http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook hourly 1 1901-01-01T00:00+00:00 http://gmane.org/img/gmane-25t.png http://gmane.org http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1438 Hi, I came across this post from the CC News feed that Cookbookers might be interested to read: <http://thefoodgeek.com/miscellaneous/who-owns-that-recipe> Thefoodgeek.com is licensed CC-BY so I think their material could be repurposed in the Cookbook if desired. Incidentally it might be useful if the Cookbook had a page listing other freely licensed recipe/cooking resources. cheers Brianna Brianna Laugher 2008-11-25T02:36:18 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1437 I just finished watching Richard Baraniuk's 2006 talk at TED (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_baraniuk_on_open_sour ce_learning.html) and took a look at Connexions. I notice that they use CC-by-2.0 (note it's not ShareAlike). So, that is a potential source of content in the future if WMF migrates in the end. I'm only just starting to explore it, I may have more to share later. If you're interested, take a look: http://cnx.org/ -Mike ---- Mike.lifeguard mikelifeguard-97jfqw80gc6171pxa8y+qA< at >public.gmane.org Mike.lifeguard 2008-11-21T00:14:26 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1429 I tried it today, and the "load collection" feature doesn't appear to be working on en.wikibooks. I've tried with several saved collections, and none of them will load. I don't remember the last time I tried to do it, it may have been before the flaggedrevs extension was installed. Any ideas on what might be causing this? Is this error happening for anybody else? Andrew Whitworth 2008-11-18T19:26:08 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1425 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I haven't seen this yet posted to the Textbook-l list or foundation-l so I wanted to make it known that Wikibooks is winding down its logo vote over the next couple weeks. While we're asking people not to specify color, text, and there may be some minor tweaks to style, the end logo will be look extremely similar to what we decide here. Thanks. Cary Bass Volco Wikimedia Foundation -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFJIeLGyQg4JSymDYkRApxjAKDYJ8fH5b6x7L0qrs4W9g+mF51XtwCfYDBD iSVbdENIjUQB4qTk21FMzWk= =9fKj -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Cary Bass 2008-11-17T21:31:51 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1422 Hi, please help us localize some strings used in the generated PDF. The process of localization will be updated to use BetaWiki in the future, but for now we'd appreciate your help. See this page if you have two minutes spare: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PDF_Writer/Localization Thanks, Heiko Heiko Hees 2008-11-14T13:55:50 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1419 First off, I've seen some of the new software changes on the wiki, and they look great. As promised, I got my first book today, and I'm racing through it to come up with feedback for the PediaPress people. I have lots and lots of feedback already, most of it is not urgent or anything and some of it is going to be difficult to implement because it's sort of wikibooks-specific. Having a robust set of configuration options that can be set on the wiki would help alleviate a lot of these things without having to tie the extension to any single wiki. 1) On the table of contents, it says "Articles", when that word really doesn't mean anything for books. The first heading that says "Articles" should either be changed to the name of the book or should be removed entirely. Actually, you could probably read the value from [[MediaWiki:Article]] to make this solution portable. 2) Subpages shouldn't be prepended with the name of the book. For instance, the chapter should just be titled "CHAPTERNAME", not "BOOKNAME/CHAPT Andrew Whitworth 2008-11-13T23:54:01 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1418 Just wanted to post a quick message to the list here to say that I got my first book in the mail today! Actually, I think I would have gotten it on Tuesday except there was a holiday and then the UPS guy came on wednesday when I was at work. The book looks awesome, much better and much higher quality then I was expecting. I've seen books before that were self-published and print-on-demand that were of very low quality, and this is not one of them. It's a good weight paper, good printing and typesetting, nice cover, etc. It's going to be so much more awesome when we get customizable cover images and ISBN numbers, but that can wait. The book dimensions are a little smaller then I expected (I didn't pull out a ruler or anything beforehand), but it's not too too small by any stretch. I wonder if we could have the option to have a larger book size (8x11 or something)? That would help for books with more content, to help keep them under the 800-page limit by increasing the amount of "stuff" per page. Anyway, I' Andrew Whitworth 2008-11-13T19:00:18 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1416 How strict is the 800 page upper limit for printed books? Is there a way we can increase this limit (possibly for a higher price point)? I don't want to say it's common, but I've already found one book that's larger. Foundations of Education and Instructional Assessment, First edition (there are three separate editions of it!!!) is a whopping 870 pages long, not including all the optional frontmatter that could have been included. Obviously, for groups who have put so much effort into their books, I would like to find a way for them to be