Mailing List Archive

On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 19:29:33 +1000, Cameron Stephen <camstephen@iprimus.com.au> wrote:
> OK, for my next dumb question ~
> Does anyone know what and how to hack my wiki to show a "printable version"
> option on my pages in monobook?

I was suspecting that the lack of "printable version" in monobook indicated that rules for printouts were indicated in the stylesheet itself, and after a quick test just now this indeed appears to be the case.

(This is hardly intuitive--not knowing this, on Wikipedia recently I have been switching to classic skin to get printable versions.)


*Muke!
--
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LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
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FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
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Muke Tever wrote:
> I was suspecting that the lack of "printable version" in monobook indicated that rules for printouts were indicated in the stylesheet itself, and after a quick test just now this indeed appears to be the case.
>
> (This is hardly intuitive--not knowing this, on Wikipedia recently I have been switching to classic skin to get printable versions.)

Yes, I must say I wouldn't have thought of this, and a non-technical
user would almost certainly just think "this won't look very good
printed out". I wonder if there's some way of making it more obvious
that this is the case...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]

I agree.
I doubted the print result for metawiki. But It is terrific when I try
to print a page out. Maybe a fake printable version link is needed for
common users to know: this page is proper to be printed out.


On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 14:56:58 +0100, Rowan Collins
<rowan.collins@gmail.com> wrote:
> Muke Tever wrote:
> > I was suspecting that the lack of "printable version" in monobook indicated that rules for printouts were indicated in the stylesheet itself, and after a quick test just now this indeed appears to be the case.
> >
> > (This is hardly intuitive--not knowing this, on Wikipedia recently I have been switching to classic skin to get printable versions.)
>
> Yes, I must say I wouldn't have thought of this, and a non-technical
> user would almost certainly just think "this won't look very good
> printed out". I wonder if there's some way of making it more obvious
> that this is the case...
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> MediaWiki-l mailing list
> MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
>



--
Be good....

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"Cameron Stephen" <camstephen@iprimus.com.au> writes:

> OK, for my next dumb question ~
> Does anyone know what and how to hack my wiki to show a "printable version"
> option on my pages in monobook?

I thought that was called the "classic" skin. Am I wrong?
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Am Tue, 14 Sep 2004 14:56:58 +0100 hat Rowan Collins
<rowan.collins@gmail.com> geschrieben:

> Muke Tever wrote:
>> I was suspecting that the lack of "printable version" in monobook
>> indicated that rules for printouts were indicated in the stylesheet
>> itself, and after a quick test just now this indeed appears to be the
>> case.
>>
>> (This is hardly intuitive--not knowing this, on Wikipedia recently I
>> have been switching to classic skin to get printable versions.)
>
> Yes, I must say I wouldn't have thought of this, and a non-technical
> user would almost certainly just think "this won't look very good
> printed out". I wonder if there's some way of making it more obvious
> that this is the case...
>

I know this is not a solution to that problem though I think it would be
sufficient to mention it somewhere accessible but if you use the Opera
browser you get a printing preview just by hitting the P key. Then you see
what ya gonna get.
I can imagine that ie got something like that too.

--tic

Paul Johnson <baloo@ursine.dyndns.org> wrote:

> > OK, for my next dumb question ~
> > Does anyone know what and how to hack my wiki to show a "printable version"
> > option on my pages in monobook?
>
> I thought that was called the "classic" skin. Am I wrong?

The Classic skin, I believe, had/has a link to a special "Print
Version" of each article. The MonoBook skin, by using CSS, simply
tells the browser to print the page differently than it displays it.
This is of course rather more "magic" than most users expect...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]

Quoting Rowan Collins, from the post of Tue, 14 Sep:
> > I thought that was called the "classic" skin. Am I wrong?
>
> The Classic skin, I believe, had/has a link to a special "Print
> Version" of each article. The MonoBook skin, by using CSS, simply
> tells the browser to print the page differently than it displays it.
> This is of course rather more "magic" than most users expect...

indeed, people expect it to render correctly as they see it on the
screen. People also expect it to at least render inteligably, but if you
try this on a Hebrew Wiki (and I suppose Farsi and Arabic will not be
different) you get your text left-justified and with many overlapping
characters here and there. not a pretty sight.

I like the "print magic" idea, but is it possible to have a setting to
disable it?

--
Bachelor number one
Ira Abramov
http://ira.abramov.org/email/

On Sep 14, 2004, at 12:51 PM, Ira Abramov wrote:
> indeed, people expect it to render correctly as they see it on the
> screen. People also expect it to at least render inteligably, but if
> you
> try this on a Hebrew Wiki (and I suppose Farsi and Arabic will not be
> different) you get your text left-justified and with many overlapping
> characters here and there. not a pretty sight.

May be a bug in the print stylesheet hard-coding alignment values
without respect for right-to-left languages. Could you open a bug
report at
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/ to make sure this gets fixed?

> I like the "print magic" idea, but is it possible to have a setting to
> disable it?

No, nor should there be; MonoBook by itself would not print correctly
and we need to include extra footers in the printed version for URLs
etc.

However we may add the useless "printable version" link to MonoBook
just because people seem unwilling to use "print preview". :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

One thing to consider,

I find that the 'printable view' is useful for things *other* than printing
- i.e. screen captures. I find the omission of this function from the
monobook skin to be regretable.

Of course admins and poweruser's can be informed to switch skins, but the
casual user is unlikely to make the distinction. Of course the installation
can be modified to use an alternate skin as the default - but monobook is
*much more* attractive IMHO.

Best Regards,

JT

===
You said:
===

Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:06:02 +0100
From: Rowan Collins <rowan.collins@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Printable Version?
To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
<mediawiki-l@wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <9f02ca4c040914120612a6cc7a@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

Paul Johnson <baloo@ursine.dyndns.org> wrote:

> > OK, for my next dumb question ~
> > Does anyone know what and how to hack my wiki to show a "printable
version"
> > option on my pages in monobook?
>
> I thought that was called the "classic" skin. Am I wrong?

The Classic skin, I believe, had/has a link to a special "Print
Version" of each article. The MonoBook skin, by using CSS, simply
tells the browser to print the page differently than it displays it.
This is of course rather more "magic" than most users expect...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]

can someone hack the monobook skin to make the print button available?
or can someone give me basic instruction so i could try it?


On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 09:17:23 -0700, jt.thomas@verizonwireless.com
<jt.thomas@verizonwireless.com> wrote:
> One thing to consider,
>
> I find that the 'printable view' is useful for things *other* than printing
> - i.e. screen captures. I find the omission of this function from the
> monobook skin to be regretable.
>
> Of course admins and poweruser's can be informed to switch skins, but the
> casual user is unlikely to make the distinction. Of course the installation
> can be modified to use an alternate skin as the default - but monobook is
> *much more* attractive IMHO.
>
> Best Regards,
>
> JT
>
> ===
> You said:
> ===
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:06:02 +0100
> From: Rowan Collins <rowan.collins@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Printable Version?
> To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
> <mediawiki-l@wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <9f02ca4c040914120612a6cc7a@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
>
>
> Paul Johnson <baloo@ursine.dyndns.org> wrote:
>
> > > OK, for my next dumb question ~
> > > Does anyone know what and how to hack my wiki to show a "printable
> version"
> > > option on my pages in monobook?
> >
> > I thought that was called the "classic" skin. Am I wrong?
>
> The Classic skin, I believe, had/has a link to a special "Print
> Version" of each article. The MonoBook skin, by using CSS, simply
> tells the browser to print the page differently than it displays it.
> This is of course rather more "magic" than most users expect...
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]
>
> _______________________________________________
> MediaWiki-l mailing list
> MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
>

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Top posting considered harmful.
http://ursine.dyndns.org/wiki/index.php?title=Top_Posting

Breck Yunits <breck7@gmail.com> writes:

> can someone hack the monobook skin to make the print button available?
> or can someone give me basic instruction so i could try it?

A few posts back, there was an explanation that this is not needed as
the style sheet has a definition for printing. I would assume this
was done entirely to avoid having to put a rather amateurish "click
this for a printable version of our broken design" link...
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Firefox, IE, and Opera all seem to have Print Preview capabilities, is
that inadequate for your needs?

I'd personally prefer to not clutter up Monobook with things like a
print icon or other text.

regards,
-Nick

JT.Thomas@VerizonWireless.com wrote:

>One thing to consider,
>
>I find that the 'printable view' is useful for things *other* than printing
>- i.e. screen captures. I find the omission of this function from the
>monobook skin to be regretable.
>
>Of course admins and poweruser's can be informed to switch skins, but the
>casual user is unlikely to make the distinction. Of course the installation
>can be modified to use an alternate skin as the default - but monobook is
>*much more* attractive IMHO.
>
>Best Regards,
>
>JT
>
>===
>You said:
>===
>
>Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:06:02 +0100
>From: Rowan Collins <rowan.collins@gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Printable Version?
>To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
> <mediawiki-l@wikimedia.org>
>Message-ID: <9f02ca4c040914120612a6cc7a@mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
>Paul Johnson <baloo@ursine.dyndns.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>>>OK, for my next dumb question ~
>>>Does anyone know what and how to hack my wiki to show a "printable
>>>
>>>
>version"
>
>
>>>option on my pages in monobook?
>>>
>>>
>>I thought that was called the "classic" skin. Am I wrong?
>>
>>
>
>The Classic skin, I believe, had/has a link to a special "Print
>Version" of each article. The MonoBook skin, by using CSS, simply
>tells the browser to print the page differently than it displays it.
>This is of course rather more "magic" than most users expect...
>
>
>

Again this creates a problem for the casual user and a dependence upon the
client software to properly render a 'print preview.'

Perhaps it would be appropriate to include this in the user preferences
(apply to all skins?) to include/exclude the 'printable view' link.

This would allow the site administrator to easily change the default
preference profile as appropriate as well as allowing the user's to override
that behavior in their personal preference profile.

Best Regards,

JT

===
You Said:
===

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 10:34:10 -0700
From: Nick Triantos <nick@triantos.com>
Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Printable Version?
To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
<mediawiki-l@Wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <41487D12.1070707@triantos.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Firefox, IE, and Opera all seem to have Print Preview capabilities, is
that inadequate for your needs?

I'd personally prefer to not clutter up Monobook with things like a
print icon or other text.

regards,
-Nick

The only thing that browsers generally do is remove background colors, I think.

What they (we) are trying to figure out is if there is a server-side
printing option. This would only show the content, not the header,
footer, or side bar. (I assume other options would happen as well).
Such on option is also useful for bots or specific/automated browser
(ie, someone made an IE shell for Wikipedia).

On a semi-related topic, is there a way in MediaWiki for it to just
return the stored wikitax? ie, index.php?page=Main_Page&mode=raw

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 10:34:10 -0700, Nick Triantos <nick@triantos.com> wrote:
> Firefox, IE, and Opera all seem to have Print Preview capabilities, is
> that inadequate for your needs?
>
> I'd personally prefer to not clutter up Monobook with things like a
> print icon or other text.
>
> regards,
> -Nick
>
>
>
> JT.Thomas@VerizonWireless.com wrote:
>
> >One thing to consider,
> >
> >I find that the 'printable view' is useful for things *other* than printing
> >- i.e. screen captures. I find the omission of this function from the
> >monobook skin to be regretable.
> >
> >Of course admins and poweruser's can be informed to switch skins, but the
> >casual user is unlikely to make the distinction. Of course the installation
> >can be modified to use an alternate skin as the default - but monobook is
> >*much more* attractive IMHO.
> >
> >Best Regards,
> >
> >JT
> >
> >===
> >You said:
> >===
> >
> >Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:06:02 +0100
> >From: Rowan Collins <rowan.collins@gmail.com>
> >Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Printable Version?
> >To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
> > <mediawiki-l@wikimedia.org>
> >Message-ID: <9f02ca4c040914120612a6cc7a@mail.gmail.com>
> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> >
> >Paul Johnson <baloo@ursine.dyndns.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>>OK, for my next dumb question ~
> >>>Does anyone know what and how to hack my wiki to show a "printable
> >>>
> >>>
> >version"
> >
> >
> >>>option on my pages in monobook?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>I thought that was called the "classic" skin. Am I wrong?
> >>
> >>
> >
> >The Classic skin, I believe, had/has a link to a special "Print
> >Version" of each article. The MonoBook skin, by using CSS, simply
> >tells the browser to print the page differently than it displays it.
> >This is of course rather more "magic" than most users expect...
> >
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> MediaWiki-l mailing list
> MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
>



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On Sep 15, 2004, at 12:52 PM, Jamie Bliss wrote:
> What they (we) are trying to figure out is if there is a server-side
> printing option. This would only show the content, not the header,
> footer, or side bar. (I assume other options would happen as well).
> Such on option is also useful for bots or specific/automated browser
> (ie, someone made an IE shell for Wikipedia).

There is no longer a distinct printable display. The "printable
version" on the old skins just includes the print stylesheet for
on-screen display.

> On a semi-related topic, is there a way in MediaWiki for it to just
> return the stored wikitax? ie, index.php?page=Main_Page&mode=raw

index.php?title=Main_Page&action=raw

This naturally doesn't include metadata such as the last edit time,
author, comment, etc. If you need that, use Special:Export.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)