Help:Books/Feedback/Archives/2013/November

Render server error
Whenever I export this book with 300+ articles to PDF, around 70-80% it always says "Render server error". Why is that like that? The limitation is 500 articles but it's only 300+. Please fix as soon as possible, thanks! Here's the link of the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Thatpopularguy123/Books/Countries Thatpopularguy123 (talk) 15:49, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

You have another limitation 2000 max pages and 400 mb. You can put only 20-30 countries /book. --84.123.36.170 (talk) 16:11, 22 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Muchas gracias!Thatpopularguy123 (talk) 04:12, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I keep getting this error message: An error occurred on the render server: error executing command 'zip_post': 

Return to Main Page.; whenever I try to preview any of my books on Pedia Press. Mind you it doesn't matter which of the 20 or so books I try to preview, how many pages or articles are in the books and many of them have been successfully accessed and printed previously. Very perplexing problem. Help!! I have no idea how to fix this and have not been able to find any info. on Wikipedia that is helpful.

Kkhemet (talk) 07:28, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Article with complex markup gives pdf mess
I realize that this article ( -- specific revision linked here for definiteness, though this has been a problem for years) is highly marked up and may be something of a stress test for pdf conversion. But other article must be I hope that sooner or later the very serious problems in the conversion machinery can be addressed. Among these are (very partial list): Will this stuff ever be fixed? I notice that today's FA renders into pdf with all its refs missing. Really, the feature should just be disabled until it is somewhere close to functional. EEng (talk) 19:01, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Markup debris in image captions
 * The string < /ref > scattered throughout text
 * Superscript ref callouts missing or incomplete
 * Ref groups (Arabic vs upper-alpha etc.) apparently mixed together into one long list of mis-numbered notes
 * Some notes run into article text
 * Honestly, so many bizarre bugs it boggles the mind
 * EEng (talk) 03:29, 31 October 2013 (UTC)


 * that page is a trainwreck for formatting and such. It is beyond a "stress test" for it breaks even my browser. There are so many issues with that page that it needs to be completely rewritten and addressed to make it accessible in the first place - much less try and use it in a book. I'll give it a shot and see what happens. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:07, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * As mentioned in my original post above, the pdf converter has made a mess of this page for many years, and it's my observation that it does the same to many other pages, particularly with regard to the citations. Go to User:EEng/sandbox/Gage2012July30_0144 which has a version from more than a year ago (containing none of the unusual markup you complain about) and look at the Notes and References sections; then do a pdf export and compare those sections.


 * As for breaking your browser, I have tested in IE, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari and see no problems. What browser are you using? I don't think I've ever done a pdf export of any but a very simply page that there wasn't something obviously wrong, so blaming the page instead of the converter is a mistake.
 * You now seem to be in the process of removing all markup you don't understand. You've removed the figure designations, changed he section head sizes and image sizes, changed the lettered Note designations e.g. [A] to e.g. [note 1], and seem to be converting the internal citation syntax from the one in use to one with which, I assume you're more familiar. And it looks like you plan to put the sources list in random order instead of the current sectioned, alphabetized order. I appreciate any and all help, but please take the time to understand the markup before assuming it's all garbage. It's not, it's all there for a purpose, and as far as I know it's all legal.
 * You've also begun to make content changes that are flatly incorrect, such as changing place-of-death from "in or near San Francisco" to just plain "San Francisco", and describing one of the portraits as a "daguerreotype of a portrait", which makes no sense.
 * Do you think it's appropriate to make such sweeping changes without at least inquiring as to why the page is the way it is? Certainly the page's markup is far more complex than that of most pages, but it's that way in order to present the material most effectively. Instead of just ripping out what you don't understand, wouldn't it be more appropriate to find cleaner ways to get the same effect (by creating templates and so on), or to add clarifying notes to explain how things work?  EEng (talk) 07:15, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Huh? I fixed that already. Though the markup is indeed extremely over complicated, I'd like you to point me to a more complex markup case. Look. I can flip it back like a switch. I got to take a break for awhile. I'll ask Mag to take a look at it. It's amazingly inefficient and needlessly complex... but he knows this better than I. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 08:24, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Huh? As is clear from this disucssion you don't know what you're talking about. The markup is legal and the fault is with the pdf renderer. EEng (talk) 10:50, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

again. EEng (talk) 07:58, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

References not included in PDF
I enjoy having the references on hand and each time I go to save an article as a PDF it only includes a couple references out of many. Oddly, they're not always the same references each time either. Is this by design & if so is there a way to have the full ref list included? Coinmanj (talk) 07:26, 20 June 2013 (UTC)


 * In my case, I've noticed that the PDF generator CREATES references from inline external HTTP links, but ignores references to citations. This is pretty bad, since a technical article has many citations. An example is the Mabel Hokin biography: the PDF only includes an external HTTP URL and a WikiMedia image URL. The many citations vanish, both from the reference list and the article itself. They are present in the "printable version" of course. Sammyjava (talk) 22:33, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Multiple citations in the ref name style (<"ref name="X"/">) simply do no longer appear in pdfs recently, while they used to work perfectly before. Can something be done about this, as most articles include such multiple references, especially the more advanced ones, like FAs and GAs. Buchraeumer (talk) 13:18, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * This is just more of the problems I mention in the section just above. The pdf renderer as it stands is a joke. EEng (talk) 17:31, 22 November 2013 (UTC)