Anne Gomez, 11/10/2017 02:12:
In case you're interested, the Foundation will be working to replace OCG over the coming months. I wanted to make sure you're aware in case you rely on any of this infrastructure and/or have plans for further development dependent on it.
What this means in the short term is that PDF book rendering (through Book Creator) will be shut off for a few months at least while a suitable replacement is researched, tested, and built.
Here's the full write up: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/PDF_Functionality
Let me know if you have any questions or if this has major impact to your work.
It does, of course. Wikisource and Wikibooks users sorely need to print books for offline reading, it's something we keep hearing from anybody in "real life".
Removing basic functionality and downgrading existing features for no gain is an excellent long-run method to kill projects like Wikibooks, Wikisource and Wikiversity whose potential users (such as teachers and other OER folks) may prefer alternative platforms which show more care.
Nemo
I still have trouble understanding what's the point of making functionality worse for a majority of users, or indeed all of them.
I've just tried exporting single pages with the "download PDF" link (the metadata says they're made by "Chromium") and they're completely unreadable, with overlapping characters and so on. They're considerably worse even than the PDF produced by a stock browser from the printable version (Firefox 56 here).
Even if the previous functionality happened to error out 95 % of the time, it would be better than the present situation.
Federico
Federico Leva (Nemo), 11/10/2017 09:40:
It does, of course. Wikisource and Wikibooks users sorely need to print books for offline reading, it's something we keep hearing from anybody in "real life".
Removing basic functionality and downgrading existing features for no gain is an excellent long-run method to kill projects like Wikibooks, Wikisource and Wikiversity whose potential users (such as teachers and other OER folks) may prefer alternative platforms which show more care.
textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org