly short, as in the comment above - but I'm giving up on creating books for now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.157.176.191 (talk) 02:07, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Identical problem for me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnpriebe (talk • contribs) 19:51, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I see that you've found the solution to this: make at least ten edits, and wait for at least four days after registering teh account. I'm not sure why the software is set up this way, but there it is. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:25, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Formats

I miss e-book formats like .epub and others. I think than creation of .epub is more simple than pdf and more usable. Why not? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.102.217.75 (talk) 08:38, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

error

The PDF creator does not work well on the Fungi page at the fungi kingdom chart. --64.31.33.55 (talk) 02:33, 9 October 2011 (UTC)Ben

I assume you mean the clade tables? That's a known issue. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:10, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Unable to save - clearer warnings please

Here's another complaint at the help desk about a book not being saved. Please can we have a very clear warning on the "Book creator" that the book cannot be saved unless you have registered an account, waited four days, and made ten edits? Currently the only mention of saving a book is the note "(unless you saved it first)" which by itself is pretty misleading. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:27, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

"Create a Chapter" - or not?

The article page show a Create Chapter option, though this doesn't appear on my computer screen. Any ide why? I'd like to organise and move things around a little if possible. Stephenjh (talk) 17:57, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

PDF covers

When one downloads a pdf version of a book, are not the covers supposed to come with it? Are they only for those printed by PediaPress? Or is there an option that can be set? Thank you. — Michael J 03:41, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd say they're only there from PediaPress. ~ ⇒TomTomN00 @ 23:59, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

if this is true, then why are they "only from pedia press"!? o__0 Lx 121 (talk) 21:39, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

advertising & nnpov

does the print-ordering tool ONLY work with pedia press?

if so, why?

(& yes i know they are an "official-partner" of the wfm; that is part of the "why" in my question)

this exclusive partnership raises some obvious questions:

do the p.o.d. links violate the "no advertising" rule?

if we are going to offer commercial, for-profit services (& with the wmf getting a "cut"), why are we limiting it to an "exclusive arrangement" with only one publisher?

how are we supposed to give npov coverage of pedia press, when we have a commercial arrangement with them?

if we had a neutral-random "marketplace" tool for ordering p.o.d.; or just let people use this tool to order p.o.d. from any service they wanted, would that not be a better way to avoid problems with both "advertising" & "bias"?

o__0

(& by the way, how much is this service earning the wmf anyway? & going forward, what happens as paper-books become less & less common?)

Lx 121 (talk) 21:38, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Structuring

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T41827

I cant get the move pages up and down tool or the chapter configuration to work in my browsers (FFox, Safari, on Mac). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:31, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm experiencing exactly the same problem (FFox, Safari and Chrome on Mac), and this seems to be the case for all of Wikipedia. Is there somewhere one can report bugs to the Wikipedia programmers? Mehinger (talk) 05:12, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Probably by filing a report on WP:Bugzilla. I'll do this now. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:35, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Great, please keep us posted on the progress of bug-squashing in this thread! :-) Mehinger (talk) 06:44, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I can also replicate exactly the same problem on Chrome 21 and IE8.0, both on Windows 7. Mehinger (talk) 07:31, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

The bug has now been corrected, and everything works as expected. :-) Mehinger (talk) 18:15, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, Mehinger (talk), I have the exact same problem that only just appeared for me. Any advice? Rourke (talk) 22:38, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

It works now. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:49, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikisource?

When will be this extension active in Wikisource? --Micru (talk) 16:55, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

It already is. What makes you think otherwise? PrimeHunter (talk) 17:13, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Creating a book from template links?

Is it possible to create a book from links appearing in a template (e.g. {{Statistics}}? Say, by automatically retrieving the articles that are linked from the template, and then allowing the user to remove/move articles. ... discospinster _talk 13:41, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't believe that it is possible to do it the way you are looking to, however if you have the book creator enabled (i.e. you see this at the top of the page), you will be able to add pages to a book by hovering over links to an article (it will look like this). You can do this from the page Statistics, where the template appears in an article. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:19, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Wiped out books

I've now run the rendering twice in a row, only to be told both times "no file exists". WTF? TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 16:42, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Now three times in two hours! TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 18:31, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Again! This is getting stupid! TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 06:00, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Again! I am getting really, really sick of having to delete & add every single page every time my screensaver goes on!! 04:21, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Clearly not enough technical people are watching this page! I suggest that if it happens again you post at WP:VPT. From your contributions I see that you are not saving your work-in-progress, either to the Book: namespace or as a subpage of your user space. That might perhaps save you some grief; though as I don't know how the book creator works, I can't promise anything. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:08, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

♠Thx for the tip. I wasn't realizing that was an option for WIP, so I'll use it next try.

