Help:Books/Feedback/Archives/2009/April

personalized introduction?
Is there a way to include a personalized introduction? Something that is not an article, but a personal essay explaining why and how you created the book? Kingturtle (talk) 13:18, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe you could create such an article in you user space? Kaldari (talk) 16:55, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * You can add optional text on the front page (in the subtitle field). I don't know how many characters this supports, but it is at least a few thousand. Is that sufficient? --Robinson weijman (talk) 16:58, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes. What would the syntax look like? Kingturtle (talk) 18:04, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Not sure who you are replying to. If me, you can check it out yourself - just create a new book (I'm talking here about PDF format) and add test to the subtitle field.  BTW, if there is no limit to the amount of text in the subtitle field, that might create a new defect?  --Robinson weijman (talk) 20:23, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Are there any existing examples out there? Kingturtle (talk) 20:26, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Still not sure to whom you are speaking, but assuming me. Why don't you just create an example?  Takes about a minute and then you can see for yourself.  --Robinson weijman (talk) 20:52, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I added a small intro to mine that way, but the drawback is that it is in bold face. If you know how to make it unbold I would appreciate that. Alice (talk) 00:33, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

How to do introductions:
Please don't abuse the subtitle. You can create a separate page in user space or as a subpage of the stored book and add it as an introduction. The title of a page shown in the PDF can be different than the page name. Therefore the book needs to be saved and the resulting page be edited. See this for an example of a custom introduction. If this solution works it could be described ob the help pages. --he!ko
 * of course! that's sheer genius. good one! Kingturtle (talk) 20:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Using this approach though the text only shows if the reader clicks through. I wanted something that students couldn't avoid. I have already used text within the book file to create three sections; is there any reason not to use text for the introduction?
 * There seems to be some misconception. The wiki page of a stored book is not what a reader should look at, as it is just a vehicle to store the outline of the book. Your students should rather receive the PDF which can be generated using stored book pages and which will include the introduction (example)if it is part of the outline. --He!ko (talk) 19:23, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Why is it "abuse" of the subtitle? I appreciate it was not the reason for adding the subtitle, but really: what's the problem?  That is, what is the risk or what can go wrong?  Also, to prevent "abuse", I suggest you impose an upper limit on the number of characters, e.g. 200.  Otherwise it will be abused by someone - and you could get defects as a result.  --Robinson weijman (talk) 07:49, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Issues with saving a book
I'm working on a biochemistry book over several sessions, and the logic behind saving the book is not clear to me. There doesn't seem to be an autosave, or a "save current" button (that I've seen, at least) and if I use the save box off to the right near the bottom with the current title it asks if I want to over-write the old one, which is what I do. Is this the only way to save a work in progress? Could there be something that reflects the fact that an extensive book is likely to be worked on in segments? Thanks! If this is not clear I can try to explain better Alice (talk) 00:25, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
 * There are two kinds of books: 1) Transient books, stored in the session (which expires after 24h or so) and which can be edited using the "create a book" box. 2) Saved books (using ordinary wiki pages), that can be loaded and thereby again become transient books.
 * I am aware that this is somewhat confusing, but this is quite similar to files on your hard drive. The only difference is that, applications that store to files which they opened themselves don't ask whether you want overwrite the file, but simply do it. As this is a wiki and everything can be reverted, this check indeed could be omitted. --he!ko
 * So if someone didn't save a book that they were working on it would evaporate in 24h? That may explain why along the way a couple of times changes were lost. Thanks for the assurance that I'm not missing some clearly correct different way to do this. Alice (talk) 22:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Yep - the silent forgetting of books in progress is definitely something we should improve. IMO a book should never, ever be forgotten to the extent that we can prevent that from happening (because the user is logged in, or can still be identified with a cookie).--Eloquence* 02:08, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposal (book tool): Add new chapter at the end
"Create chapter" button in the book tool currently adds a new chapter at the beginning of the book. Almost always I need it at the end of the book, it would be nice if the tool does this automatically. Andreas Kaufmann (talk) 10:15, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I endorse this suggestion whole-heartedly!! Alice (talk) 15:35, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The problem with this approach and books with many articles would be that, if one adds a chapter nothing changes in the visible area of the browser. This may lead to some confusion. I'd prefer to be annoyed rather than being confused. --he!ko
 * Would be it possible to scroll automatically to the end of the book in this case? Another alternatives to consider: Add a checkbox "[x] Create chapter at the end" to the dialog where you enter chapter name. Then the user will know what happens. Andreas Kaufmann (talk) 20:19, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

