Hello,
We've released new version of our wikibooks pdf generating tool. Now it is named wikitype and has moved to http://dash-of-pepper.com/wikitype
New features: -- posibility to choose chapters -- gfdl license at the end of each book -- direct links to generate books like http://dash-of-pepper.com/wikitype?url=http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Name_Of_... (e.g. http://dash-of-pepper.com/wikitype?url=http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Open_Sou...).
If noone minds we can attach some well-formatted PDFs, like Knowing Knoppix ( http://dash-of-pepper.com/wikitype/pdf-of-the-day/Knowing_Knoppix.pdf ), to wikibooks.org books and we would be glad if the authors do the same.
Looking forward to receive your feedbacks and comments.
Regards,
Robert
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 12:16 PM, Robert Arustamyan robert@blogpaper.com wrote:
Hello,
We've released new version of our wikibooks pdf generating tool. Now it is named wikitype and has moved to http://dash-of-pepper.com/wikitype
New features: -- posibility to choose chapters -- gfdl license at the end of each book -- direct links to generate books like http://dash-of-pepper.com/wikitype?url=http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Name_Of_... (e.g. http://dash-of-pepper.com/wikitype?url=http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Open_Sou...).
If noone minds we can attach some well-formatted PDFs, like Knowing Knoppix ( http://dash-of-pepper.com/wikitype/pdf-of-the-day/Knowing_Knoppix.pdf ), to wikibooks.org books and we would be glad if the authors do the same.
Looking forward to receive your feedbacks and comments.
Fantastic!
I noticed that some images in the Knoppix books (especially screenshots) are actually the thumbnail images. They even have the little "zoom" icon below. I think you should use the full-size images, as PDFs are often generated for printing and could really benefit from higher resolution. Since using full-size images would increads both bandwidth usage and file size considerably, it should probably not be used on the ebook reader mode (which I'll appreaciate, owning an iRex Iliad:-).
Also, congratulations on your good non-ASCII handling (testing: "Modern Greek").
For wikipedia articles, maybe you would consider using a textbox (one article per line)? We could add sone JavaScript "shopping basket" goodie to Wikipedia and have people collect articles for a topic and get them PDFed...
Cheers, Magnus
Hello,
Fantastic!
I noticed that some images in the Knoppix books (especially screenshots) are actually the thumbnail images. They even have the little "zoom" icon below. I think you should use the full-size images, as PDFs are often generated for printing and could really benefit from higher resolution. Since using full-size images would increads both bandwidth usage and file size considerably, it should probably not be used on the ebook reader mode (which I'll appreaciate, owning an iRex Iliad:-).
We will see if it all right for letter-size PDFs to include bigger images. If yes we'll change that as soon as possible.
Also, congratulations on your good non-ASCII handling (testing: "Modern Greek").
Thank you, it wasn't the easiest part :)
For wikipedia articles, maybe you would consider using a textbox (one article per line)? We could add sone JavaScript "shopping basket" goodie to Wikipedia and have people collect articles for a topic and get them PDFed..
I like this idea. I'm going to implement that in the nearest releases.
Also I would like to thank you for your great ideas and feedback.
Regards,
Robert
Hello,
Fantastic!
I noticed that some images in the Knoppix books (especially screenshots) are actually the thumbnail images. They even have the little "zoom" icon below. I think you should use the full-size images, as PDFs are often generated for printing and could really benefit from higher resolution. Since using full-size images would increads both bandwidth usage and file size considerably, it should probably not be used on the ebook reader mode (which I'll appreaciate, owning an iRex Iliad:-).
We will see if it all right for letter-size PDFs to include bigger images. If yes we'll change that as soon as possible.
Also, congratulations on your good non-ASCII handling (testing: "Modern Greek").
Thank you, it wasn't the easiest part :)
For wikipedia articles, maybe you would consider using a textbox (one article per line)? We could add sone JavaScript "shopping basket" goodie to Wikipedia and have people collect articles for a topic and get them PDFed..
I like this idea. I'm going to implement that in the nearest releases.
Also I would like to thank you for your great ideas and feedback.