♠There's obviously a problem somewhere, tho. Last night, I left a rendering in progress; this morning, it was empty, & all the pages were gone, too... List & all. (At least before, I still had the old list...) That has me wondering if there's a connection to the pages still being in browser history. (I deleted them, anticipating the PDF.) TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 16:40, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi there. I spent some time trying to replicate your problem, but haven't been able to. As John of Reading said, it would be a good idea to save a copy of the book in your userspace. If you look at this screenshot, the "Save your book" section in the bottom right is where you would be able to do this. If you continue to have problems, please let me know and I will help you further. Sven Manguard Wha? 03:31, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

What controls the rendering of a large picture?

If I want to render an image at the largest possible resolution, how should this be done? I tried a map on a sub-article page as a full resolution image - like [[File:Map.png]]. I tried this with a pdf rendering and the image in the pdf was quite a bit narrower than the page, although it was 3000 pixels wide in full resolution on commons. Is the full page-width image more than 3000 px in pdf? Would it render wider if more than 3000 px? Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:39, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Allow newly-registered accounts to save user-space books

I have made a proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Allow newly-registered accounts to save user-space books. Anyone watching this page may like to comment there. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:16, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

 Done by Bugzilla ticket 46944. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:11, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

And Special:Contributions/Kumar.tharumalingam is an example where a user saved a book with his first edit. I'll have a go at updating the help pages. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:28, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Introduction feature disabled since 2011

The introduction feature is apparently disabled since 12 March 2011 - let's not confuse both beginners and advanced users: here's the edit to the Book template on 12 March 2011. Boud (talk) 01:38, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Adding whole categories

Never mind, it seems the problem is that I had Javascript disabled. When I used the "create a book" link, help text appeared which said:

If you are viewing a category page, you can add all the pages in that category at once. The Add this page to your book link will have changed into Add this category to your book. Click on this new link, and all the articles in that category will be added to your book. Relevant categories may be found at the very bottom of Wikipedia articles. Categories can also be added by hovering category links.

I was already viewing a category page. I noticed that there was a link labeled Add this page to your book, not Add this category to your book. When I clicked on the link, I was taken to File:Collection Extension - Create a book box.png and the book remained empty. —rybec 23:18, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Template documentation

How does this work for essential templates with (too) many parameters? I always need the complete documentation for cleanup tags, redirect tags, cite web, infobox software, and related cite/infobox templates. Search is too slow over GPRS (mobile with modem speed) and often ends up in the article name space. What I need is only help, project, or template. –Be..anyone (talk) 17:10, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

One way is to use the "advanced search"; go to Special:Search, click "Advanced", and then tick the namespaces you need. But here I've adapted the markup from Help:Contents to create a custom search box that does exactly what you want. You could copy this to your user page or the top of your user talk page, perhaps. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:39, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

ns12

ns4

ns10

Thanks, I used to have a similar iGoogle gadget for this job, but iGoogle is dead and actually the normal search box is good enough when I hide its stupid "go directly to the page" button in common.css. My question here was about creating a book for relevant help/template/project topics. Bonus points for adding pages from m: or mw: if the hardcore technical info here is buried under mega-tons of irrelevant "MOS" spam. ;-) –Be..anyone (talk) 17:43, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Save book; create new book; revisit saved book etc.

I'm not finding anything anywhere on if or how this can be done.

I have a book started which I have saved. I now want to begin creating another book, but I want to be able to go back to the original (different subject) book and add pages or make other changes. This information should probably be in the book help, but it isn't.

So, if I disable the book creator for my current saved book, then re-enable it:

• will I be able to go back to that first book later?
• will it even let me create a new book or just give me the same book back again? Zlama (talk) 23:23, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

@Zlama: If you follow a link to a saved book, for example, Book:Physics, there should be a banner at the top beginning "This is a Wikipedia book...". One of the links in that banner is "Open in Book Creator", which sets things up so that you can continue to edit it. To find the names of the books you have saved, you can click the "Contributions" link at the top right of every page whenever you are logged in. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:14, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

@John of Reading: Thank you, John of Reading. Being of the ooh-something-shiny mindset, if you can call something that scatterbrained a mind set, I need to know I can revisit when something new distracts me. Is this in the Help somewhere, because of it's not it should be. Thanks, again! Zlama (talk) 21:05, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I've added a new section to Help:Books. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:32, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

@John of Reading: Thanks, again, John of Reading. Zlama (talk) 10:44, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

ZIM File

Hello! I am hungarian Wikipedia user. I have a problem: hungarian wiki zim file is one year old, and I would like a new file. Hungarian wiki is mittel, only 265,000 articles. I would like make an own zim file with Books tool, is it possible? --B.Zsolt (talk) 20:13, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Bug day: Book tool/Collection/PDF, 2014-10-08, 14–22 UTC

Printed books

Hello! Please join us on the next Wikimedia bug day: 2014-10-08, 14:00–22:00 UTC[2] in #wikimedia-tech on IRC.

