Help talk:Print versions

upload to Wikimedia Commons forbidden?
This Help Page says: "PDF files can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons just like images. [...] PDF files could previously be uploaded to Wikibooks but new files are now uploaded to Commons." I created a PDF for an article I wrote and uploaded it, but someone on Commons told me that this is out of scope of Wikimedia Commons and requested a deletion, see for the discussion. So, I'm confused - where should PDF files be uploaded? (I intend to write more articles and create PDFs. Where should I upload them?) I would like to have a definite answer, where the PDF gets either deleted or moved or the "deletion request" gets removed. --LarsWinterfeld (discuss • contribs) 12:42, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

the file should not be deleted on commons, there is even a category for pdf version of wikibooks on commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:English_Wikibooks_PDF

--Dirk Hünniger (discuss • contribs) 17:08, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Problem with step by step
If you do the following:

4. Insert every chapter like a template, preceded by chapter title. Remember about chapter with list of authors.

= Chapter name =

And the chapter already includes the chapter name then in the contents menu on the print version the chapter's name will appear twice, one as a subtitle of the other.

Doesn't this need to be changed? Glich (talk) 16:29, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Deeper explanation of "Creating separate page for print version" required?
Could someone take some time to provide a more in depth explanation of the steps needed in the section "Creating separate page for print version". For example, step 3 mentions "Copy the TOC as an ordered list". Does this mean just the text on the web page as I see it, or the wikitext or html code which is behind the TOC? I looked at the proposed reference work (Python Programming) but don't quite understand whether they created their TOC, or whether there is a way for wikibooks to create it for me that I am supposed to use.

Can someone provide some clarification? Many thanks. --Codinghead (talk) 11:18, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Copyright inclusion
In Ada Programming we already have a "print version" in Ada Programming/All Chapters so I followed the additional recomendations and have added the template and included the GFDL text. I wonder whether this last inclusion is really necessary; it adds too much text to the page and what is worst, it adds the page to the Category:Wikibooks enforced policies. Could an administrator at least use the noinclude tag around the category? Otherwise we need other method for including the GFDL text. ManuelGR 20:40, 9 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, done, adding noinclude helped.
 * About GFDL problem: yes, it is strictly required that any print version of text under GFDL license has full text of the license. In fact, we should also include it in all our pages, but we "cheat" a bit by providing only link to the license text. Yes, GFDL is a stupid license, but unfortunately when Wikibooks were created there was no better alternative (like CC-BY-SA license). It's too late to change anything so we are stick to GFDL forever. Remember, when you create your own wiki, never ever use GFDL, maybe except dual-licensing ;-) --Derbeth talk 22:13, 9 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I reread the license and I don't think we are cheating since we follow the requirements of section titled GNU Free Documentation License.  Actually I don't see any problem on using the GFDL for a wiki. ManuelGR 23:08, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Automatic generation of print version pages from a navigational map
Take a look at m:User:Nigelk/Nav and m:User:Nigelk/ConcatPages. This extension could be used to keep the TOC of the book synchronized with the print version. This extension also automatically adds next/up/previous links to the pages listed in the TOC page, aka nav map. ManuelGR 20:19, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

No Print Question
If I do the following:


 * To prevent block of text from being printed, cover it with  ... .

