[Textbook-l] The PDF generator on the toolserver has implications for quality control on a per-chapter basis

[Andrew Whitworth]

>  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