Help:Books

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EduTechWiki Books

EduTechWiki Books are PDF versions of a collection of articles (and just that!). You may create one yourself (read the manual at Wikimedia or download one from the category of saved Books books.

You either may download a free PDF file or order it as Print Book through PediaPress. Before you do the latter, you may first look at the free PDF. "Print book" does not mean "edited quality book". It's just quality print (including a table of contents and index). If your order such a print book, you will probably save money since printing 300 or more pages on your own printer isn't cheap either. In addition, you will support Wikipedia (and neither TECFA nor DKS). I created EduTechWiki for organizing my knowledge, for fun, for better teaching and glory, not for money ...

Warning: Some contents don't print well, in particular computer code near pictures, long source code lines, CSS3, and special graphics created by extensions such as MetaUML. You may check the PDF first before you order from PediaPress. Also, PediaPress shows you a preview that you can examine. A good example to look at is the Flash tutorials. I ordered the book sometimes in spring 2009 and found it more ergonomic than the pile of PDF from the printer. Delivery took about 10 days. Sometimes in 2010 I'll make a list of collections I consider good enough to be printed and to be used as cheap textbooks for example. I don't feel that I am there yet right now.

- Daniel K. Schneider 17:48, 16 September 2009 (UTC).

General user information and more help

Please be nice with our server. This extension is very CPU intensive and will slow down the server. Only create a "book" if you need it and do not create two books at the same time. - Daniel K. Schneider 17:48, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Very basic help:

  • Creating a book should be self-explaining with the new interface. If you click on "create book" (bottom) left you will see a widget on top. To stop creating books, click on disable :)

Basic help:

Further help:

Generated books

Generated books can be found in the Books category. Just click on the PDF. Please do not force re-rendering of a book, since the process will slow down the wiki and you will have to wait 5 minutes. As soon as an article is changed, the server will re-render it anyhow. So you always will get the latest edition.

I also would appreciate if people who found this feature useful and did create a nice larger collection could save the collection (you must fill in the form to give it a name). To help you with the motivation part: Once a book is saved, you then can edit its structure as wiki code (I find that easier than dragging around items ...)

Screen capture of the Book creation and management page - sept. 2009

General information

See also: the wiki book article.

For wiki maintainers

See Mediawiki collection extension installation