and the block of text contains a header. Is there a way to also not show the header in the TOC?
 * Try ...  It solved some problems for me Pluke 14:31, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Inclusion of Module Sections?
Is there a way to link a module's section from the print version's page, but not include the entire module as well? I was thinking about creating an Endnotes page for some books instead of having footnotes at the end of each chapter. I tried, but no luck. --Everlong 23:28, 17 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Not quite sure what, precisely, you're asking. If you want to include only parts of the module in the "all-pages" version, you can use the &lt;noinclude&gt; tag to mark the parts that you don't want included. If you want all the endnotes included, you may have to make each module's endnote section a seperate page and include it both at the end of each module as well as in the "all-pages" endnote page. --Swift 18:47, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Patent and PDF
I noticed that PDF is the file type of choice. Due to the various patents surrounding this format, it should be avoided. Wikimedia takes a stance against similar formats such as MP3, AVI and, to a lesser extent, GIF/JPG. How about promoting the use of ODF and other unencumbered (but equally powerful) formats? --OldakQuill 15:48, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * AFAIK JPG cannot be substituted and I haven't heard of any instructions from any Wikimedia project to avoid JPG files. Currently, PDF is the only reasonable publication format: it can be viewed in various web browsers and operating systems. I don't see any alternative and in my opinion it's not Wikimedia Foundation role to promote free software and new standards. --Derbeth talk 17:42, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not simply talking about advocacy. Patents often put a burden on Wikimedians to pay various companies whenever they create a file in a patented format. This is precisely the reason why we do not allow MP3 files. ODF is a very viable, flexible alternative. PNG can be used in the place of most JPG files. --OldakQuill 12:39, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Certainly I'm all in favor of open file formats, including the OpenDocument format (ODF) developed by OASIS. Certainly *some* patent holders require a license fee to use their license. However, the wikipedia article on pdf pdf claims that PDF is also an open file format. Also, according to the wikipedia article on pdf, "Anyone may create applications that read and write PDF files without having to pay royalties to Adobe Systems; Adobe holds a number of patents relating to PDF but licenses them royalty-free for use in developing software that complies with its PDF specification."
 * Likewise, since the LZW patent has expired, GIF is now a open file format (and free). But PNG is technically superior to GIF, even if it is no longer "morally" superior, so I still recommend converting all GIFs to PNG.
 * I don't know enough about ODF vs PDF to know whether one is technically superior to another. But it seems reasonable to me for ODF advocates to post ODF versions, so that users have a choice of viewing a Wikibook in HTML/XHTML, PDF, or ODF.
 * --DavidCary 04:16, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Don't over complicate task of book making
I can understand the open source community has its roots in programming but word processing is a common thing. You don't need to use a programming language to make pdfs or even E-books the programming has already been done for you from many many sources. If you can have an HTML page you can make it into an RTF page, if you can make it into an RTF page you can edit it in any number of word processing programs and print it out into PDF form or MSReader form or Palm Doc form. I've done all this countless times. I've taken text files off of Gutenberg.org and done everything from making them into paperbacks you can hold in your hand to e-books for e-readers -- ALL FROM COMMONLY AVAILABLE PROGRAMS (pardom my volume) -- MSWord and WordPerfect being the most common. The point is DON'T set it up as a specialist's task but one countless people can accomplish from their home computers. ALL the Wikibooks should be available in downloadable format. Infact MULTIPLE formats ... HTML, palm Doc, MSWord Doc, MSReader, PDF and whatever else format is requested. Set a place where the source text is available for book makers and you'll get them back from home book makers as quick as you can write or devise them. -- Thank you. JN

Print version tag prints!
I have including the tag on the A-level Computing page, as I am trying out the print version to see how it looks (no where near finished i know!). However the tag appears on the printed version, A-level Computing/Print version. Using the div noprint tag doesn't get rid of it!?! any suggestions Pluke 14:26, 18 June 2006 (UTC)


 * SolvedTry ... Pluke 14:32, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

More tips on PDF creation
Can you explain me, step by step, how do you create PDF files from print versions? I tried method described in Help:Print versions but it did not work. I was saving true print version (without navigation bar, print version notice and so on) as HTML file with images using Opera, Firefox and Internet Explorer and opening them as HTML file in OpenOffice.org 2.0.2 and Microsoft Word 2003. None of these combinations worked. The thing I got in word processor was text with print version notice, section edit links and so on. --Derbeth talk 14:03, 24 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I save articles as "Web page complete". MS Word displays the files properly for me (looking like the Print Version) provided they are small (under 50 pages). Larger files may need breaking into parts for viewing. Recently I have used Wordpad to "top and tail" the files before viewing. I remove all the unnecessary code before the BODY tag and after the end of text, before the /BODY tag. I just stick the standard HTML HEAD /HEAD sequence in front of the BODY tag.


 * Once the file has been saved as a word processor file it looks like the Print Version but does have irritating additions such as section templates still in place. I chop off the Print Version heading and any Table of Contents and use recorded macros in Word to cut out all the repeating elements that are not needed such as "edit" links and templates. I then page through the whole file looking for headings that have the wrong 'level', links that are incorrect and missing graphics. If there is a missing graphic I go to the online version and copy and paste the graphic into place. Once the text looks OK I insert a Cover Page and Table of Contents at the start. The whole process takes about 45 minutes for a 200 page book so it is a labour of love if you are a busy person. Once the Word Document is complete I print it to file using PDF Creator and upload.


