Help:Books/Feedback/Archives/2013/May

Observation: no obvious button "New Feedback"
I cannot locate (i.e., spot, find, read, search) something that is unambiguously the button "New Feedback" which would permit me to enter my feedback... obviously I did find it... but it took time clicking links, hovering over icons, as well trial-n-error

request: at top of page placement of button "New Feedback"

request: when providing a form for new feedback, auto-populate the stuff implied by "Sign your posts on talk pages"

THX Howard nyc (talk) 18:50, 28 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I have streamlined the talk pages so that everything goes either to this page or to Help talk:Books.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  22:26, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Request: more choices for e-book formatting
Everybody has their personal preference and mine happens to be EPUB; it is not (obviously) available; since rendering is performed dynamically prior to permitting downloading (e.g., “Please wait while the document is being generated Progress: 13.76%”), it seems the appropriate point to allow the customer (aka: user, consumer) to choose their preferred format;

THX

Howard nyc (talk) 19:52, 28 April 2013 (UTC)


 * EPUB is actually a supported format on some projects, like Wikivoyage, but is turned off on other projects. I will try to find out why that is for you.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  22:24, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Request: add missing attribute “e-book format preference” to Wikipedia ID profile attributes
Request: add missing attribute “e-book format preference” to Wikipedia ID profile attributes

Context = whenever there is an e-book requested, rendering is performed dynamically prior to permitting downloading;

Summary = Everybody has their personal preference and mine happens to be EPUB; it is not (obviously) available;

Attribute label = “e-book format preference”

Attribute value = finite range of values, each of which is an established standard, in set {LIT, MS-DOC, TXT, EPUB, PDF, MOBI}

Attribute background-slash-help = link into article providing background useful for understanding the choices provided, along with technical bafflegab oriented upon which platforms support reading which formats

THX

Howard nyc (talk) 19:55, 28 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I will try to find out more information about how the list of formats was selected and whether or not additional formats could be added.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  22:29, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Request: checkbox to alert me when a ‘published’ e-book has been updated
Request: checkbox to alert me when a ‘published’ e-book has been updated

Context = whenever there is an e-book which somebody has assembled (never mind the source, nor the content) it is likely there will be revisions made; it could be a significant change such as addition of new content, or, perhaps chaining of auto-notifications due to changes within a Wikipedia article incorporated in the e-book, or, an article referenced, etc.;

THX

Howard nyc (talk) 19:56, 28 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Since you have a registered account, the easiest thing to do would be to add all of the pages in your published e-book to your watchlist (see Help:Watching pages for more information on that). Additionally, if a collection of articles is saved using the saved book template (for example Book:Miami) you will be able to view all of the changes to those articles by clicking the [ Recent Changes ] link at the bottom right hand corner of the template. That would bring you to a list of recent changes for those pages like this.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  22:35, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Problems with downloading my book
Hi, At first things were going very well. I made a book containing several articles and downloaded with success. Then I added more articles to it as well as chapters, to make the content more comprehensive. But .... I am not able to download this upgraded version of my book. After rendering is complete and I start the download process (as a PDF) I get the message that there is no file. When I look at my book, the index is still there, but what happened with the pages connected to it? Can any body help me. Somewhere during working on this book I switched from working on a tab to a laptop, as the latter is easier working for this task. Don't know if it has anything to do with it, but I rather mention it. My book is named Portugal. Any help is welcome. Miss Lizzy (talk) 15:22, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I tried running your book but it failed for me as well. My first guess is that you made the book too big and somewhere along the line some part of the software got overloaded and petered out. Try breaking it into three books. If you're making a PDF you can always combine them later if you have access to Adobe Acrobat, and if you're making a printed book, they only go up to 800 pages before splitting anyways.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  16:35, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

SVG cover image in PDF output
I just modified someone's book (User:Unjedai/Books/GMS) by changing cover-image from a PNG to an SVG version, however the PDF output has an empty cover image. Is this expected? Like equations, should this SVG image simply be rasterised at a reasonable resolution? + m t  09:41, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, the PDF output isn't showing any SVGs. Not only is the one from the cover missing, but there is one from ESRI grid that is also missing. I have let PediaPress know.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  15:30, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I suspected this. Thanks for passing the message. + m t  23:00, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I spoke to PediaPress about the issue, and they are going to make sure it is fixed as soon as possible. SVGs were supported in the past, so it's likely that this broke very recently, else someone else would have pointed it out earlier.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  22:13, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
 * SVG rendering has been fixed.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  17:18, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your efforts! The SVG content within the book is fixed (e.g. File:ASCII_grid_example.svg); however, the SVG cover is still broken. + m t  23:35, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The PediaPress software, best I can tell, only allows people to select as a cover image freely licensed images that appear within the articles in the book. The image File:Groundwater_flow.svg is not used in any of the articles contained in the book, and therefore isn't available for selection. The cover-image field in Saved book does not, at this time, get transferred over with the articles when you export to PediaPress, and never appears in the PDF exports, regardless of what type of file the image is.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  00:43, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, I now see here that cover-image "is only used to generate a preview of the cover", which is why it isn't in the PDF output. + m t  05:54, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Proposal/Bug - Support for rendering Metabolic Pathway Maps (WikiPathways) - ex: Citric Acid Cycle
I made a book a while ago about various metabolic pathways, and noticed that things included from the WikiPathways project aren't rendered. An example of this is the Citric_acid_cycle (Citric_acid_cycle for the pathway page). Is there a "API" of sorts for how to render different kinds of things for the E-Pub/PDF/etc render-er?

However, I have no idea how this would really be done except for just rendering the "base image" that's shown on the Wikipedia page

A couple suggestions I can think of are:

1. Possibly rendering some of the names in the pathway as numbers instead - for text that otherwise would be too small or too close together.

2. Maybe rendering the pathway "in pieces" - such as the "upper/lower-left/right" quadrants of the Citric Acid Cycle map separately. Although how to figure out where the best points to "split" the diagram (and what order to put them on the page) could be tricky unless there were such information included in the description.

Jimw338 (talk) 21:35, 9 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I spoke with PediaPress about this issue. I may have a solution in the near future but I cannot commit to anything right now.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  22:22, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Book Output
I'm trying to render a book with 40 articles inside.. but when the book is finished and I am checking, there are always 2 or 3 articles missing, and there is no way predicting what the missing articles would be, that is they are missing in a random fashion, but sometimes it works fine, and it has no connection with the type of the article. Thank you.--Sgccgs (talk) 19:13, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

No more missing articles, thank you!--Sgccgs (talk) 21:37, 25 May 2013 (UTC)