There ought to be ways to handle this intelligently via JavaScript, e.g. by popping up a small message saying "Chapter XX has been added to the bottom" in the visible area when one adds a new chapter, or by adding an HTML anchor to the DOM and changing the location.--Eloquence* 02:06, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposal for new placement for the Book Tool
I have been using the book tool for a bit. I have noticed that it would be easier to use to tool if there was a "my books" link at the top of the page where the "my talk", "my preferences", and "my watchlist" links are. I hope this helps. Hda3ku (talk) 03:20, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I've noticed a bit of opposition to giving the book tool a too prominent place, at least on the Dutch wiki. I don't think there would be much support to creating an extra tab on top of the pages. I'm afraid the tool tends to be seen as an intrusion from outside - not by me as I'm an enthusiast, but by long-term editors. Either because they think it's commercial promotion, or it's not the "real Wikipedia thing". This type of implementation takes some time to be generally accepted, I presume. - Art Unbound (talk) 18:48, 21 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Presently, the "create a book" box comes above the links to articles in other languages, and I'd prefer that it not come before them. Coming after them, or being a tab, or on the line above the tabs as Hda3ku suggested, would make it easier to access the links to other languages. A "books" dropdown list (not a link) with "Add wiki page" and "Books help" on the list, placed on the line with "my talk" or on the line with the tabs, would take up less space on the screen than the present box. Fg2 (talk) 01:06, 22 March 2009 (UTC)


 * To me the books tools seem like a feature which will be very useful to some users and not at all useful to others (probably the majority). As such for most people the books links just take up screen space. One way around this would to code the book links as a Gadget which could be switched on or off from the your preferences. When switched on it could have "my books" link at the top.--Salix (talk): 20:50, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with Salix's idea it sounds like a good compromise. Hda3ku (talk) 14:05, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Server troubles have broken Books?
I have finished organizing a book on biochemistry but for the past several days I have been unable to load it for further editing or to compile it into a pdf for my students. Is there any idea of how soon the servers will be able to handle books again? Alice (talk) 01:47, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The markup was broken, which prevented the book from being loaded. I added a ticket to support broken markup more gracefully and fixed your book, which can now be loaded again. Hint: No markup and text on stored book pages other than those described on the help pages will have any effect on the generated PDFs. He!ko (talk) 11:06, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks very much. What was the error that prevented it from loading? Alice (talk) 15:44, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Problems with The Simpsons (season 20)
In the episode table of The Simpsons (season 20) there are following problems: --Morten (talk) 21:44, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) The Original airdate cell of "In the Name of the Grandfather" has some strange content.
 * 2) The cell "Upcomming episodes" has its own column instead of its own row.

No logo?
There's not much reference that the articles come from Wikipedia. Shouldn't there be a logo or something? F (talk) 06:32, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Book server failing to finish a book
Hi! I was trying the book feature for the first time. I made a larger-scale book, which I saved at User:UltimateSephiroth/Books/Video games. When I'm trying to get it as a PDF file, the process hangs up at 92% (Status: rendering (page: 287)) and, after a moment, fails to a render server error (An error occured on the render server: Collection/article could not be rendered). Is the size of the book a problem of does something else interfere with the process? --UltimateSephiroth (talk) 21:57, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I forgot to mention that I tried to make the PDF version twice already, so it doesn't seem like a random problem. --UltimateSephiroth (talk) 22:02, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * There was a bug in PDF rendering Software which caused the rendering to fail. I fixed that - the problem will be resolved with the next update. -- Volker.haas (talk) 15:45, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks for fixing the bug, whatever it was :) --UltimateSephiroth (talk) 22:48, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