 * Some books make Word 'hang' when you try to view them as HTML. The only way round this (that I have found) is to chop them into pieces, top and tail the small files with HTML tags and combine them in Word. RobinH 09:18, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

How to stop template appearing in print version
How can I stop a navigational template from appearing in a print version? Poppy 15:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)


 * there are a number of ways to go about doing this, although the nuances can be tricky. The easiest way to stop something from appearing in a print version is to surround the text of the navigational aide in  tags. The templates will still appear on the print version page, but will not appear on the paper when you print it. If you need a better solution, let me know. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:59, 1 April 2007 (UTC)


 * An other solution is.
 * -- MichaelFrey 15:57, 2 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks it worked. Poppy 15:23, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Something that editors may find useful
To create manual page breaks in the print version, use Print version page break. According to an HTML comment inside the template, it only works in Firefox. JeremyMcCracken (talk) 21:52, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

MediaWiki to LaTeX conversion for printing
I've written a MediaWiki to LaTeX conversion script that ties into the ExportPDF extension to produce high-quality PDF documents on the fly from Mediawiki pages. There are also a set of templates that go with the script to allow index generation, references, citations, abstracts, epigraphs, equations and figures. There is preliminary support for fairly complicated markup like the tag, which is converted into floating subfigures, and tables, which are converted into floating tables inside of figures. I'm still working on bibliographies and style sheets.

It is still very much in beta, but I hope that it proves useful for other users.

Hudson (talk) 17:19, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Move to the Help namespace
I propose we move this page to the Help namespace. It is, in essence, a page helping users get a task done on Wikibooks, not about the Wikibooks site or community. (I'm not being bold since page moves aren't trivial to revert) --Swift (talk) 03:33, 12 December 2008 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Yes check.svg|15px]] Done --Swift (talk) 08:21, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

move to Using Wikibooks
I propose we move this page (again), making it a module of the "Using Wikibooks" book. Would "Using Wikibooks/Print versions" be appropriate? --DavidCary (talk) 15:07, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Subchapters
The help pages explains how to create chapters. What I miss is a description explaining how to create subchapters.

E.g. GLPK has a chapter GLPK/Compiling GLPK which contains a subchapter GLPK/Linux OS.

Now in the printout I want every heading level of GLPK/Linux OS to be one level more indented than in a chapter.

Template:Printable
I would like to talk about Template:Printable in this page, because it's a simpler, quicker and dynamic alternative. As anyone can see into Microsoft SQL Server/Print version, adding a chapter on the TOC will add it into the printable version at the same time.

It's only withdraw I would say, is that its regex doesn't recognize the " JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 23:49, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Table of Contents error
In the print version of Arimaa, I noticed that one chapter included the entire book's table of contents. It turned out that page used the TOC template, which I removed. But that shouldn't happen. Belteshazzar (discuss • contribs) 21:18, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * With the "TOC template" are you talking about Template:Arimaa/Navigation? It has multiple transclusions at Arimaa/Print version because each transcluded chapter contains it. To remove it from the print version you need to surround it with noinclude tags on each transcluded chapter. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 22:09, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * No, I meant the thing I removed here. Belteshazzar (discuss • contribs) 22:11, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Well I can't quite see your problem as I can't see an auto-generated TOC at Arimaa/Distribution of Force or the print version. But if you are getting problems with it, you can switch it off completely with the code  it will switch it off for any page that you include it on. -- Jules  (Mrjulesd) 22:27, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I fixed it by removing  from the page in question. I just thought that in general such a thing shouldn't happen. I suppose noinclude tags would probably work for that also. Belteshazzar (discuss • contribs) 22:31, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The thing is, removing  doesn't switch off the TOC; that code is simply to position the TOC at a certain place. The TOC will still reappear if there is enough sections. For example look at Brief History of Europe/Early Middle Ages, that page has a TOC but there is no   code included on the page (check the source). To switch off the TOC you've got to use   instead. -- Jules  (Mrjulesd) 22:37, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Other pages in that book do have an automatic TOC, and there was no problem there. So the  tag does seem to cause a problem with transclusion. Belteshazzar (discuss • contribs) 23:03, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

That's because you need at least 4 sections for the TOC to be auto-generated. See, a test edit I later self-reverted; it contains a TOC. But there must be a bug with a TOC being generated with 3 sections instead when transcluded. A bug I can't personally see.

