Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2015 March 8

= March 8 =

Any way to tweak the automatically generated PDF books from Wikibooks?
Is there a way to customize or tweak the automatically generated PDF files in Wikibooks? There are a few formatting preferences that I want to control--page size, font, margins, and column width--common formatting variables. There are also a few things that are kind of broken with the generated PDF files. Take the PDF version of this book chapter for example. Wide pictures are blindly shrunk to fit column width, making some of them unreadable when printed. A few pictures also render as blank space in the PDF file.

Is the Wikibooks program for generating PDF files available as a standalone app that a user can customize & run? Alternatively, is there an easy way to start with an HTML+CSS version and make it print nice like a normal printed textbook?

Thanks. --173.49.18.106 (talk) 16:08, 8 March 2015 (UTC)


 * If it displays properly but doesn't print right, you could try doing screen grabs and printing those. It's a lot of work, but you should be able to print what you see that way. StuRat (talk) 08:22, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

programing in computer
a company has determined that its annual profits is typically 23 percent of sales. write a program that asks the user to enter the projected amount of total sales ,and then displays the profit that will be made from that amount.it must be written in python Ntokzen (talk) 16:46, 8 March 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ntokzen (talk • contribs) 16:41, 8 March 2015 (UTC)


 * We aren't going to do your homework for you. And you haven't even specified what language you want your program written in. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:44, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I suggest you go and find out what system you're supposed to be learning to program, and what language you're supposed to be programming it in, and learn how to program that system in that language. We can't do your homework for you, and we especially can't learn to program for you. AlexTiefling (talk) 16:45, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
 * http://www.learnpython.org/ &#8213; Mandruss  &#9742;  16:50, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Question 1: Sales Prediction A company has determined that its annual profit is typically 23 percent of total sales. Write a program that asks the user to enter the projected amount of total sales, and then displays the profit that will be made from that amount. in python language Hint: “Use the value 0.23 to represent 23 percent.”Ntokzen (talk) 16:50, 8 March 2015 (UTC)


 * No. We still aren't going to do your homework for you. If you want to learn programming, you will have to do it for yourself. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:53, 8 March 2015 (UTC)


 * If we do the homework for you then we will learn how to program in Python. Unfortunately the purpose of YOUR HOMEWORK is for you to learn how to program in Python. And the only way for you to learn how to program in Python is for you to program in Python yourself. For the reason, we strongly urge you to do your own homework. 175.45.116.65 (talk) 00:14, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
 * If there is some SPECIFIC problem you are having with this, then we might be able to help, but overall this is a VERY basic problem to solve in programming, after "Hello World". Take one input, apply one operation and spit out one output, there really should be no reason you can't work out how to do this. I hate to break it to you but if you can't work this out, you're probably studying the wrong subject.  Vespine (talk) 00:58, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I implore you to deeply consider why you are doing this.Fractal618 (talk) 17:36, 10 March 2015 (UTC)


 * After multiple editors have advised the OP that we are not going to do their homework for them, in keeping with the instructions at the top of this page, what is the rationale for doing exactly that? &#8213; Mandruss  &#9742;  17:43, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Web scripts and browsers
Sometimes I'll see people talking about editing scripts that are browser-specific (example; see the middle of the final paragraph), and I don't understand why a script would work in one browser but not another. Are these scripts basically keyboard and mouse macros, which work only in one browser because different browsers use different hotkeys? Or is there typically a different/more complex reason? Nyttend (talk) 17:57, 8 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Ideally all browsers would support the same (recent) versions of the HTML, JavaScript, and CSS standards (and HTTP, and SSL, and more and more), and have no bugs. But they all have bugs (all different ones), all (especially the older ones) support a patchwork subset of the standards, and in some cases they interpret subtleties of the specifications differently. Things are much better now than they were a few years ago, particularly because serious effort has been put into IE, but its still not safe to assume that stuff that works in one current browser will definitely work in another. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 18:07, 8 March 2015 (UTC)


 * One of the biggest issues is with new features. HTML, CSS, and JS are constantly evolving. As an example, the final spec of HTML5 wasn't finalized until late last year. But the first public working draft was released in 2008 and browser vendors have been adding features from it sporadically over the past several years and no browser has 100% support for everything in it yet. http://caniuse.com/ is useful in determining how widespread support is for particular features. The problems are usually with IE, but not always. I can recall at least one instance of having to put a hack in place because of a difference between Safari and everything else. But the biggest issue with IE (IMO) is in updating it. Browsers like FF and Chrome have built-in updaters, so generally within a year or so of a new release, almost no one is using the old version and there's generally no excuse not to update it. But MS tends to drop support for old versions of Windows in new versions of IE. So there's still a ton of people using IE8 because that's the last version that works on XP. And IE9 is the last version supported on Vista. Mr.Z-man 03:05, 9 March 2015 (UTC)