OpenDoc failure
Attempting to create an OpenDocument version of User:Hlj/Books/Petersburg-Appomattox, I am getting a consistent failure:

Render server error

An error occured on the render server: traceback Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/mwlib-0.10.2-py2.5-linux-x86_64.egg/mwlib/apps.py", line 375, in render writer(env, output=tmpout, status_callback=status, **writer_options) File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/mwlib-0.10.2-py2.5-linux-x86_64.egg/mwlib/odfwriter.py", line 799, in writer w.writeBook(book, output=output) File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/mwlib-0.10.2-py2.5-linux-x86_64.egg/mwlib/odfwriter.py", line 175, in writeBook self.write(e, self.doc.text) File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/mwlib-0.10.2-py2.5-linux-x86_64.egg/mwlib/odfwriter.py", line 267, in write self.write(c,e) File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/mwlib-0.10.2-py2.5-linux-x86_64.egg/mwlib/odfwriter.py", line 267, in write self.write(c,e) File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/mwlib-0.10.2-py2.5-linux-x86_64.egg/mwlib/odfwriter.py", line 267, in write self.write(c,e) File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/mwlib-0.10.2-py2.5-linux-x86_64.egg/mwlib/odfwriter.py", line 247, in write e = m(obj) File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/mwlib-0.10.2-py2.5-linux-x86_64.egg/mwlib/odfwriter.py", line 729, in owriteImageLink innerframe.addElement(draw.Image(href=href)) File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/odf/draw.py", line 121, in Image return Element(qname = (DRAWNS,'image'), **args) File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/odf/element.py", line 147, in __init__ self.addAttribute(arg, args[arg]) File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/odf/element.py", line 205, in addAttribute self.addAttrNS(allowed_attrs[i][0], allowed_attrs[i][1], value) File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/odf/element.py", line 220, in addAttrNS self.attributes[prefix + ":" + localpart] = c.convert((namespace, localpart), value, self.qname) File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/odf/attrconverters.py", line 1439, in convert return conversion(attribute, value, element) File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/odf/attrconverters.py", line 27, in cnv_anyURI return unicode(arg) UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe2 in position 33: ordinal not in range(128)

Hal Jespersen (talk) 00:34, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Place a hairline border around images
What do you think of placing a hairline border around all images, such as the flags of Indonesia and Japan on page 85 of the sample book? Without sufficient context or foreknowledge, Japan's flag for example appears to be a list bullet rather than a flag. —Christian Campbell 04:07, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * This would be a nice option I think. Kaldari (talk) 19:48, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

=Moved from Help talk:Books/for experts=

Even more help for experts needed?
I noticed over a month ago that the "PDF version" link handles images in a bizarre way. Hoping to create a guide on maximising image quality in rendered books, I tried to predict what one will get on any given input but have failed.

For example User:84user/Books/Test renders the two images at different scales and yet the original image files are both 400 pixels wide. So, in the html the first two images have the same width, but in the PDF the first is rendered small while the second renders almost twice as wide.

I know there are other unresolved image problems with Books (which appear to be marked as low-priority enhancement requests), so I guess what I'm asking for is a set of work-arounds or rules that an editor like myself could use. Will one image per subpage work for example? Is there a clever template? Is there a specification or flowchart describing what the renderer actually does when it sees any given image file? 84user (talk) 16:13, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Some PDF test results; tall-aspect images get rendered narrow? Results using PDF version on User:84user/Books/Test Images 1 (with full page width as 28.2 cm): 84user (talk) 17:01, 21 April 2009 (UTC)