Hi All,
I think you guys can all see how useful it would be if the Chinese Wikipedia also has the ebook/PDF creation feature as seen on other language Wikipedias. Some countries don't always let their people visit Wikipedia, so ebooks can be an alternative.
We have tried to solve this bug that prevents the Chinese/Japanese Wikipedias from having this feature: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33430
The relevant developers (PediaPress) have solved the bug to some extent, but Shi Zhao, leader of the Chinese Wikipedia, still doesn't think the resulting Chinese PDF files are good enough, so the Chinese Wikipedia has not yet upgraded to the latest MediaWiki software to get this feature.
My two suggestions: (1) Persuade Shi Zhao to adopt the latest MediaWiki software, which can generate ebook/PDFs for the Chinese Wikipedia, although the page layout is not perfect. (2) Or find another organization than PediaPress to provide this feature, because PediaPress refuses to adopt a more Unicode-friendly PDF code library that provides better Chinese PDF rendering.
Regards, Ziyuan Yao
Side question:
Does Chinese Wikipedia indeed have an elected or consensus "leader" or some sort?
Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos)
On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Yao Ziyuan yaoziyuan@gmail.com wrote:
Hi All,
I think you guys can all see how useful it would be if the Chinese Wikipedia also has the ebook/PDF creation feature as seen on other language Wikipedias. Some countries don't always let their people visit Wikipedia, so ebooks can be an alternative.
We have tried to solve this bug that prevents the Chinese/Japanese Wikipedias from having this feature: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33430
The relevant developers (PediaPress) have solved the bug to some extent, but Shi Zhao, leader of the Chinese Wikipedia, still doesn't think the resulting Chinese PDF files are good enough, so the Chinese Wikipedia has not yet upgraded to the latest MediaWiki software to get this feature.
My two suggestions: (1) Persuade Shi Zhao to adopt the latest MediaWiki software, which can generate ebook/PDFs for the Chinese Wikipedia, although the page layout is not perfect. (2) Or find another organization than PediaPress to provide this feature, because PediaPress refuses to adopt a more Unicode-friendly PDF code library that provides better Chinese PDF rendering.
Regards, Ziyuan Yao
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On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 3:21 AM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
Side question:
Does Chinese Wikipedia indeed have an elected or consensus "leader" or some sort?
Dunno, but he seems to be the community organizer.
Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos)
On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Yao Ziyuan yaoziyuan@gmail.com wrote:
Hi All,
I think you guys can all see how useful it would be if the Chinese Wikipedia also has the ebook/PDF creation feature as seen on other language Wikipedias. Some countries don't always let their people visit Wikipedia, so ebooks can be an alternative.
We have tried to solve this bug that prevents the Chinese/Japanese Wikipedias from having this feature: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33430
The relevant developers (PediaPress) have solved the bug to some extent, but Shi Zhao, leader of the Chinese Wikipedia, still doesn't think the resulting Chinese PDF files are good enough, so the Chinese Wikipedia has not yet upgraded to the latest MediaWiki software to get this feature.
My two suggestions: (1) Persuade Shi Zhao to adopt the latest MediaWiki software, which can generate ebook/PDFs for the Chinese Wikipedia, although the page layout is not perfect. (2) Or find another organization than PediaPress to provide this feature, because PediaPress refuses to adopt a more Unicode-friendly PDF code library that provides better Chinese PDF rendering.
Regards, Ziyuan Yao
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Well, I think Shizhao is subscribed to this list :-) but I cc: him just in case. This sounds like a reasonable request. Can one of the developers involved comment on the situation?
Ziyuan: can you post a link to the discussion on the chinese wikipedia about whether to upgrade?
SJ
On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Yao Ziyuan yaoziyuan@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 3:21 AM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
Side question:
Does Chinese Wikipedia indeed have an elected or consensus "leader" or some sort?
Dunno, but he seems to be the community organizer.
Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos)
On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Yao Ziyuan yaoziyuan@gmail.com wrote:
Hi All,
I think you guys can all see how useful it would be if the Chinese Wikipedia also has the ebook/PDF creation feature as seen on other language Wikipedias. Some countries don't always let their people visit Wikipedia, so ebooks can be an alternative.
We have tried to solve this bug that prevents the Chinese/Japanese Wikipedias from having this feature: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33430
The relevant developers (PediaPress) have solved the bug to some extent, but Shi Zhao, leader of the Chinese Wikipedia, still doesn't think the resulting Chinese PDF files are good enough, so the Chinese Wikipedia has not yet upgraded to the latest MediaWiki software to get this feature.
My two suggestions: (1) Persuade Shi Zhao to adopt the latest MediaWiki software, which can generate ebook/PDFs for the Chinese Wikipedia, although the page layout is not perfect. (2) Or find another organization than PediaPress to provide this feature, because PediaPress refuses to adopt a more Unicode-friendly PDF code library that provides better Chinese PDF rendering.
Regards, Ziyuan Yao
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Yesterday I started two discussion threads for this issue, one one the Wikizh-l mailing list, the other on the zh.wikipedia Google Group (both are official discussion lists for the Chinese Wikipedia):
Wikizh-l thread: (in Chinese) http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikizh-l/2012-March/000733.html
zh.wikipedia thread (in Chinese): https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!topic/zh_wikipedia/5B...
