Wikibooks:Reading room/Proposals/2009

Chemistry Symbols
I am working on placing a chemistry book online and with all the 'fun' characters in chemistry, I am having the hardest time figuring out how to post an ion. Example: SO$$\textstyle{\frac{2-}{4}}$$, is the closest thing I can get, but I would like the middle line removed. Is there another way to do this? Elo 1219 (talk) 22:14, 7 January 2009 (UTC)Elo 1219


 * $$SO^{2-}_{4}$$ &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 22:21, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * How about in front of the element, like this $$\textstyle{\frac{37}{17}}$$Cl ?Elo 1219 (talk) 22:47, 7 January 2009 (UTC)elo_1219
 * $$^{37}_{17}Cl$$ &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 22:52, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Ya that is all that I am getting as well, but I do need them one on top of each other. Also, is there a way to make font smaller for $$NH^{+}_{4}$$ ? It is not matching well with the text. Elo 1219 (talk) 22:55, 7 January 2009 (UTC)Elo_1219
 * I don't know about changing font size. You might check m:Help:Displaying a formula. &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 22:58, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Maybe $$\begin{matrix} 37 \\ 17 \end{matrix} Cl $$ or $$_{17}^{37}Cl$$? --dark lama  23:19, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Bookmarks
Hello!, I was just browsing the cookbooks, I really liked many recipes and began to copy them to some text document and save them unto the hard disk. So, I just had the idea of making some kind of tool to bookmark the pages you like by clicking on an icon on the top of the page or wherever, and all that without moving from the page you are on, I mean just like the bookmark tool in Firefox or Internet Explorer. I hope my idea is useful, Thanks.--;Hiba;1 (talk) 18:51, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


 * While not a bad idea in of itself, a tool such as this (as you mention) already exists at the user agent level. If you want to store a list of pages you're interested in here on Wikibooks, you can always add links to your userpage. --Swift (talk) 19:00, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Excuse my question: how and where can I find that???--;Hiba;1 (talk) 16:16, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Special:MyPage &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 16:29, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I got it!. Thanks!--;Hiba;1 (talk) 11:46, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Bot permissions
Per Special:UserGroupRights, Bots do not have move or reupload permissions, but Autoconfirmed users do. Is this by design, or should I request this be changed via Bugzilla? The current rights listing may cause interference in some rare cases (and only for four days, which almost makes it moot if it weren't for the min 10 edits) but given that the bot group implies that it can edit semi-protected pages, it probably should have permissions adjusted to handle other tasks possible under autoconfirmed accounts. --Sigma 7 (talk) 01:51, 25 August 2009 (UTC)


 * If a bot's account is four days old and has made ten edits (possibly as test edits even) then it will be a member of the autoconfirmed users and those permissions will combine with those of the bot group. Effective permissions would include move and reupload permissions due to all groups a bot would be a member of.  If I had my way I'd remove the "edit semi-protected pages" permission from the bot group since that will be assigned via the autoconfirmed group.  So I could actually take the inverse position to your own. -- Adrignola talk contribs 03:15, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Sequential Reading
One thing that is not sticking out to me if it exists is the ability to read the book pages sequentially, e.g. when I get to the bottom of a page, I do not see any way to go onto the next topic without first popping up one level to the parent page. Am I missing something?

If not, then that is my suggestion. I'd like to see a next / previous page button or hyperlink on the pages to allow a more book-like read.

HJS —The preceding comment was added by 67.85.166.191 (talk • contribs) 01:19, 29 September 2009.


 * Each book has its own conventions for how to handle navigation, partly because there has been no one way that everyone could be happy with: the more sophisticated navigational aids have been much harder to maintain, so each book chooses a trade-off between ease of use and ease of maintenance.  I've been working (very slowly, as it's in my copious free time, of course) on a set of generic tools that I hope will make maintenance somewhat easier.  So far, it sets things up to look like this.  --Pi zero (talk) 10:58, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

E-Book Reader Support
I'd love to see a way to create an "easy to import" file to popular e-Book readers, with support for the different capabilities of the individual readers. I'd image it as follows:

Click on e-Book download

Next appears a list of supported e-Book readers. Right now the big two (or three if you want to count them as separate) would be:


 * Sony
 * Kindle
 * Kindle DX

(The second Kindle has a larger screen and supports a usable version of PDF)

Once you select the reader, a list of the supported formats appears.

Select the format you want.

Finally, a link to the download file (generated on the fly) appears. This file should include the entire e-Book, not just the page being viewed. If the format chosen supports navigational aids (table of contents, etc.), then they should also be included in the file.

For those devices which support wireless and/or email delivery, give the option of entering an email address at this point (in accordance with the Terms of Service for the various devices).

This would make WikiBooks much easier for the those people who aren't great on technology. Most of this is probably already doable, assuming you know what you're doing. But it would be much easier for those who bought an e-Book reader but are not technologically sophisticated.

fcoulter (talk) 16:32, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Some do support PDF and RTF, but not all do. Amazon Kindle did not support PDF formats until Kindle DX, and the Amazon DRM format AZM violates open source licenses which prohibit DRM technology. Amazon.com has a web service that can copy PDF to AZM format so they can download the PDF on a computer, use the web service, and put it on their old Kindle ebook reader. I doubt an open source license would allow porting to a proprietary format as it is not apparently an open source format that I know of and would be no different than printing out to MS-Word DOC formats. Orion Blastar (talk) 02:46, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm sceptical. Don't these e-book readers support PDFs? What I did to support reading on an iPod touch, was to create PDFs using a large font for each chapter of a book such that you can read it comfortably even on a small display: . --Martin Kraus (talk) 08:31, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes they support PDFs. The ePUB format has some advantages, for example by flowing the text properly to fit the screensize. Gutenberg has a tool that automates the conversion of text to a number of other formats, like the Mobipocket reader one... if that's a free tool, maybe we could grab it? Unusual? Quite TalkQu 17:15, 21 December 2009 (UTC)