able to buy and enjoy them. --Andrew Whitworth Andrew Whitworth 2008-11-11T23:58:31 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1413 Hi, we received a lot of feedback that suggests, that the extension needs some usability improvements if it shall be useful to casual visitors. I ´ll share our thoughts on how to improve the situation and it would be great if you could share yours. We distinguish two use cases: * Users want to create collections * Users want to share/find collections = Creating collections = The main challenge for most users is to discover this feature at all - as most visitors simply ignore the sidebar. The current solution having a dedicated portlet for the extension labeled "Create book" is the best we could think off so far. We plan to remove all but the "add wiki page" links if users have no active collection. This will save some space in the sidebar making it less obtrusive if users are not interested in creating collections. When compiling collections users are limited to add articles they are visiting (except for categories). We thought it might be beneficial to permit to add articles which are linked on a page Heiko Hees 2008-11-10T17:18:58 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1409 There have been only a few people who took notice that there was a policy proposal up for discussion, so hopefully this will get a few more people interested. I've proposed a bot policy for approval. I think it's decent. Here's why: * It is descriptive and informative * Uses a lightweight approval process leaving plenty of latitude for bureaucrats * Allows administrators the use of the flood flag (proposal borrowed from Meta, where it's been working very nicely, I think). The flood flag portion is important, I think for a few reasons: * When admins want to move 500 pages at once, it lets them not flood RC. Now that we have move-subpages, this will be important. * Extends temp bot privileges to admins - until now really only bureaucrats could to this (in fact, I think WK might be the only person who's ever done this?) for a few reasons: * Too much trouble to ask for it * 'Crat has to be there to give & remove * There will now actually be permission in policy t Mike.lifeguard 2008-11-09T17:07:50 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1406 I have a few templates on Wikibooks that are designed to show some text with a border around it or with a different background color, to set it apart from the rest of the text. This is used for Examples, Questions, Sidenotes, Vignettes, etc. None of the templates we have now seem to generate borders/background colors in generated PDF files or printed books. Is there a way to offset text like this from normal paragraph text? If not, can one be added? --Andrew Whitworth Andrew Whitworth 2008-11-08T16:15:17 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1404 I've been putting together a colleciton for Wikijunior:Colors[1], and I remembered that the printed books don't come in color. That's a shame, because this is a charming little book for kids that relies pretty heavily on colored pages. What are the chances that we could get some kind of "color option" for printing the books? How much would that affect the price? [1] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior:Colors --Andrew Whitworth Andrew Whitworth 2008-11-08T02:05:08 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1388 I've been using this wiki-to-print extension today, and it's wonderful! However, I have come up with a few details that I would like to mention and hopefully have addressed in the future. Is this list a good place for these points, or should I open bugzilla tickets, or what? 1) The connection to PediaPress seems unreliable. Clicking "Order Book from PediaPress" returns an error about as often as it succeeds. I will try to record more data about this failure mode next time I see it 2) The books generated by PediaPress look amazing (I've just ordered my first one, so I will tell you how it looks when it gets here). However, I would like to be able to adjust the cover image, and possibly list multiple editors on the cover 3) In the generated PDF files, at the top of the GFDL license, there is a shortcut link to "WP:GFDL". This shortcut won't work on en.wikibooks. We either need to localize this to say "WB:GFDL", or we need to provide a fully-qualified URL to a place where a person can actually find the GFDL. 4 Andrew Whitworth 2008-11-05T17:48:57 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1382 For those who aren't on foundation-l, news has arrived that the GFDL 1.3 was released, containing the relicensing clause which could allow us to move to CC-by-sa-3.0 My general impression has been that we think this is a good thing, and we would discuss it if/when the option arrived. So, let's start thinking about this some more. I suggest reading the new bits of the license, the FAQ and perhaps reviewing some comments on foundation-l if you need background. I look forward to some fruitful discussion. -Mike ---- Mike.lifeguard mikelifeguard-97jfqw80gc6171pxa8y+qA< at >public.gmane.org Mike.lifeguard 2008-11-03T17:47:56 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1381 We're not migrated yet, but once we are, the prefix: feature will be /very/ useful for us, I think. Something to look forward to! -Mike ---- Hi all, We now have english wikipedia fully migrated to new servers / new search backend. We cannot fully migrate other wikis until we resolve some hardware issues. In the meantime, here is the overview of new features now deployed on en.wiki: 1) Did you mean... - we now have search suggestions. Care has been taken to