Suggestions for best methods for converting sites or portions thereof to PDF? - MediaWiki-l

John Moorhouse

30 May 30 May

6:29 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] Suggestions for best methods for converting sites or portions thereof to PDF?

We are successfully using (MW 1.9.3) http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Pdf_Export To do this, only issues we have had so far is that it appears in the toolbox which mean users have to be logged in to use it, I've also had to work with some of the other extensions we use that add usefuly navigation information and edit one of the CSS files to add further div exclusions so that they don't appear in the printed output Ta John Ken McDonald wrote:

...

We'd like to convert some (eventually all) of our site to printable PDF (and to be able to autogenerate such in the future.) It's easy enough to batch-download html, and to organize either via internal tags or an external TOC (in conjunction with scripts). Is there a better way to do it directly? And if not, any recommendations for good HTML->PDF converters, preferably ones that we could do pagination in, and preferably convert internal links into page references? Thanks, Ken _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

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John Moorhouse

7:16 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] Suggestions for best methods for converting sites or portions thereof to PDF?

To risk being misunderstood but size doesn't seem to matter we have documents being built up to around 120 A4 pages at the moment, we have activated 'sub pages' within the main namespace and have developed system that takes an index page eg. named test, which lists subpages such as *[[/part1/]] *[[/part2/]] *[[/part3/]] *[[/part4/]] that converts this to *[[test/part1|part1]] *[[test/part2|part2]] *[[test/part3|part3]] *[[test/part4|part4]] ---- [[all:test|See all sections on one page]] and also gives us this wiki text that then bulds the whole lot onto one page ====[[test/part1|part1]]==== {{:test/part1}} ====[[test/part2|part2]]==== {{:test/part2}} ====[[test/part3|part3]]==== {{:test/part3}} ====[[test/part3|part3]]==== {{:test/part3}} ---- *[[test|return to :- Test]] We then go on building up till we have all the section / sub sections of the document on one page, we have some documents when the subpage nesting is down to 5 levels, this is the maximum that you can use and still get a usable TOC created. Ta John Ken McDonald wrote:

...

Thanks for the feedback. We'll build a somewhat more complex system (we want to automatically generate large documents, and then make them available for our users), but one important fact from this is that HTMLDOC works well.) Should be interesting. Ken John Moorhouse wrote:

We are successfully using (MW 1.9.3) http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Pdf_Export To do this, only issues we have had so far is that it appears in the toolbox which mean users have to be logged in to use it, I've also had to work with some of the other extensions we use that add usefuly navigation information and edit one of the CSS files to add further div exclusions so that they don't appear in the printed output Ta John Ken McDonald wrote:

We'd like to convert some (eventually all) of our site to printable PDF (and to be able to autogenerate such in the future.) It's easy enough to batch-download html, and to organize either via internal tags or an external TOC (in conjunction with scripts). Is there a better way to do it directly? And if not, any recommendations for good HTML->PDF converters, preferably ones that we could do pagination in, and preferably convert internal links into page references? Thanks, Ken _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

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John Moorhouse

1 Jun 1 Jun

7:05 a.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] Suggestions for best methods for converting sites or portions thereof to PDF?

Ken McDonald wrote:

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That's impressive. Given that HTMLDOC doesn't support styles, I'm assuming that everything (in particular, floating elements) gets sorta "flattened out", and style-based font and other settings are lost? But things like lists still come through (mostly) good-looking?

Bascically the PDF documents look exactly like the 'printable' version selectedable from the wiki toolbox, I have just thought that the pages are just text / tables we don't currently have any diagrams or images on the site, so I don't know how it would handle those, I'll have a go when I'm back in the office (this is a intranet only system at the moment) Ta John

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Thanks once more, Ken John Moorhouse wrote:

