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
Hoi, Anne just a question, if this was key functionality for the English Wikipedia, would you remove this functionality with a promise of "trust us we are working towards something new" ?? I think not. Thanks, GerardM
On 11 October 2017 at 08:40, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
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
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Hi everyone,
Maybe I'm misunderstood the situation but I'm not sure to understand the problem: does anyone use OCG?
I thought that not one use it anymore (if it was ever used... at least onf the French wikisource it never really worked well as it didn't understand the 'pages' tag we use on almost all pages) and we have our own PDF/ePub/mobi generator (https://tools.wmflabs.org/wsexport/tool/book.php). SO don't we all use WSexport?
I see very few pages on https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Special:PrefixIndex&prefix=W... , most of them generated a long time ago, so I don't think that this will have any impact on Wikisource.
Cdlt, ~nicolas
Yes, I think Nicolas is right. OCG has never really done what Wikisource needed, and WsExport has (wonderfully). It would of course be brilliant if the new PDF & epub generation could support Wikisource, but it not doing so is no different from the existing situation. On Wed, 11 Oct 2017, at 05:01 PM, Nicolas VIGNERON wrote:
Hi everyone, Maybe I'm misunderstood the situation but I'm not sure to understand the problem: does anyone use OCG?> I thought that not one use it anymore (if it was ever used... at least onf the French wikisource it never really worked well as it didn't understand the 'pages' tag we use on almost all pages) and we have our own PDF/ePub/mobi generator (https://tools.wmflabs.org/wsexport/tool/book.php). SO don't we all use WSexport?> I see very few pages on https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Special:PrefixIndex&prefix=W... , most of them generated a long time ago, so I don't think that this will have any impact on Wikisource.> Cdlt, ~nicolas _________________________________________________ Wikisource-l mailing list Wikisource-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l
Hoi, Thanks good to know. GerardM
On 11 October 2017 at 11:56, Sam Wilson sam@samwilson.id.au wrote:
Yes, I think Nicolas is right. OCG has never really done what Wikisource needed, and WsExport has (wonderfully). It would of course be brilliant if the new PDF & epub generation could support Wikisource, but it not doing so is no different from the existing situation.
On Wed, 11 Oct 2017, at 05:01 PM, Nicolas VIGNERON wrote:
Hi everyone, Maybe I'm misunderstood the situation but I'm not sure to understand the problem: does anyone use OCG? I thought that not one use it anymore (if it was ever used... at least onf the French wikisource it never really worked well as it didn't understand the 'pages' tag we use on almost all pages) and we have our own PDF/ePub/mobi generator (https://tools.wmflabs.org/wsexport/tool/book.php). SO don't we all use WSexport?
I see very few pages on https://en.wikisource.org/w/ index.php?title=Special:PrefixIndex&prefix=Wikisource:Books/ , most of them generated a long time ago, so I don't think that this will have any impact on Wikisource.
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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.
wikisource-l@lists.wikimedia.org