We will be triaging bug reports for the Collection extension (Book tool) in general and PDF export in particular, which were just switched to a new backend (OCG). We have two immediate goals:

• recover 100 % of the relevant reports from the defunct PediaPress tracker;
• get a clean list of known PDF issues that the new backend didn't fix.

Everyone is welcome to join any time these weeks, and no technical knowledge is needed! It's an easy way to get involved or to give something back. We encourage you to record your activity on the etherpad. See also:

• this information, participants list and more (please sign!);
• more information on triaging in general.

I look forward to seeing you there. Please distribute further by email, talk pages etc. (Collection is used on almost 2 thousands wikis!)

Nemo 18:14, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Why does my book render in two columns when I asked it to render in one?

Why does my book render in two columns when I asked it to render in one? Also, is there any alternative source to get these printed? I loved having a dead tree copy of my better contributions and not being able to order another one at the end of the year is killing me. Abyssal (talk) 15:35, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Order link, failure

Today, for the first time, I have found that the link enabling books to be ordered from Pediapress is not available. Is this a temporary glitch? Such as Book:Henrik Ibsen, playwright[3]:

"This is a Wikipedia book, a collection of Wikipedia articles that can be easily saved, rendered electronically, and ordered as a printed book. Edit this book: Book Creator · Wikitext Select format to download: PDF" (Letter)" Qexigator (talk) 22:50, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

The printed book support has been discontinued. See Help:Books/Printed books and [4]. PediaPress was removed from the interface 10 October.[5] PrimeHunter (talk) 02:12, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for this reply and the links, which I have now read. PediaPress was an excellent service while it lasted. Is there a page where users can express support for replacing with another book creating facility? Qexigator (talk) 07:04, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

I haven't found a place. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:51, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for looking. Qexigator (talk) 13:03, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

This reply from Pedia Press was received (but it may only apply to re-ordering books previously ordered): "Wikipedia is currently overhauling its offline export infrastructure. Unfortunately the book export had to be taken down during this process, but it will become available again in the next few days. If you do not want to wait, you can use the collection builder from the PediaPress website. You can find it at http://pediapress.com/collection/ Qexigator (talk) 16:40, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

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)". I don't know anything beyond the pages linked here. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:05, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

The PediaPress service is back and has been readded to Template:Saved book on a request Template talk:Saved book#Template-protected edit request on 23 October 2014 by the same WMF employee who originally requested the removal. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:19, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Order link, failure 2

The PediaPress link has failed again. It resulted only in message "Book rendering failed. There was an error while attempting to render your book." Is this being repaired? Qexigator (talk) 09:42, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

ePub format vanished

Hi, what happened to the ePub format? why now i can only save to PDF? --AzeveL (talk) 19:57, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

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. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:03, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Empty book

I have created new book from category here https://wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Special:PrefixIndex&prefix=User:Agilight/Books/ but this book was empty in pdf format, but in pediapress version working normal. Anyone help me? Agilight (talk) 08:34, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Tables?

Good day. Tables seem to be excluded from the PDF downloads. Why? Thank you. —Nelson Ricardo (talk) 13:46, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

... along with infoboxes. The "Books"-feature is useless now. See also Help:Books/Feedback#Infoboxes and tables do not appear in PDFs and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 131#Download as PDF does not print infoboxes. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:56, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the links, Michael! —Nelson Ricardo (talk) 21:12, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Still a problem. Is anyone working on this or is there just buck-passing? Montanabw^(talk) 20:21, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Rendering failed 30 October

As said on Talk, PediaPress link has failed again[6] See also PediaPress article revision[7] --Qexigator (talk) 09:21, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Bn Land84133 (talk) 21:19, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Include template in "Download as PDF"?

I'd like to have at least parts of a template included in the version when choosing "Download as PDF". Is there any way to do this? Mikael Häggström (talk) 10:03, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

It seems the section below answered my question as well. Mikael Häggström (talk) 15:14, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Bengali Land84133 (talk) 21:19, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Wrong image loaded in Languages of India

When I convert Languages of India (oldid=637310903) into a pdf, the first image gets changed. The present top image is File:South Asian Language Families.jpg whereas the rendered pdf shows the top image as File:Hindispeakers.png. Strangely, this happens even when I copy the entire article wikitext to my sandbox and render the sandbox script as pdf.

