How is wiki-to-print made?

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Technically seen, wiki-to-print is a web application made in Python with Flask, that can be installed on the same server as where the MediaWiki is installed, or on any other server that you can access with sudo rights.

In practice, it's a version of a DIY configuration and that glues different things together: it takes a wiki page and a stylesheet as input sources (using Python) and renders them into a HTML page (using Pandoc) and a PDF preview page (using Paged.js).

Code

The source code of the wiki-to-print version that is installed at CC can be found at: https://git.vvvvvvaria.org/varia/wiki-to-print/.

The git repository contains the following files and folders: 

├── static/
├── templates/
├── Makefile
├── README.md
├── api.py
├── config.json 
├── config.py
├── requirements.txt
└── web-interface.py
  • static/: folder for static files used by Flask (eg. css and js scripts)
  • templates/: folder for Jinja templates used by Flask
  • Makefile: script you can use to install or run the Flask application
  • api.py: script with all the functions that are used by the Flask application
  • config.json: config script for your wiki-to-print installation
  • config.py: script that binds config.json with web-interface.py
  • requirements.txt: list of software dependencies for wiki-to-print
  • web-interface.py: the Flask application

Other versions and variants of this wiki workflow can be found here:

To install wiki-to-print

  1. make setup: make a virtual environment and install all the requirements
  2. edit config.json: to configure the Flask application
  3. run the Flask application
    1. on your computer: make local
    2. on a server: make server (it uses Gunicorn, as we work with a subdirectory in the wiki-to-print URL on CC, with https://cc.vvvvvvaria.org/wiki-to-print/ as the root of the Flask application)
  4. add a proxy_pass to your webserver configuration, to bind web requests with Gunicorn, here is an example: https://git.vvvvvvaria.org/varia/wiki-to-print/src/branch/master/wiki-to-print.nginx.example
  5. add the following to your LocalSettings.php file: wiki-to-print.LocalSettings.php.example
  6. add the following code to MediaWiki:Common.js: wiki-to-print.Common.js.example
  7. add the following code to MediaWiki:Common.css: wiki-to-print.Common.css.example
  8. you can create a systemd service to run wiki-to-print in the background, here is an example: wiki-to-print.service.example

Flask application

The Flask application is based around the following URLs/routes:

button URL/route Flask action
Unfolded Pdf:Test -
CSS! https://cc.vvvvvvaria.org/wiki-to-print/static/Test.css renders PdfCSS:Test as CSS stylesheet
Preview HTML https://cc.vvvvvvaria.org/wiki-to-print/html/Test renders Pdf:Test as HTML page, using PdfCSS:Test as CSS stylesheet
Preview PDF https://cc.vvvvvvaria.org/wiki-to-print/pdf/Test renders Pdf:Test as PDF preview page (using Paged.js), using PdfCSS:Test as CSS stylesheet

For a more detailed description of how to work with these buttons, see: How to work with wiki-to-print?

Special namespaces

Wiki-to-print uses the Pdf and PdfCSS namespaces to customize the navigation bar.

This means that all wiki-to-print Unfolded pages start with Pdf: and all CSS pages start with PdfCSS:.

The wiki-to-print buttons are added and adjusted with Javascript, using MediaWiki:Common.js. MediaWiki:Common.css is used to style the buttons.

Fonts

Fonts must be hosted outside the wiki. We host fonts at the CC server and just declare their URLs in our CSS. You can also host them in other ways, using font manager software for example.

It's important to use the same domainname to avoid cross-origin errors, or you need to configure your server in such a way that cross-origin links are allowed.

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