And if no particular version needs to be stabilized, we likely don't need to have one at all. I really envision only stabilizing a particular version for the use of particular classes, and allowing things to be dynamic otherwise.
Absolutely! This is the '''only''' reason I bothered to make a PDF of [[First Aid]] - because I was going to be teaching a class, and I wanted to see how the book fared. In the end the class was cancelled, but the point remains.
I don't think people should be overly concerned with "book authors who are trying to be overly creative with their formatting, and are not conscious of the fact that things don't render the same on different display media" though. If formatting doesn't render well, then that book will just have bad PDFs. (For that reason we may want to say "this page is hopeless with respect to the automatic PDFs, so don't give it the PDF tab" on a per-page basis. Not sure how that might work though.)
I love this idea! Tabs at the top of the page for "Printable Version", "PDF version", "Stable Version" (especially once the FlaggedRevs extension is activated) would be much better then the myriad of templates we try to use for the purpose now.
This is actually something I hadn't thought of before. I don't know how server-intensive the PDF tool is (and that should be checked by someone who the answers will make sense for) but if it'd work, a PDF tab at the top could be awesome. For pages that have a cached PDF version (ie from the toolserver), that would get served. For pages that don't, one could perhaps get automatically made and cached (ie just link to the toolserver). Then we need to have some rule for when the PDFs expire. This would become much easier once FlaggedRevs is in place - whenever a page is reviewed, then a PDF is automatically generated and cached (and has the same lifespan as that top reviewed revision. Once the page gets reviewed again, the PDF is replaced. Being that I'm not a programmer, this may or may not work exactly as described.
-Mike
-----Original Message----- From: textbook-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:textbook-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Whitworth Sent: November 25, 2007 11:06 AM To: Wikimedia textbook discussion Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] The PDF generator on the toolserver hasimplications for quality control on a per-chapter basis
Or to completely ignore the problems of trying to format HTML into something that can be rendered into a PDF version of the book.
I think that a lot of the problems involved in this process stem from book authors who are trying to be overly creative with their formatting, and are not conscious of the fact that things don't render the same on different display media. I think there are plenty of ways to make books that will render just as well on screen, in print, or in a PDF file.
As far as quality control is concerned, I'd love to see something akin to a "published page" tab and "revised" or "draft" page that could be edited, with some sort of admin-type tool that could be used to select a specific version of the page edits to be noted as the "published page" that could be used by casual readers to the wiki.
I love this idea! Tabs at the top of the page for "Printable Version", "PDF version", "Stable Version" (especially once the FlaggedRevs extension is activated) would be much better then the myriad of templates we try to use for the purpose now. I believe that there are many user-interface changes and enhancements that Wikibooks needs, so many that perhaps we would do well to build our own skin from the ground up. I perhaps would like to put this off until after we have a new logo, but some things like adding new tabs could be done immediately.
The decision for what page would actually be selected is something to be decided by the participants of that page.
And if no particular version needs to be stabilized, we likely don't need to have one at all. I really envision only stabilizing a particular version for the use of particular classes, and allowing things to be dynamic otherwise.
--Andrew Whitworth
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