[Wikimedia-l] Re: The Book Creator

[Camelia Boban]

Hi, super interested in this topic, for WikiDonne's educational program.
We just finished the 2024 course, we have 31 women biographies in *Profili
di donne emiliano-romagnole*[1] written by students*. W*e wanted to create
a first version of the ebook to be presented in front of school principals,
other students and the partners involved, in May.

At the end I download page by page as PDF and united them in an unique
file. Needless to say, the formatting is horrible. The last year, for our 3
ebooks we spent more than a week to convert the three pdf in odt, format
them and save again as pdf, just to have decent ebooks[2].
Solving the book creation tool inside Italian Wikibooks too would be very
helpful.

Camelia



[1] https://it.wikibooks.org/wiki/Profili_di_donne_emiliano-romagnole
[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiDonne_eBook

On Thu, Apr 18, 2024, 20:45 Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga 
wrote:

> That's better than nothing, but still not the best solution. The book
> creator had options to download in odt format, so anyone downloading it
> could edit the content. That's what teachers actually need, if we want to
> be the central infrastructure of free knowledge.
>
> Thanks
>
> Galder
> --
> *From:* Felipe Schenone 
> *Sent:* Thursday, April 18, 2024 5:20 PM
> *To:* Wikimedia Mailing List 
> *Cc:* Karl Fogel 
> *Subject:* [Wikimedia-l] Re: The Book Creator
>
> Hi again, Galder!
> I just "globalized" the template gadget for downloading PDFs, so now it
> can be easily installed in the Basque Wikipedia if you feel like it.
> See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Template:Download_PDF for the
> documentation.
> Cheers!
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: The Book Creator

[Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga]

That's better than nothing, but still not the best solution. The book creator 
had options to download in odt format, so anyone downloading it could edit the 
content. That's what teachers actually need, if we want to be the central 
infrastructure of free knowledge.

Thanks

Galder

From: Felipe Schenone 
Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2024 5:20 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
Cc: Karl Fogel 
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: The Book Creator

Hi again, Galder!
I just "globalized" the template gadget for downloading PDFs, so now it can be 
easily installed in the Basque Wikipedia if you feel like it.
See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Template:Download_PDF for the documentation.
Cheers!
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: The Book Creator

[Felipe Schenone]

Hi again, Galder!
I just "globalized" the template gadget for downloading PDFs, so now it can
be easily installed in the Basque Wikipedia if you feel like it.
See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Template:Download_PDF for the
documentation.
Cheers!
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: The Book Creator

[Samuel Klein]

This is so cool Felipe!  Agreed there's a whole lot that can be done via
JS.
I know a few other wiki-maintainers who have used or continue to be
interested in such tools; copying one :)

SJ

On Sun, Jan 7, 2024 at 8:57 AM Felipe Schenone  wrote:

> Hi! Today I coded a simple template that is able to generate something
> like a book and prompt the user to print or download it.
> See https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Template:Download_PDF for usage and
> https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/MediaWiki:TemplateScript-DownloadPDF.js
> for the code.
> As you can see, I put it on the English Wikiversity rather than the Basque
> Wikipedia. This is because template scripts
>  are not yet enabled on
> the Basque Wikipedia.
> If you see potential in this approach, you may want to write to your
> community and have template scripts enabled there. Then you can copy-paste
> the template and code and improve upon it.
> I too miss the Collection extension, but it's been too long to hope for a
> fix. Perhaps this approach holds more water, at least in the short/mid
> term. There's quite a lot that can be done via JavaScript like this.
> Cheers!
>
> On Wed, Dec 27, 2023 at 4:01 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <
> galder...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>> Some years ago, when we started the Education Program at the Basque
>> Wikipedia, we used a lot the Book Creator (or Collections) extension. It
>> allowed to bind some articles and download them in PDF or DOC/ODT formats
>> for further editing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Book). This
>> was a great feature, as it allowed us to send the teachers and students a
>> collection of articles they had created. The teacher could create free
>> learning materials from the articles created by their students, and
>> download them in DOC/ODT format allowed to edit them, rearrange and add
>> other materials. Some teachers said us that they have created learning
>> materials using Wikipedia articles created by their students.
>>
>> Anyway, in 2017 the Wikimedia Foundation decided to break the book
>> creator, because there were some errors in the PDF creator. So they
>> disabled the book creator and added a note saying that the system is
>> "Undergoing changes". The message is still visible, but no changes are
>> being done. (You can follow the last messages of redesigning the book
>> creator here:https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T175681).
>>
>> I know that this is not the most important feature that is broken. There
>> are many other broken things. But creating materials for students, and
>> being able to read them offline or edited by teachers is a feature that
>> aligns with our mission and vision. As always happens, no one is
>> accountable for having something broke for six years. And it doesn't seem
>> that this feature will return in the future. At least, the PediaPress link
>> is still working, but there you can't edit your book, only pay for have it
>> printed.
>>
>> I think no one knows what will happen with this feature. I write this
>> message simply to say that I miss it a lot.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Galder Gonzalez
>> ___
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>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
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>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
>>
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-- 
Samuel Klein  @metasj   w:user:sj  +1 617 529 4266
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: The Book Creator

[Felipe Schenone]

Hi! Today I coded a simple template that is able to generate something like
a book and prompt the user to print or download it.
See https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Template:Download_PDF for usage and
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/MediaWiki:TemplateScript-DownloadPDF.js for
the code.
As you can see, I put it on the English Wikiversity rather than the Basque
Wikipedia. This is because template scripts
 are not yet enabled on the
Basque Wikipedia.
If you see potential in this approach, you may want to write to your
community and have template scripts enabled there. Then you can copy-paste
the template and code and improve upon it.
I too miss the Collection extension, but it's been too long to hope for a
fix. Perhaps this approach holds more water, at least in the short/mid
term. There's quite a lot that can be done via JavaScript like this.
Cheers!

On Wed, Dec 27, 2023 at 4:01 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <
galder...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Dear all,
> Some years ago, when we started the Education Program at the Basque
> Wikipedia, we used a lot the Book Creator (or Collections) extension. It
> allowed to bind some articles and download them in PDF or DOC/ODT formats
> for further editing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Book). This
> was a great feature, as it allowed us to send the teachers and students a
> collection of articles they had created. The teacher could create free
> learning materials from the articles created by their students, and
> download them in DOC/ODT format allowed to edit them, rearrange and add
> other materials. Some teachers said us that they have created learning
> materials using Wikipedia articles created by their students.
>
> Anyway, in 2017 the Wikimedia Foundation decided to break the book
> creator, because there were some errors in the PDF creator. So they
> disabled the book creator and added a note saying that the system is
> "Undergoing changes". The message is still visible, but no changes are
> being done. (You can follow the last messages of redesigning the book
> creator here:https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T175681).
>
> I know that this is not the most important feature that is broken. There
> are many other broken things. But creating materials for students, and
> being able to read them offline or edited by teachers is a feature that
> aligns with our mission and vision. As always happens, no one is
> accountable for having something broke for six years. And it doesn't seem
> that this feature will return in the future. At least, the PediaPress link
> is still working, but there you can't edit your book, only pay for have it
> printed.
>
> I think no one knows what will happen with this feature. I write this
> message simply to say that I miss it a lot.
>
> Thanks
>
> Galder Gonzalez
> ___
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> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
>
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