Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2004/August

Obstacles to growth
In comparison to Wikipedia, Wikibooks is less inviting to editors because it is harder to approach in a piecemeal fashion. This dooms Wikibooks. If on Wikipedia I start an article called Jimbo Wales and write simply "Jimbo Wales is the founder of Wikipedia", what I created may be a stub, but it is nonetheless a useful and informative encyclopedia article. In the most casual way, I thus have the satisfaction of contributing to the Wikipedia. Unless Wikibooks can find a way to be similarly inviting, friendly and satisfying, I am unable to envision success for it. I see it as imperative to the success of Wikibooks that some prominent, friendly, and intuitive way be devised to encourage the creation of useful stubs. Currently this does not exist. As others have suggested, some method needs to be devised to encourage a proliferation of mass chaos that can be gradually ordered. Here are some seeds for thought: Kupord Maizzed 21:50, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Encourage contribution of isolated how-tos, recipes, instructions, and equations as independent pages. Have as a goal the enabling of 20-minute stub creation by anonymous visitors. Kupord Maizzed 21:50, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Provide a prominent link to a categories page so contributors of new material can at least link it by category to a textbook it might someday belong in. Kupord Maizzed 21:50, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Marketing text by prof & students
I am an editor at the English Wikipedia. We have recently had a professor and some college students arrive writing a marketing textbook (that is, they aren't as interested in NPOV as they are in explaining why doing a certain thing is right). I believe Wikibooks is a good choice for them, and the professor agrees. Can anyone leave me a note at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jwrosenzweig volunteering to help with the transition? (I've never used Wikibooks and would be a poor resource). Thanks very much! --James Rosenzweig


 * Update, anyone? Sj 04:43, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * ditto --dgd 18:18, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Bugs and Feature Requests
See Feature Requests for details

Bugs:
 * Leading colon bug?
 * Templates and interwiki links
 * MSIE runtime errors
 * "Editing help" popup window is too small

Feature requests:
 * Searching within a book
 * Automatic Numbering
 * Book-specific Layour Features
 * Tags & external program for image generation
 * Entry Forms / Online Quizzes

Printable versions : PDF or other e-Book method?
Being new to Wikipedia, perhaps this is an old question. Are there any means to obtain a PDF file or other electronic book (other than HTML)? When I select "Printable Version" it would be very nice if I could find a PDF link. Maffu 00:36, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * This has been talked about on the mailing list. In short yes it is possible and in fact the PmWiki people are working on this. But it would take time and interest in somebody who knows PHP to port this to MediaWiki. See and  --mav 05:41, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * Plucker is your friend. 141.156.142.55 03:02, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Importing : from OpenOffice Impress
How to [import] from OpenOffice Impress? I have 3 tutorials on LPI certifications (101,201 & 202) and I would like to put them into Wikibooks. How to export from XML to the wiki? Yann 19:43, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No software recognizes the Wiki-syntax. You'll have to do it yourself. Dysprosia 01:24, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * I think the question is, what scripts have *we* built that take in XML and produce wikitext from it? Sj 08:45, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Synchronization across projects
Has there been any discussion of synchronisation? As Wiki* grows and branches into more fields it will become increasingly difficult to keep content current everywhere. This is already evident in translations. 81.211.110.171 13:28, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
 * For isntance : synching related WP and WBooks information. Sj 03:28, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Volunteers wanted: Wikimedia Embassy
Hello, at meta:Wikimedia Embassy we have a list with people of the different wikipedias to contact for questions about their projects. It would be fine to have someone from Wikibooks there, too. If you like to do the job, please fill in your name there. --Elian

Problems with Questionmarks
I've got a problem with pages, that contain a questionmark "?" in the title. If I try to show one of them, I get an empty page. e.g. Was_ist_eigentlich_Zufall?. Is this a solvable problem?--berni 20:16, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * ? is a bad character to have in titles, since it's part of CGI syntax (see the link, phtml?title=...). You can get to you8r page by using http://en.wikibooks.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Was_ist_eigentlich_Zufall%3F, I suggest you move the page. Dysprosia 23:41, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Non-English Fonts
I'm trying to get started on the Classical Greek Wikibook, but I'm facing a bit of a technical problem. Greek uses a non-Latin alphabet, of course, and I'm not sure how to go about making such a thing work. Typically, Greek websites have the user install a Greek font, as common Windows and Mac Latin fonts (e.g. Arial) have inadequate Greek support. Is there a way to change the font on a page, as with HTML? I can't find any such info in the help pages. Thanks.

--George McAllister 21:11, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * You can put your text between  and   tags. But the problem is finding a font that a lot of people will have. For Windows users, Arial Unicode MS will probably have the support you need, and many people will have it. and Gentium is a good-looking font, and will definitely have the support you need, but not many people have it. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog) 17:15, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Check the Visibone font card for compatibility. r3m0t (cont) (talk) 17:29, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Content Donation : Economics book
I'm an economics professor at Caltech and I'm writing a creative commons introductory economics text. The full draft should be available Dec 2004. For various reasons, mostly to do with my skills, but also because an html file with so many images and equations is a pain. I am writing it in MS Word but will make pdf files of the chapters as well as the msword source available for others under the creative commons license. The table of contents is available at http://intro.mcafee.cc/, and more about me at www.mcafee.cc.

