Wikibooks:Reading room/Proposals/2011/March

Define $wgCollectionHierarchyDelimiter = "/" for Wikibooks project(s)
I would like to propose that the definition of, so that when creating a collection (e.g. from the category of a book that already exists but that does not have a collection), the extension save the page with the following syntax in the collection pages: :Chapter name''' instead of the standard syntax, which is :Book name/Chapter name With this change, the title of each page will be correctly displayed without the prefix "Book name/" (and therefore it won't be necessary to correct the collection page right after creating it from Special:Book). This configuration is available since 73454 of the extension and I think it should be enabled by default on all Wikibooks projects, since most projects use the "/" as delimiter. See also these comments.

What do you think? Helder 23:58, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I like it. I think most of the time that's what someone would want, and in the few cases where it's not what is wanted, it can be fixed manually.  --Jomegat (discuss • contribs) 12:28, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * That would be great. I've always had to fix that by hand and cases where you wouldn't want that would be the exception, not the rule. – Adrignola discuss 12:42, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * What are collections used for on Wikibooks? (I gather they are, from the comments here?)  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 13:19, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Collections are the basis for auto-generating a PDF. The PDF may include several pages (or... a "collection" of pages).  The PDF can be turned into a dead-tree version of a book. --Jomegat (discuss • contribs) 13:43, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Where, then, do ".../Print version" pages fit into this? If the entire contents of the book are on a single page, already in the correct order, would one use a collection of that one page?  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:33, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * My opinion is that collections supersede print versions. Often print versions of books run into the transclusion limit and so don't actually contain the full book.  Collections have no such limit.  Additionally, updating a collection is far easier as you don't have to wait for all the pages to be rendered in your browser before you update the list of pages that are included.  The PDF generated can be printed, saved, or ordered as a physical book.  There is no messing with  either as you can add templates to Category:Exclude in print (category name could be changed in settings) or use hide in print/only in print for anything else.  It is a far superior solution both technically and for ease of use, with more flexibility.  "Print versions" are a hack in comparison. – Adrignola discuss 12:45, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I think print versions of a book are a relic from a time when people generated PDFs on their own infrequently and could easily become dated compared to the live version. I guess you could use a book's print version as a single page collection. I think more people would find updating a collection with new pages or changes in the order using the collection interface easier though. --dark lama  12:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I find the idea quite useful. Adrignola, thanks for writing about the templates! Kayau 13:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Interesting. A particularly likely use I've had in mind for my Navlist suite is to automatically generate Print version pages: just as the navlist automatically figures out what links to put on navigation boxes at the tops and bottoms of pages, it should be easy to generate translusions of all the pages of the book in order, with the navigation boxes simply automatically suppressing themselves (doesn't involve noinclude's).


 * What are the translusion limits that print versions come up against? --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 17:40, 16 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Translusion invokes template expansion. I think each template subtracts from a time limit, so if one template eats whatever time remains, than the rest of the templates won't be expanded. I believe some operations are considered more expensive and subtract from the time faster as well. I suggest not relying too much on limits or trying to work around them though as they can change at any time as the parser is changed and improved on. --dark lama  18:18, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Pi zero, do you mean something like this kind of automatic print version generated from the list of pages of the book?
 * Wikipedia has a page about the limits: w:Wikipedia:Template limits. The most problematic one for print versions (mainly the automatic version) is the Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded. It makes (almost?) impossible to get an automatic print version for long books.
 * Ideally, Collection extension should have the option to output HTML too (or the feature could be added to mw:Extension:BookManager), so that editors don't need to keep various "lists of chapters of a book" syncronized (table of contents, print version, collection, navigation...). Helder 13:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
 * For the record: the change was requested on Bug 29648. Helder 22:03, 29 June 2011 (UTC)