Help:Books/For experts

The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

Printed PediaPress books of Wikipedia content

This page gives experienced users details on the advanced functions of the book creation tool. Among other things it explains how the layout of books can be improved and how books are stored on LIMSwiki.

Adding articles to a book

Add a particular revision to your book

Older revisions of a page can be added to a book collection instead of the current version by using the history tab. By choosing to load the relevant older revision from the history page, the wiki page can be added to the book in the same way as before, by clicking the "Add this page to your book" link in the book creator toolbar. (See the step by step guide for more help). If an older revision has been added, this specific revision will always be used. If you add the most current version of a wiki page, the latest revision will always be used.

Add the entire contents of a category in one click

To add the entire contents of a category in one click, first navigate to the relevant category page. Then click the "Add this category to your book" link in the book creator toolbar.

Saving books

Format of stored book pages

Here's an example of a book with the title "My book" and the subtitle "Example", with two chapters named "Foo" and "Bar", each containing three articles, with the last article having a fixed revision number:

== My Book ==
=== Example ===
;Foo
:[[First article]]
:[[Second article]]
:[[Third article]]
;Bar
:[[Fourth article]]
:[[Fifth article]]
:[{{fullurl:Sixth article|oldid=20}}Sixth article version:20]
[[:{{ns:category}}:Books]]

You can also create books without the use of the input box and Special:Books page. The wiki syntax to use is:

Title	The title is contained in double equals signs. Example: `==Title==`
Subtitle	The subtitles is contained in three equals signs. Example: `===Subtitle===`
Chapter headings	Chapter headings are preceded with a semicolon. Example: `;Chapter name`
Add an article	An article is inserted as a wikilink after a colon. Example: `:<nowiki>[[Article title]]</nowiki>`
Use a fixed article revision	To use a fixed revision of the article you can use: Example: `:[{{fullurl:Article name\|oldid=Version number}}Article title]`
Renaming of articles	You can use a pipe ('\|') to rename the article in the book. Example: `:[[Python (Programming language)\|Python]]`

Location of books

Books can either be saved in the user's namespace or as a community book and can be found via LIMSWiki:Books.

Improving book layout

Some wiki-markup can lead to problems in the generation of PDF documents as part of the book feature. This mainly applies to templates, which will be displayed differently in the electronic or print version compared to how they look in the online version of an article. This can be fixed by either substituting the current template or removing the template from the content that cause problems in the PDF. As a rule of thumb, all content (especially templates) that is not useful for an offline version of the document, should be excluded from the print version.

Identifying problems

The most efficient way to identify problems is to go on the individual articles of your book and view the article as a PDF (click "Download as PDF" in the "print/export" box on the left hand side of your screen, towards the bottom). Preview the page, and if something doesn't look right, chances are there's a problem.

Usually there are three kinds of problems:

A template that is not content-related (such as a navigational box) is displayed. See below on how to fix this.
Something looks weird, such as math calculations in the PDF rendering oddly or having superfluous whitespace. This is usually due to a template being coded in a non-standard way, or to a problem with the rendering software. You can try to fix this yourself if you know your way around templates. If you don't know how to fix it or are simply intimidated by templates, leave a message on the talk page of the template, and place a notice at Help:Books/Feedback and someone will look into it.
Content and style problems, such as spelling, grammar, different varieties of English, poorly worded sentences, etc.

Fixing problems

There are four ways to resolve issues caused by templates:

Exclude templates: A template can be excluded from content by adding it to MediaWiki:PDF Template Blacklist.

Note: Many templates use other templates to function. Therefore groups/types of templates can be excluded by adding the commonly used template to this category.

Exclude certain specific content: By using Template:Hide in print, certain specific content, such as a few words or an image, can be excluded from printing.
This content will be printed. {{Hide in print|This content will *not* be printed.}} This content will be printed.
Include certain specific content only in print versions: The Template:Only in print can be used to insert content that shall only be visible in offline versions.
This content will be printed. {{Only in print|This content will only appear in PDFs or printed books, *not* with the browser.}} This content will be printed.

Note: This feature is currently disabled. You can create a print version of a template under the name "Template:TEMPLATENAME/Print" with "Template:TEMPLATENAME" being the name of the original template. If a /Print page exists, it will override the original template.

Content problems such as poorly worded sentences or style problems such as variations in the citation style used can be fixed only by editing the article.

Using a main and supporting articles for a book

One easily definable style of book, in terms of the content it contains, is to include the main article and all supporting articles that are referenced as major expansions of selected sections. Supporting article links typically are included at the top of a section using templates such as {{Main}}, {{See also}} and {{See}}. Books using this content style offer a comprehensive coverage of the main article, usually within a reasonable number of pages.

Template:Book can be used to create a basic main article and supporting articles book. The template also creates links to start subpages for a table of contents plus a books category based on the main article.

Multiwiki books

Using the extension it is currently impossible to create a collection of content from multiple different wikis. However this page shows how to create a book containing articles from multiple wikis.