To risk being misunderstood but size doesn't seem to matter we have documents being built up to around 120 A4 pages at the moment, we have activated 'sub pages' within the main namespace and have developed system that takes an index page eg. named test, which lists subpages such as *[[/part1/]] *[[/part2/]] *[[/part3/]] *[[/part4/]] that converts this to *[[test/part1|part1]] *[[test/part2|part2]] *[[test/part3|part3]] *[[test/part4|part4]] ---- [[all:test|See all sections on one page]] and also gives us this wiki text that then bulds the whole lot onto one page ====[[test/part1|part1]]==== {{:test/part1}} ====[[test/part2|part2]]==== {{:test/part2}} ====[[test/part3|part3]]==== {{:test/part3}} ====[[test/part3|part3]]==== {{:test/part3}} ---- *[[test|return to :- Test]] We then go on building up till we have all the section / sub sections of the document on one page, we have some documents when the subpage nesting is down to 5 levels, this is the maximum that you can use and still get a usable TOC created. Ta John Ken McDonald wrote:

Thanks for the feedback. We'll build a somewhat more complex system (we want to automatically generate large documents, and then make them available for our users), but one important fact from this is that HTMLDOC works well.) Should be interesting. Ken John Moorhouse wrote:

We are successfully using (MW 1.9.3) http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Pdf_Export To do this, only issues we have had so far is that it appears in the toolbox which mean users have to be logged in to use it, I've also had to work with some of the other extensions we use that add usefuly navigation information and edit one of the CSS files to add further div exclusions so that they don't appear in the printed output Ta John Ken McDonald wrote: > We'd like to convert some (eventually all) of our site to printable PDF > (and to be able to autogenerate such in the future.) It's easy enough to > batch-download html, and to organize either via internal tags or an > external TOC (in conjunction with scripts). Is there a better way to do > it directly? And if not, any recommendations for good HTML->PDF > converters, preferably ones that we could do pagination in, and > preferably convert internal links into page references? > > Thanks, > Ken > > _______________________________________________ > MediaWiki-l mailing list > MediaWiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l > > > > > _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

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Ken McDonald

31 May 31 May

9:28 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] Suggestions for best methods for converting sites or portions thereof to PDF?

Do you have any documents that are public and that I could download to see what the output looks like? Thanks, Ken John Moorhouse wrote:

...

To risk being misunderstood but size doesn't seem to matter we have documents being built up to around 120 A4 pages at the moment, we have activated 'sub pages' within the main namespace and have developed system that takes an index page eg. named test, which lists subpages such as *[[/part1/]] *[[/part2/]] *[[/part3/]] *[[/part4/]] that converts this to *[[test/part1|part1]] *[[test/part2|part2]] *[[test/part3|part3]] *[[test/part4|part4]] ---- [[all:test|See all sections on one page]] and also gives us this wiki text that then bulds the whole lot onto one page ====[[test/part1|part1]]==== {{:test/part1}} ====[[test/part2|part2]]==== {{:test/part2}} ====[[test/part3|part3]]==== {{:test/part3}} ====[[test/part3|part3]]==== {{:test/part3}} ---- *[[test|return to :- Test]] We then go on building up till we have all the section / sub sections of the document on one page, we have some documents when the subpage nesting is down to 5 levels, this is the maximum that you can use and still get a usable TOC created. Ta John Ken McDonald wrote:

Thanks for the feedback. We'll build a somewhat more complex system (we want to automatically generate large documents, and then make them available for our users), but one important fact from this is that HTMLDOC works well.) Should be interesting. Ken John Moorhouse wrote:

We are successfully using (MW 1.9.3) http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Pdf_Export To do this, only issues we have had so far is that it appears in the toolbox which mean users have to be logged in to use it, I've also had to work with some of the other extensions we use that add usefuly navigation information and edit one of the CSS files to add further div exclusions so that they don't appear in the printed output Ta John Ken McDonald wrote:

We'd like to convert some (eventually all) of our site to printable PDF (and to be able to autogenerate such in the future.) It's easy enough to batch-download html, and to organize either via internal tags or an external TOC (in conjunction with scripts). Is there a better way to do it directly? And if not, any recommendations for good HTML->PDF converters, preferably ones that we could do pagination in, and preferably convert internal links into page references? Thanks, Ken _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

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