Regards,
Robert
Robert Arustamyan wrote:
Hello,
We've released new version of our wikibooks pdf generating tool. Now it is named wikitype and has moved to http://dash-of-pepper.com/wikitype
New features: -- posibility to choose chapters -- gfdl license at the end of each book -- direct links to generate books like http://dash-of-pepper.com/wikitype?url=http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Name_Of_... (e.g. http://dash-of-pepper.com/wikitype?url=http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Open_Sou...).
If noone minds we can attach some well-formatted PDFs, like Knowing Knoppix ( http://dash-of-pepper.com/wikitype/pdf-of-the-day/Knowing_Knoppix.pdf ), to wikibooks.org books and we would be glad if the authors do the same.
Looking forward to receive your feedbacks and comments.
Regards,
Robert
Hi Robert,
I am so far very impressed with wikitype. But there are some issues with "my" book (Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book) that might interest you.
First, this book is huge. I have not yet successfully generated a PDF of the whole thing using wikitype. It has a three-level hierarchy, and in retrospect, perhaps it should have been nine books instead of one.
But I really wanted to see what wikitype could do, so I scaled back my ambitions, and selected one of the nine sections. Still pretty big, and it didn't seem to work either (I gave it a couple of hours, but it never came back with a "Get PDF" button. So I scaled back the ambitions a little more, and went for a single chapter of one of the sub books (I choose "Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Sand" - not because it is a great chapter, but because it is fairly small. That worked great!
But I did notice a few problems. Every chapter in this book uses Template:Honor_header, which uses tables with colspan specified as something other than 1. That seems to be a tad broken. A lot of the chapters also use Template:Species_id which suffers from the same problem.
But man... this really is a great tool, and I will be busily generating PDF's of individual chapters (or small collections of them) in the near future. When it can handle the whole book, I will generate one of those too (or perhaps nine - one for each major section).
Suggested feature - Octavo or Folio printing: A couple of months ago I printed off seven chapters and folded them into a book. I reduced each page with a photocopier so that I could fit four pages on the front and four more on the back of each sheet of paper. Then I folded each sheet in half twice, nested the whole mess, and stapled it together. I had to print some of pages upside-down so that they would be right-side up when folded. This actually has a name - octavo - in the printing business, and there's a Wikibook called "Zine Making" that covers this in some detail. Getting all of this right took several hours, as page one was on the opposite side of the page from page 72. It might be easier to support folio (folded once rather than twice, so you end up with four pages per sheet of paper), but Octavo is nice too (if you want a small book or if you're using 11"x17" paper).
Thought you'd like some feedback. Once again, I cannot praise wikitype highly enough!
j.w. thomas wrote:
This actually has a name - octavo - in the printing business
Oops! That should be quarto, not octavo. Octavo is when you fold each sheet three times, getting 8 pages per side.
Very good!
I only had a problem about the localization of some structure messages - i.e. the date on the footer or the title "Table of Contents". Is there any way to translate these messages? I could help with italian localizations.
Regards, Ramac
In data 13 giugno 2008 alle ore 13:16:46, Robert Arustamyan robert@blogpaper.com ha scritto:
Hello,
We've released new version of our wikibooks pdf generating tool. Now it is named wikitype and has moved to http://dash-of-pepper.com/wikitype
New features: -- posibility to choose chapters -- gfdl license at the end of each book -- direct links to generate books like http://dash-of-pepper.com/wikitype?url=http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Name_Of_... (e.g. http://dash-of-pepper.com/wikitype?url=http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Open_Sou...).
If noone minds we can attach some well-formatted PDFs, like Knowing Knoppix ( http://dash-of-pepper.com/wikitype/pdf-of-the-day/Knowing_Knoppix.pdf ), to wikibooks.org books and we would be glad if the authors do the same.
Looking forward to receive your feedbacks and comments.
Regards,
Robert
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Raffaele wrote:
Very good!
I only had a problem about the localization of some structure messages - i.e. the date on the footer or the title "Table of Contents". Is there any way to translate these messages? I could help with italian localizations.
Regards, Ramac
I planned to go in for localizations. Your help would be appreciated, I'll apply to You for italian.
Robert
Raffaele wrote:
Very good!
I only had a problem about the localization of some structure messages
- i.e. the date on the footer or the title "Table of Contents". Is
there any way to translate these messages? I could help with italian localizations.
Regards, Ramac
I planned to go in for localizations. Your help would be appreciated, I'll apply to You for italian.
Robert
textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org