The Wikipedia rendered pdf is available here. A copy of the article when saved as a print version & rendered to pdf on my computer is here. Naturally, by rendering off WP, I get error free pdf.

AshLin (talk) 12:40, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

@AshLin: See the previous section here; the current software doing the PDF conversion has left out the infobox entirely. With the infobox gone, unhelpful as that is, the first image in your PDF is the second image in the article, which is the one just below the "Culture of India" box. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:04, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

John of Reading, thanks for the clarification. AshLin (talk) 13:20, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

See Help:Download as PDF. --  Gadget850 ^talk 21:22, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Troubled articles

I am trying to compile a couple electrical theory books and have ran into an issue with 2 of the articles I am trying to include Transformer and Weight. If I include either or even try and compile them separately. I have a feeling it may be to do with some tables or quote boxes in the articles but am not an expert in this field and wonder if anyone can provide guidance on how this may be rectified?- McMatter ^(talk)/_(contrib) 15:20, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

PDF creation is badly broken. Look through Help talk:Books/Archive 1 and Help:Books/Feedback. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:57, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Only PDF downloadable

I would like to have other downloadable formats than PDF. OpenDocument or Epub are gone. Is there somebody working on this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xo0ox (talk • contribs) 03:50, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Ditto. See the following threads at Help:Books/Feedback (not that there's a heck of a lot there).

• Download as ZIM??
• EPUB format
• Book creator (OpenDocument/ODT)

—Shelley V. Adams ‹blame
credit› Updated 21:56, 18 February 2015 (UTC). Created 21:40, 18 February 2015 (UTC).

Thanks for the links, but sadly it looks like, that nobody cares. --Xo0ox (talk) 07:12, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

My vote for (RE)enabling epub format. -- YN Desai ^Discuss 11:03, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Cover images and “custom colors”

I notice there are many books in the invisible categories Wikipedia books (books without cover images) and Wikipedia books (books without custom colors) but I can’t find anything here about how to include these elements, or indeed what the latter are for. Where might this information be found?—Odysseus1479 20:29, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello, @Odysseus1479: if you have a look at the template, Saved book, you can find out how to add those things there. This template is the box at the top of a book page. Hope this helped.  Seagull123  Φ  16:47, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Book creator works

The page says book creator is broken.I made a book and it worked just fine! Someone should change that. (Help:Books) Ekamb25 (talk) 01:18, 23 November 2015 (UTC)Ekamb25

I think it's still broken. Infoboxes and tables are not rendered. See Help talk:Books/Archive 1 & Help:Books/Feedback for further links. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:02, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Some books using simple page layouts and default formatting will work, though others will throw up the mystery bug message. Maybe "crippled" would be more accurate than "broken", I'll change that. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:34, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it's infuriating. I've used it very successfully to produce a long and complex PDF (which I've then used to produce printed books run using pediapress.com), but have also found that for no obvious reason it can't cope with some articles (e.g. 'Mandelbrot set' - the problem probably being either the length of the article or the mathematical symbols). I wish they'd fix this. GeoffHope (talk) 13:11, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Mandelbrot set had a piece of HTML with a bug in it. I edited it and it now compiles. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 15:35, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

It may help to clarify "This Help page is about books created on Wikipedia" by moving it to the top along with the special notice, and by adding, 'using the "Book Creator" (from Print/export > Create a book on any article)'. I tried to make the change but the page is semi-autoprotected. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Siznax (talk • contribs) 02:57, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Help needed

Dear, Wikipedia, what can you create a book for? 100.2.203.204 (talk) 19:29, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

How to add text between articles...

Hello, I'd like to be able to add text of my own between articles. for example, I create a chapter and put articles in that chapter. I'd like to be able to add an introductory paragraph of my own between the chapter header and the first article. Is there a way to do this? In the wiki code of the book itself? thanks! Eric Cable  !  Talk  14:23, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Help:Books/for experts explains how to specify a book by writing its wiki page manually. I can see nothing there about added text. I suppose you could just add some and see what happens when you try to build and download the pdf. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:27, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, but that page doesn't tell me anything new at all. Also, I tried just adding text to see what happens and it doesn't appear. Oh well. Eric Cable  !  Talk  15:38, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Here's one workaround: create the introductory section as a page in your user space, say at User:EricCable/My-book-name intro. Add it to the book. Then, in the book's page, change the displayed title to "Introduction" or whatever. On the other hand, if what you write is useful then perhaps it ought to be in the main article space anyway, either at the start of the first article or as a standalone "Introduction to My Topic". Worth a thought. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:37, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

BY golly I think that might work! Thanks! Eric Cable  !  Talk  20:34, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Help requested

Hi! I can't seem to adjust the size of figure 2 in the step by step guide. I have set it as a thumbnain for now, as it was stretching larger than the screen. Thank you! Daylen (talk) 05:20, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

 Done -- John of Reading (talk) 07:01, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Unhide Book Creator Toolbar?