I can't really envision the wiki concept working for economics. There is an army of people with a low value of time who pollute exchange sites with nonsense, rendering anything not carefully scrutinized by editors useless. The idea of free textbooks is great, since the $120 ones often aren't very good, but quality control is critical and that means having versions which are checked and in some way certified. Moreover, a text ought to build on a foundation and re-use notation and have some consistency, which means having one coherent version, and then letting people add or substitute as they see fit. --Prestonmcafee 07:24, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * I think you need more faith in the Wiki concept. If you're going to be active here, you (and others!) can scrutinize edits that misguided people may have and remove them if need be. The books are open, but we all can discuss how to contribute to it. Dysprosia 10:01, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It may be that I need more faith, but what is there now doesn't inspire faith. There is still the coordination problem -- how do you get a consistent language and notation without a "starting" voice? In any case, I'm also making an offer to provide my open book, but it isn't in the standard format, and has the creative commons rather than gnu license. -Preston


 * You create guidelines, and you ask that contributors follow the guidelines and you edit so that the text adheres to the guidelines. It works for Wikipedia - they have a Wikipedia:Manual of Style for example, so it can work here too. If you're unhappy with what's there, and you want to fix it, then you're welcome to.
 * I don't think you can submit your CC book to the GFDL wikibooks, because of the differing licensing schemes, though I'm not a copyright expert.
 * Dysprosia 04:06, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Preston, perhaps you can release your book under both CC and GFDL? I think you will find GFDL very much in the spirit of CC, however (depending upon which CC license you have in particular). As for your "starting" comment, I think you're right on the target: In order to get a consistent feel, it's probably necessary to have someone "bootstrap" the process. New chapters, new exercises, clearer explainations, extra diagrams, extra tables, and more examples can all be contributed and turn a 50-100 page volume into a full 300 page text. One advantage I've found to writing as a wikibook is that I can copy material from the wikipedia to help me. Though I am writing lots of new material, some of the annoying/well known details don't get in my way (e.g., who can get excited about writing the mathematical definition of a total order?). In some ways, I guess it can be viewed as writing lecture notes along with editing useful material from the wikipedia into a coherent text. Mshonle 22:42, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The only difference I can see in the GFDL license and CC is the transparent editor requirement of GFDL, which is a bit of a problem because I wrote the document in Word. Word can produce a HTML version but Word adds thousands of lines of unnecessary code (or it used to at any rate) to make it render better in IE than Netscape. I found the subsidiary work aspect of GFDL confusing because it clearly licenses for commerical purposes, but also requires subsidiary works be free. The problem is that commerical applications usually involve charging. I chose CC partly because it was so clear in that regard.

I'm not averse to making a version available under GFDL (these don't seem to conflict in a meaningful way). If someone knows how to convert a Word document into Wikipedia's format, send me an email. You can preview a pdf of the book at http://intro.mcafee.cc/ --Prestonmcafee 15:02, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Probably the best way is to just copy all of the text in your word document and paste it into the wiki text field. You'd have to manually change all Heading 1s to have =='s around it, and Heading 2s to have ==='s around it, et cetera. However, maybe someone out there knows WordBasic well enough to automate this for you. MShonle 19:57, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * If you upload a word document via the Upload a file link on the sidebar, and are releasing a GFDL version of the text, other users will be glad to help turn that into a series of properly-wikified pages. The problem would be keeping the wikified version up-to-date; perhaps this should be done in sections as the text is finalized?  The TOC could be first, once it has become a final draft...   (afaik, there is no current Word-to-wiki conversion script).  Sj 04:11, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Can anyone reading this create a good GPL MSWord-to-wikitext conversion script? This would result in thousands of good articles being added to the wikipedia. Something that didn't require ownership of MSWord would of course be ideal, but not essential. (An OpenOffice macro, maybe?) Thanks in advance. Dave.


 * You can probably use a macro to do the conversion for you, or export to html then do a search and replace then manual edit, or export to a text file then modify, etc. I would suggest first focusing on the content, then worry about the formatting once the book is done. Hopefully people wont judge a book by its cover..

TOC has been uploaded to Introduction to Economic Analysis; see what you think. It needs a lot more content to be useful to readers. (: Sj 06:28, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I just checked out his website and book, this is a serious effort he is making, and I think wikibooks would be better off by recruiting him and his book.

Knowledge normalization

 * I was wondering if there was a use for this wikipedia article here. The user and writer of the article has been inactive since April. Yardcock 13:49, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Proofreader requests request
I am currently in process of turning some of my more extensive college-course notes into WB modules. See: Introduction to Paleoanthropology for an example. I was wondering if there was a process where, once a module is complete, an author can post its link and request a good, thorough proofread edit. If not, how do I go about creating one? Davodd 08:07, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * There is. See Proofreading for a list of interested proofreaders; place a request under "Requests for proofreading" there for a proofreading pass.  Sj 05:52, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

exercise books
I'm an English teacher with a fully networked classroom with nearly full time access to the web for my students. We use the web for all course descriptions and completion. I use Tiki now for my class. I've begun to add wiki links from my site to WikiPedia (!?) Wikipedia Wikitionary and linux questions:. You can see how this is done here: wikisyntax linking different external wikisI would like to find a way to use student contributions to build the materials found here and on Wikipedia.

Is there syntax supporting more linkage between Wikipedia and Wikiquote?
 * Yes; compare for instance Economics (local article), Economics (wikipedia), and Economics (wikiquote).

Some issues:
 * legality of certain age groups (parent consent necessary to publish?)
 * oversight to make sure content is worthy of the site
 * load on servers if too many try it ;)

Perhaps considering an initial distribution channel via ISO and then CVS or rsynch for servers that can host a mirror.

After reading some of the above posts it might be fun to write a logic and argument course using wiki talk pages as discussion material.

I welcome comments and criticisms.--dgd 18:27, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Welcome to wikibooks! With a little preparation of your students, their contributions will be most welcome here and at Wikipedia and Wikiquote.  Please see the Schools FAQ for more about how to introduce your students to the communities here, and how to help them learn to use the community of other editors as resource and encouragement. Sj 06:54, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)