Information about Special:Collection.

A great extension, that is actively being developed by pediapress. ~~Could do with more documentation.~~, cf. this post, and

[edit] 1 Some tips

Really Template:Saved_book (which is automatically added to collection pages) should have links for generating pdfs etc added automatially. Looking through the code we find

Special:Book/load_collection/?colltitle=COLLECTION

will load the collection. A bit more digging (also on the Searching the google group for 'one click') also suggests a way of generating a pdf with one click:

Special:Book/render_collection/?colltitle=COLLECTION&writer=rl

So a couple of templates:

Template:LoadBook (explanations included with template)
Template:MakePdf (explanations included with template)

Examples for "single click" pdf and odt generation: MediaWiki:Books/HCPT.

Update: The German wikipedia has got such a template: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorlage:Gespeichertes_Buch.

[edit] 2 Issues, problems, feature requests

[edit] 2.1 Current Issues

Spurious rows in tables. Collection/tables: When this table is printed, spurious <tr> are inserted (presumably due to the length of the cell). For single column tables, the formatting is not preserved.
- Reported here: http://groups.google.com/group/mwlib/browse_thread/thread/5fabba8602015a4f#
- ... and fixed the same day! Great stuff!

[edit] 2.2 Resolved issues

Chapter headings (inserted with ";" in book definition) are missing:
- http://groups.google.com/group/mwlib/browse_thread/thread/8dcb009eedfaf8a5
- Use this as example http://www.ict4e.net/wiki/Collection/issue1/book
- Fixed.
SkinMonoBook::getTitle() causes fatal error
- http://groups.google.com/group/mwlib/browse_thread/thread/785cdd67c81d8f8d
- Fixed.
issues - problem with <blockquote>
- Submitted to mailing list, see here http://groups.google.com/group/mwlib/browse_thread/thread/f1849c37e91ad141
- Fix to propagate within a few days: Should work for <blockquote><div><i></i></div></blockquote>, but won't work for background colours.
- FIXED (Bjoern 16:49, 18 April 2009 (UTC)), see issues.
issue1 - problem when a page is transcluded into a book chapter and also appears as part of the book definition
- http://groups.google.com/group/mwlib/browse_thread/thread/ca0edf712dedee51
- FIXED (Bjoern 11:47, 19 April 2009 (UTC)), possibly since http://groups.google.com/group/mwlib/browse_thread/thread/8dcb009eedfaf8a5
issue2 - problem with transcluding pages from alternative namespaces (known, open bug)
- WORKAROUND: If transcluding pages from alternative namespaces, include leading ":", see issue2.
issue3 obsolete - this was the same as issue2.
issue4 - book title not printed if there is no space between "==" and the title.
- WORKAROUND: Be sure to leave spaces.
- http://code.pediapress.com/wiki/ticket/486
- http://groups.google.com/group/mwlib/browse_thread/thread/ad9d43116e409a48#
- FIXED: Turns out it affected the Extension, now fixed: see here. If you update your extension code from svn, you'll have the fix.
A curl timeout issue? http://groups.google.com/group/mwlib/browse_thread/thread/d9fd37c7112be0b9
- This disappeared a while back.
[1] thread about pdf article names
[2] thread about images

[edit] 2.3 Feature requests

Numbered chapters, and numbered headings within chapters.
Customised front page (particularly further lines of text, or use of the central part of the page, say for an image)

[edit] 2.3.1 Implemented feature requests

Table of contents - a table of contents is now produced automatically!

[edit] 3 Links

Template:Saved_book

_mwlib: http://code.pediapress.com/wiki/wiki/mwlib
- http://groups.google.com/group/mwlib
_`PediaPress GmbH`: http://pediapress.com/
_`Wikimedia Foundation`: http://wikimediafoundation.org/
- http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikis_Go_Printable
_`Commonwealth of Learning`: http://www.col.org/
_`MediaWiki API`: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API
http://www.wikieducator.org/Help:Collections
http://edu.onnz.net/wikieducator/package/
http://pediapress.com/collection/
http://pediapress.com/books/

Good documentation:

German version:

Contents