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mwlib.pdf PDF writer

Overview

This is a MediaWiki to PDF renderer based on the HTML of MediaWiki pages. Since Wikipedia's original output format is HTML, we found that relying on HTML proves to be more reliable than the Wikimarkup used in other PediaPress renderers created previously. The main benefit is that developers can work with familiar technologies like HTML and CSS and face fewer frictions than when converting to different rendering technologies like LaTeX, ODF or DocBook.

Under the hood, the renderer uses PrinceXML which fully supports CSS Paged Media and allows for rendering print-specific elements like table-of-contents and page numbers directly from a HTML/CSS source.

The target output should look like this (thanks Alex Hollender for the designs):

cover Contents Article Font Guidelines

Installation

The PDF renderer requires PrinceXML for creating PDF files:

  • Download Prince
  • Put the prince binary in your path (e.g. /usr/local/bin/prince)
  • Check that prince is working correctly

If Prince is installed correctly, you should see something like this on the command line:

~$ prince
Usage:
  prince [OPTIONS] doc.html              Convert doc.html to doc.pdf
  prince [OPTIONS] doc.html -o out.pdf   Convert doc.html to out.pdf
  prince [OPTIONS] FILES... -o out.pdf   Combine multiple files to out.pdf

Try 'prince --help' for more information.

Now, you are ready to install the project requirements to get started.

$ make install

Getting Started

To render a few arbitrary article from the English Wikipedia, enter the following commands:

$ mw-zip -o scripts.zip -c :en 'Chinese characters' 'Japanese writing system' 'Cyrillic script' 'Indo-Aryan languages'
$ mw-render -wpdf -c scripts.zip -o scripts.pdf

To learn more about the various options of mw-zip use mw-zip --help.

To learn more about the various options of mw-render use mw-render --help.

Math Formulas

Currently, rendering Math Formulas requires TeX (xelatex). Math formulas are cached as SVG files with a hashed name. Please keep an eye on the math_formulas folder since there is no cache management.

The full installation of TeXLive is pretty large (2.5GB). Fortunately, for our purposes a basic distribution and a few additional packages are sufficient.

On a Mac, a good starting point is to install BasicTeX. Other operating systems might have similar "basic" distributions.

After the basic installation completed, use tlmgr to install required additional packages:

$ sudo tlmgr update --self
$ sudo tlmgr install collection-fontsrecommended
$ sudo tlmgr install cancel
$ sudo tlmgr install AMSmath
$ sudo tlmgr install dvisvgm

Contributing

As you will see, rendering has a lot of room for improvement.

Pull requests are welcome.

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2019 PediaPress GmbH

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.