provide suggestions that are context-sensitive, i.e. on phrases, proper names, etc.. 2) fuzzy and wildcard queries - a word can be made fuzzy by adding ~ to it's end, e.g. query sarah~ thompson~ will give all different spellings and similar names to sarah thompson. Wildcards can now be prefix and suffix, e.g. *stan will give various countries in central asia. 3) prefix: - using this magic prefix, queries can be limited to pages beginning with certain prefix. E.g. mwsuggest prefix:Wikipedia:Village Pump will search all village pumps and archives for mwsugge Mike.lifeguard 2008-10-31T16:43:39 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1380 Hi all, We're hosting three open knowledge events in London this November that may be of interest to people on this list: * Workshop on Finding and Re-using Public Information - Saturday 1st November 2008, London Knowledge Lab - http://okfn.org/wiki/PublicInformation * Open Everything London - Thursday 6th November 2008, The Roundhouse - http://openeverything.wik.is/London * Workshop on Finding and Re-using Open Scientific Resources - Saturday 8th November 2008, London Knowledge Lab - http://okfn.org/wiki/OpenScience/Workshop If you plan to attend a workshop, please add your name to the wiki. If you plan to come to Open Everything London it might be advisable to book a ticket as there is limited space. More details on the events below. Please circulate as appropriate! Warm regards, Jonathan Gray The Open Knowledge Foundation --- Open Everything London ====================== On 6 November 2008, London will host an Open Everything event, a global conversation about the art, science a Jonathan Gray 2008-10-31T15:51:08 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1377 Hi all, A reminder that the a second open textbook virtual meeting will take place later today: http://blog.okfn.org/2008/10/26/second-open-textbook-virtual-meeting-27th-october/ * When: Monday 27th October 2008, 1800 GMT, 1300 EST or 1100 PST * Where: #okfn channel at oftc.net * Wiki: http://okfn.org/wiki/opentextbooks You can connect via mibbit at: http://ur1.ca/4fh It would be great to see people there! Regards, Jonathan Jonathan Gray 2008-10-27T09:39:03 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1373 OK, so the logo thing has been stagnant for some time now. Someone should wrap up this section by choosing the winner from each proposal (maybe dropping the proposals that have very little support and substituting a popular second choice from the more active proposals) and set up the last poll to choose between those alternatives. Probably [[Wikibooks/Logo/Proposal]] is where that should be taking place (which means nothing to archive, I think :D ) I'd do it myself, but I have too much on my plate for the next week or two and I want this to get done sooner than that. Also, this serves as a reminder to everyone who forgot about it. -Mike Mike.lifeguard 2008-10-24T04:03:40 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1371 The PediaPress technology is now running in all Wikibooks languages. We have also gone ahead and enabled ODT support, so you can export collections to edit them in a word processor. The help is currently available in English and German: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Help:Collections http://de.wikibooks.org/wiki/Hilfe:Sammlungen Help with translating it is appreciated; I've also posted a notice to translators-l to this effect. I've created an English example collection: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Eloquence/Collections/Blended_Learning To get a PDF, ODT or to order a printed copy of that demo, go here: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Collection/load_collection/?colltitle=User:Eloquence/Collections/Blended_Learning To report bugs, please visit: http://code.pediapress.com/ create an account, and create a "new ticket". The PP team is very responsive & helpful. :-) Known issues: * Licensing info isn't perfect. This is a tricky one because proper attribution of collaborative works is generally n Erik Moeller 2008-10-24T01:21:37 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1368 Hi all. As pointed out by John, customization of PDFs generated with the Collection extensioin is currently not possible by the user. Our current goal is to generate PDFs with a layout that works for most of the users out of the box. Therefore we are happy to adapt the default layout to the community consensus. At some point in the (hopefully not to distant) future basic customization will be possible with the Collection extension, especially pagesizes for example. Regards, Volker Volker Haas 2008-10-14T10:55:06 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook/1362 hi, on the level of wiki-book projects, we have just launched the FLOSS Manuals bookstore...you can see it here: http://www.flossmanuals.net and details on how to embed it here: http://www.flossmanuals.net/bookstore Its an 'embeddable' bookstore -designed to fit on the sidebar of your site, and it advertises all books produced by the FLOSS Manuals community using the FM platform. We have some tools that enable print-on-demand print-ready PDF generation from the wiki. The format looks lovely...you can see an example of the PDF copy here: http://www.lulu.com/items/volume_64/3865000/3865224/9/print/g1g1_final.pdf There is a photo of the books someone brought here: http://olpclearningclub.org/2008/10/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiouslee/2925910346/ adam adam hyde 2008-10-13T18:44:49 Search the mailing list at Gmane query http://search.gmane.org/?group=$group=gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook