In BlueSpice pro, wiki pages can be displayed as a structured book with chapter navigation. A book can also be printed as a PDF file with a cover sheet.
Characteristics of books
Books have the following characteristics:
- On book pages, the book navigation is displayed instead of the main navigation.
- A wiki page can be in multiple books.
- Books can be printed completely or partially as a PDF with a cover sheet.
- Books can be grouped into individual bookshelves.
Creating a book
Books are created from the page Special:Books.
To create a book:
- Click Create new book in the actions menu of the page tools. This opens a dialog box.
- Enter a book title.
- Enter a subtitle (optional).
- Select a bookshelf (optional). This puts the book in a group of books. If you do not select a bookshelf, the book will be listed under the heading Various books.
- Upload or select a cover image (optional). If you do not upload or select a cover image, a random cover image will be applied.
- Click Save. The book is now shown in its bookshelf group and can be edited.
- Click Done. The book editor loads next.
Editing a book
You are now in the book editing mode.
- Click the Plus button (1). A dialog window opens.
- Search for a page in the wiki and select it. If a different name is to be displayed in the book navigation, you can enter a display title (optional).
- Click Done.
- Add additional pages.
- Click the arrow of the Save button and select Save and add chapter navigation. This process inserts the
<bookshelf />tag into the source code of all wiki pages in the book. This causes a revision of the pages.
Adding elements
Editing meta data
While editing a book (adding or removing pages), metadata for the book can be added. References to these metadata can be included in the PDF template. To edit metadata, select the top-most node of the book (first page) and click the wrench icon. A dialog with a drop-down selection of the following options is available:
- Title
- Subtitle
- Author 1
- Author 2
- Document-ID
- Document type
- Department
- Version
- Bookshelf image
- Template (PDF): If you maintain multiple PDF templates for books, you can select one of them here.
- Table of Contents (Only article titles, or Embed article TOCs)
It is also possible to add your own met data for use in the <booklist>-tag, for example.
Mass adding pages
After clicking "Mass add", a dialog is opened. It contains different criteria for page selection:
- All pages of a category
- All subpages of a certain page
- From a page collection - page collections are lists of pages located in the MediaWiki namespace. They are usually created from a Word import or from search results.
After adding your book pages click Save at the bottom of the page. Now you have created a page in the namespace Book. It simply contains the list of pages that have been added to the book.
Exporting a book
Books, individual chapters or even individual book pages can be exported as PDF files:
- Open the book in the book manager.
- Select each of the pages or chapters to export by clicking the appropriate check boxes. Sub-chapters are selected automatically.
- Click the Export Selections drop-down menu to open a list of the available formats.
More actions
Delete
When you delete a book, you only remove the book page of the book (that is, the table of contents) in the "Book" namespace. However, the wiki pages in the book are not deleted.
Edit metadata
This provides the same functionalityas the button Edit meta data in the menu editor.
Assign
A book page can be assigned to individual users or usergroups like any other wiki page. The book will then show up under the user's assignments in the user menu.
Configuration
Display options
Book
- Show book chapter pager after content: Displays previous/next book page navigation at the end of each book page. (1)
- Show book chapter pager before content: Displays previous/next book page navigation at the beginning of each book page. (2)
- Use display title from book source on article: Shows the title from the book navigation as page title instead of the page name.
Content structuring
Prepend article table of contents and headlines with book numberation: The page TOC does not start with the main heading 1, but with the actual number from the book chapter (see screenshot). If users have activated in their user preferences to "auto-number headings", the numbering system is matched accordingly.
Export
- Supress namespace prefix of book articles in output: The namespace prefix of an article is not shown in PDFs.
Skinning
- Show entrypoint "Books": Adds a link to the page Special:Books to the main navigation entrypoints.
Export
Wiki administrators can make the following adjustments for the book export:
- Show stabilization information in PDF export:
Prints the timestamp for the last approved version below the page headings in the PDF (date of approval and date of last edit before approval).
- Supress namespace prefix of book articles in output: The namespace prefix of an article is not shown in PDFs.
- Show watermark for expired pages in PDF: Shows the watermark for expired pages in PDFs.
- Show watermark for expired pages in print version: Shows the watermark for expired pages when a page is printed.
Configuring the file size limits (server)
By default, the book export is limited to 50MB in file size. To adjust this value, complete the following steps:
- In Apache Tomcat, open the file web.xml:
sudo -s nano /opt/tomcat/webapps/manager/WEB-INF/web.xml
- Look for the following lines and adjust the value (e.g. for 250MB=26214400)
<max-file-size>262144000</max-file-size> <max-request-size>262144000</max-request-size>
- The web app BShtml2PDF also has a setting that needs to be adjusted:
nano /opt/tomcat/webapps/BShtml2PDF/WEB-INF
- Enter your values in the following lines:
<param-name>maxMemSize</param-name> <param-value>26214400</param-value> <param-name>maxFileize</param-name> <param-value>26214400</param-value>
- Restart Apache Tomcat
service tomcat restart
Differences to previous versions
- A page can now be in multiple books.
- There are no more private or temporary books, since these were edge use cases.
- There is no option to duplicate a book, since this was also an edge use case.
- There is no more separate book manager. All books can now be managed directly from the Books page.
Including a book table of contents on a page v4.4+
The Content droplet “Book table of contents” can be used to insert the an entire book TOC or an individual chapter navigation of a book on any wiki page.
Adding a PDF-download link to a page
The Content droplet “Book PDF link” can be used to insert a link on a page that will download a book directly as a PDF.
Permissions
To create and edit books, users need edit rights in Book namespace. Additionally, a user can only add pages to the book that that user can read. If a user tries to export a book to PDF that contains pages for which the user does not have permissions, the user will get an error message.