I clicked the 'hide' button on the Book Creator toolbar, but now it's completely disappeared. I've disabled and then started again, restarted my browser and still nothing works. Even after restarting my computer I find that it's still hidden. Is there any way around this? --Theudariks (talk) 21:06, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

I've also noticed that I have trouble converting the 'Flag of the Bahamas' and the 'Coat of Arms of the Bahamas' pages to PDF, in that the images on that page are not converted at all; this issue is also present is some other cases, but it would appear, not all --Theudariks (talk) 21:19, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

@Theudariks: You can delete the en.wikipedia.org cookie "dismissSiteNotice" in your browser. I don't know whether there is a simpler way. If you don't know how to do it then try a Google search on your browser name and delete cookie. If you delete all cookies then it may also effect many other things so try to only delete the right cookie. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:31, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I've got Book Creator back. As to my other issue, is there any way to create full PDF pages, including all the images featured on those pages, including flags? I'm still having trouble with this --Theudariks (talk) 02:02, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

• For Help on downloading a page as a PDF, see Help:Download as PDF.Moxy (talk) 07:33, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

How to delete a self created User Book?

Dear Reader/Helper,

Introducing to myself, I am Krupa Vara Prasad. I have created some books for myself in Wikipedia for personal reading. Now, I would like to delete the books that I have created for myself.

Can anyone guide me to delete the books that I have created in Wikipedia.

Yours sincerely,

Krupa Vara Prasad 04:10, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

@Krupa Vara Prasad: I see that you worked this out for yourself - adding a {{db-u1}} code at the top of the saved page. One of the site admins will delete the page shortly. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:18, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Creating a subset of wikipedia as a digital copy for use offline in remote schools?

It would be very useful to be able to create a complete copy of wikipedia on disk for use in schools that do not have a good conenction to the internet - such as Cuba. Alternately, it would be good to be able to create a subset of the available information. ( Martin | talk • contribs 19:04, 25 May 2017 (UTC))

See Wikipedia:Database download for some options. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:22, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, Books are not a good way to go for this kind of use. I know one or two organizations which have installed instances of the Wikipedia software and regularly import the bits of the database they care about. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:19, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 August 2017

Please change "If you have hidden the book creator then see Help:Books/for experts#Hide and unhide book creator." to "At the moment we suggest you don't hide the Book Creator Interface because work is being done on making it easy to bring back for use again. And in the case that you have hidden it before reading this tutorial then see Help:Books/for experts#Hide and unhide book creator for help on making it visible again."

I think the opening sentence will make people aware of the issues of bringing it back before they act and having to go through hassles of bringing it back. HakimBalogun (talk) 16:18, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. jd22292 (Jalen D. Folf) (talk) 16:46, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Help subpage title

I have started a discussion at Help talk:Books/PediaPress PDF rendering#Article title, please stop by and give your views. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:30, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Embarrassment to the Wikipedia Community

Why has this revamp taken so long? The old system worked for most situations and its horrible that PDFs don't have formatting options. Bug that PDFs have 2 columns? Absolutely not, it is essentially nothing more than a print preview of the page. Disabling downloading a book as a PDF in the meantime? What is the point of disabling a working system that a few people have problems with while a "new book system is being completely rewritten"? Is that just a flat lie? Because as far as I'm concerned, it is against general system improvement protocol to hinder existing progress while no supplement is available in the meantime. This seems to be a bad mistake on behalf of administrator, and if I'm wrong about any of this please point me to the Wiki: page that explains what exactly is happening here. Sorry but, come on. Nuvigil (talk) 04:02, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

The old PDF renderer had become unsupportable and increasingly flaky. The developers of the new component said that they could not integrate it into Wikipedia without doing so on the live system. It is not realistic to have both systems running alongside, so the old one had to go. Such breaks in function do sometimes happen when a major rewrite takes place, the project manager must balance one issue against another. We users do get frustrated for a time but that can be the price of progress, The seasonal celebrations are probably slowing everything down too. Let us hope it is all worth the wait. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:11, 25 December 2017 (UTC)