The two threads are still early in discussion, but commenters so far support adopting the latest MediaWiki version, but they also pointed out a bug that needs to be resolved (Chinese text should be converted to either all-simplified or all-traditional before PDF creation):
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34919
Previously there was another bug (Chinese lines don't wrap automatically) and it was resolved:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33430
From this resolved bug report you can find the relevant developers of
MediaWiki's PDF creation feature (PediaPress).
On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 6:58 AM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Well, I think Shizhao is subscribed to this list :-) but I cc: him just in case. This sounds like a reasonable request. Can one of the developers involved comment on the situation?
Ziyuan: can you post a link to the discussion on the chinese wikipedia about whether to upgrade?
SJ
On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Yao Ziyuan yaoziyuan@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 3:21 AM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
Side question:
Does Chinese Wikipedia indeed have an elected or consensus "leader" or some sort?
Dunno, but he seems to be the community organizer.
Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos)
On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Yao Ziyuan yaoziyuan@gmail.com wrote:
Hi All,
I think you guys can all see how useful it would be if the Chinese Wikipedia also has the ebook/PDF creation feature as seen on other language Wikipedias. Some countries don't always let their people visit Wikipedia, so ebooks can be an alternative.
We have tried to solve this bug that prevents the Chinese/Japanese Wikipedias from having this feature: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33430
The relevant developers (PediaPress) have solved the bug to some extent, but Shi Zhao, leader of the Chinese Wikipedia, still doesn't think the resulting Chinese PDF files are good enough, so the Chinese Wikipedia has not yet upgraded to the latest MediaWiki software to get this feature.
My two suggestions: (1) Persuade Shi Zhao to adopt the latest MediaWiki software, which can generate ebook/PDFs for the Chinese Wikipedia, although the page layout is not perfect. (2) Or find another organization than PediaPress to provide this feature, because PediaPress refuses to adopt a more Unicode-friendly PDF code library that provides better Chinese PDF rendering.
Regards, Ziyuan Yao
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-- Samuel Klein identi.ca:sj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266
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Actually, the MediaWiki extension "Collection" developed by PediaPress is based on a PDF generation library "ReportLab", which doesn't support Chinese very well (for example, so far, a Chinese line in a generated PDF doesn't take up the full width of a page; there is still much space unused to the right of every Chinese line). I suggested them to use a more Unicode-friendly PDF library such as TCPDF, but they said (in https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33430 and email correspondence with me) they had already done much work with ReportLab and therefore switching to a new PDF library was not an option.
I think the ideal solution is to rewrite MediaWiki's PDF generation feature using a good PDF library such as TCPDF. Is there any other company than PediaPress that the Wikimedia Foundation can collaborate with to rewrite MediaWiki's PDF generation feature?
On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Ziyuan Yao yaoziyuan@gmail.com wrote:
Yesterday I started two discussion threads for this issue, one one the Wikizh-l mailing list, the other on the zh.wikipedia Google Group (both are official discussion lists for the Chinese Wikipedia):
Wikizh-l thread: (in Chinese) http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikizh-l/2012-March/000733.html
zh.wikipedia thread (in Chinese): https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!topic/zh_wikipedia/5B...
The two threads are still early in discussion, but commenters so far support adopting the latest MediaWiki version, but they also pointed out a bug that needs to be resolved (Chinese text should be converted to either all-simplified or all-traditional before PDF creation):
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34919
Previously there was another bug (Chinese lines don't wrap automatically) and it was resolved:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33430
From this resolved bug report you can find the relevant developers of MediaWiki's PDF creation feature (PediaPress).
On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 6:58 AM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Well, I think Shizhao is subscribed to this list :-) but I cc: him just in case. This sounds like a reasonable request. Can one of the developers involved comment on the situation?
Ziyuan: can you post a link to the discussion on the chinese wikipedia about whether to upgrade?
SJ
On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Yao Ziyuan yaoziyuan@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 3:21 AM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
Side question:
Does Chinese Wikipedia indeed have an elected or consensus "leader" or some sort?
Dunno, but he seems to be the community organizer.
Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos)
On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Yao Ziyuan yaoziyuan@gmail.com wrote:
Hi All,
I think you guys can all see how useful it would be if the Chinese Wikipedia also has the ebook/PDF creation feature as seen on other language Wikipedias. Some countries don't always let their people visit Wikipedia, so ebooks can be an alternative.
We have tried to solve this bug that prevents the Chinese/Japanese Wikipedias from having this feature: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33430
The relevant developers (PediaPress) have solved the bug to some extent, but Shi Zhao, leader of the Chinese Wikipedia, still doesn't think the resulting Chinese PDF files are good enough, so the Chinese Wikipedia has not yet upgraded to the latest MediaWiki software to get this feature.
My two suggestions: (1) Persuade Shi Zhao to adopt the latest MediaWiki software, which can generate ebook/PDFs for the Chinese Wikipedia, although the page layout is not perfect. (2) Or find another organization than PediaPress to provide this feature, because PediaPress refuses to adopt a more Unicode-friendly PDF code library that provides better Chinese PDF rendering.
Regards, Ziyuan Yao
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-- Samuel Klein identi.ca:sj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266
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