Put  on that page and there's a good chance it will fix it. Note that Arimaa/Print version already contains. Anyway that's my advice to you. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 00:19, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
 * There's no need to add, as there's no problem now that   has been removed from that page. I just wanted to flag this apparent issue. Belteshazzar (discuss • contribs) 00:26, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, I think I misunderstood you a bit, there's no problem as such now. But since  forces a TOC I think its simply expected behavior personally. -- Jules  (Mrjulesd) 00:36, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The problem was that it was the wrong table of contents. A table of contents for the whole Arimaa book appeared in that chapter of the print version. I imagine that could be solved with noinclude tags if one wanted to keep the, but it seems like a bug. Belteshazzar (discuss • contribs) 00:47, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah I see what you mean now. If you just want the TOC for that particular page in the print version, it may not be possible it seems. And noinclude tags would stop it all together. I think its probably due to the way transclusion works in the software: when content is transcluded, there is no difference maintained between transcluded and non-transcluded content; so magic words act for the whole page rather than the transcluded section. -- Jules  (Mrjulesd) 04:21, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
 * It's possible to tell a navigation template to check the name of the page it's being transcluded on, and if that name ends with " ", have the template do something different than it otherwise would. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 05:16, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, but the question here is whether you can transclude a page with the magic word  on it; and have it generate a TOC for the transluded page only rather than the page its transcluded onto. I think this may be impossible. -- Jules  (Mrjulesd) 10:10, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Ohh, I see. That does sound impossible, although... there is a possible technical solution that I can imagine.  I've had it in mind, in fact, as a general technique for lots of relatively hairy wiki tasks, but the main obstacle is that one would have to learn how to do it smoothly because (afaik) it's never actually been done; not in its entirety.  Here's the general technique:
 * You need to perform some rather-advanced operation for each of a large, unbounded set of pages, each part of which can be done (say, using evalx), but you can't afford to do it all at once.
 * In this case, the operation to be done is, given a module of the book, generate a TOC for the module. I'm pretty sure I could write a template that, given the module name, would do that.  But you wouldn't want to do that for every page of the book all at once when generating a print-version page.
 * In another case I've lately wrestled with in the Wikibooks Stacks, you have a hierarchy of "shelves", and you want to generate, for each shelf, a list of all the shelves above it in the hierarchy. The trouble there is that it's natural to define it recursively &mdash;the ancestor list for a given shelf is the union of its parents list with the the ancestor lists of all its parents&mdash; but there's no fixed finite bound on how deep the recursion might be.
 * For each page that the operation has to be performed on, you set up a subpage that's meant to have the result for that page on it.
 * In this case, you'd have for each module of the book a subpage containing its TOC.
 * For the Wikibooks Stacks, each shelf has a subpage containing its list of ancestors.
 * Somewhere or other, a template compares the current content of the subpage against the actual result of performing the operation. If they agree, well and good.  If they differ, the template hollers for somebody to come fix it, by adding the subpage to a category of pages that need attention.
 * In the Wikibooks Stacks, the check is performed by Shelf:Page/Check ancestry.
 * There should then be a semi-automated assistant that helps the human operator to perform the update when needed. This is the part I haven't gotten to yet, in the Wikibooks Stacks.
 * With practice, I'm hoping this sort of thing would get to be easy to set up. Would.  As I say, hasn't actually been done yet.  (Actually, if I were redesigning the wiki platform &mdash;and I am tempted to try&mdash; it ought to embrace this sort of incremental approach to all template transclusion, not just the most difficult cases, and a lot of problems with suppsedly-too-expensive operations in the current wiki implementation would just go away.  But I figure, I need more experience with how this sort of thing can work before I'd have enough confidence in what I was doing.) --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:30, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Well perhaps I shouldn't have said impossible then! Certainly not an easy task though. By the way, I'm very impressed by Wikibooks Stacks, which I know is mainly your work. Seems to work well in my experience.
 * I've been thinking about the task, and one other (partial) solution would be to have a "dummy TOC"; not an autogenerated TOC, but one that looked and felt like an auto-TOC without being one, which was actually wikitext and CSS. Even I could do that. The only downside would be you have to manually update if you changed the contents of the page.
 * Another solution would be to have a parser in the style of Module:Printable version which could generate one I guess. Still I don't think this is a common problem so I'm not suggesting it, it would take some work. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 17:18, 23 April 2020 (UTC)