Wikisource:Scriptorium/Help

How to add formulas

Hi, I'm wondering how to correctly add formulas, such as the ones on this and this page. I have taken a look at Fractions and functions but that confuses me the longer i look at it. Thanks Nobody (talk) 11:36, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

MathML can get complicated. You can get started by clicking around at mw:Manual:Math and reverse engineering existing math formulas. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:39, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi Koavf, thanks for that link, I just tried adding the first one with the help of Help:Displaying a formula here. If you find the time could you see if I did it right? Thanks Nobody (talk) 12:05, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Looks properly formatted and semantically correct to me. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 12:08, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Nobody,

If it helps, there are also the <math></math> tags, which might provide both a simpler syntax, and subjectively, an improved rendering of the equations. For example, {{math|1 - y²}} yields 1 - y², compared to <math>1-y^2</math> which yields $1-y^{2}$ (where you no longer need spaces around operators, if you want them, and the negative sign is no longer diminutive). Ultimately up to you though, but if you do use <math></math>, and are looking for examples to work from, you can always try many of the pages in Calculus Made Easy, which came through the MC a while back, and was the work of an unregistered user.

Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 22:41, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi TeysaKarlov, I'll probably use whatever makes it look closer the original. I currently am stuck on this page with a symbol I don't know. It looks like a t, but no idea what style it is. Nobody (talk) 05:06, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

That is τ (tau), one of the Greek letters shamelessly stolen by mathematicians and physicists. To render, you can find it in the insert menu among the other Greek there, or it can be represented as I did here with &tau; or <math>\tau</math>.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 13:08, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

An attempt to add a book scan for "From the Earth to the Moon"

Hello. I'm trying to create Index:From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon_direct_in_ninety-seven_hours_and_twenty_minutes,_and_a_trip_round_it_(IA_fromearthtomoond00vern).pdf page, but the image quality in this PDF is just hideous and makes my eyes bleed. On the other hand, there are also high quality raw jpegs for this book stored in a big archive at https://archive.org/download/fromearthtomoond00vern

Would it be a good idea to create a decent quality DjVu file, replacing the overcompressed PDF? Also what's the proper naming convention for the index pages? --Ssvb (talk) 13:08, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

(I'm not aware of any naming conventions for indexes)

Making a DjVu out of JP2s is often done, and can be done via djvulibre (documentation on use and alternatives at c:Help:Creating a DjVu file).

I'm doing the conversion, I'll ping you once it's done.

What name would you like for the index? same as the pdf? — Alien333 ( what I did
why I did it wrong ) 14:03, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! From the purely technical side, I know how to create a DjVu file. As for the name of the index, I wondered if any kind of common unofficial conventions exist for naming indexes of translated books. Should it include the year of the publication and/or the name(s) of the translator(s) for disambiguation purposes? The Wikipedia article From the Earth to the Moon says that this particular translation was done in 1873, but the title page has 1874 printed on it and there was another edition from a different translator also published in 1874.

I would like to also experiment with adding a text layer to the DjVu file. So that it's conforming to the English Wikisource formatting rules (with words hyphenation automatically removed and the {{nop}} templates added where appropriate). --Ssvb (talk) 14:30, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

When you say removing hyphenation, what hyphenation are you talking about? on end of page? on end of lines?

Also, there isn't really a way to automatically add nop's where appropriate. What you could try is checking if the first line of the next page has an offset, but you need for that to differentiate the header from the body, to take care of images and OCR is not a perfect science so there's always a risk of a spot on the page adding an O at the wrong place, etc. In any case, you'll have to manually review each case, so there's not much point. — Alien333 ( what I did
why I did it wrong ) 14:40, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

You can remove end-of-line hyphenation to a reasonable approximation, but you'll probably only get about 80% because the rest are properly hyphenated words and you can't detect these without functionally infinite word lists (and books use inconsistent hyphenation rules anyway). This may not be optimal because many contributors prefer to preserve the original lineation when proofreading (to keep track of where they are) and only remove hard line breaks at the end. I have a JavaScript that does a simple regex-based hyphen removal that's "good enough".

Detecting when to add a {{nop}} is possible, but it probably requires machine learning ("AI") in practice. I don't think the effort will be worth the investment to make it, unless there's a ready-made tool for it out there that I'm not aware of. Xover (talk) 15:04, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Machine learning always has an error rate, that is likely larger than that of a human proofreader, given that printing is often inconsistent, and you can't train a neural network for every type of printing/OCR error. — Alien333 ( what I did
why I did it wrong ) 15:08, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

@Xover: It doesn't need to be perfect, because proofreading is still needed anyway. The goal is to reduce the amount of time spent by a proofreader on editing text. I found end-of-line hyphenation correction to be one of the most annoying activities during proofreading. I also have a JavaScript myself, which removes end-of-line hyphenation while preserving the original lineation. If a proofreader removes hard line breaks at the end, then the text will be only harder to review for a validator.

Adding {{nop}} markers should be technically possible for a DjVu creator tool, because such tool can look one page ahead and use this additional information for its decision making. And it doesn't need to always guess everything perfectly. Though you may be right and things like running headers may make it harder to do or less reliable. --Ssvb (talk) 16:39, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

If typing {{nop}} is your problem, there's a previous page nop gadget to do that from the following page. — Alien333 ( what I did
why I did it wrong ) 16:46, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

@Ssvb: Index pages must have the same name as the File:, because that's how Proofread Page connects the two. Files, though, don't really have hard rules beyond being descriptive. I recommend the schema Title (year).djvu (e.g. Sixes and Sevens (1911).djvu) because it is sufficiently unique to avoid collisions, descriptive, and comports with common bibliographic conventions. The year is the year of publication of the edition of which the scan represents a copy (so probably 1874 for this text). If further disambiguation is needed (relatively rare) one can add, for example, the publisher in the parenthesis (e.g. Sixes and Sevens (Doubleday, 1911).djvu). Others prefer other schemas and there is no hard rule for it, so this is just my recommendation. Xover (talk) 14:58, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh, and "Index:From the Earth to the Moon direct in ninety-seven hours and twenty minutes, and a trip round it (IA fromearthtomoond00vern).pdf" was automatically generated by a bot doing a bulk import of the Internet Archive. It is not a good practice for naming files. It just grabs the title given at IA (very arbitrarily set from some library catalog somewhere) and tacks on the IA identifier. It was made by one person and was interested only in bulk-importing. Please don't replicate this file naming schema. "From the Earth to the Moon" is the sensible title to apply here. Xover (talk) 15:08, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

This perfectly answers all my questions on this matter. Thanks a lot for providing such detailed explanations. --Ssvb (talk) 15:44, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

(Since you know how to do it, I stopped the conversion) — Alien333 ( what I did
why I did it wrong ) 15:14, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Footnotes at the bottom of a chapter in Main, at the bottom of the page in Page:

Hi. Looking at Page:ChroniclesofEarlyMelbournevol.1.pdf/41 I have a footnote, which displays correctly, but is completely wrongly placed at The_Chronicles_of_Early_Melbourne/Volume_1/Chapter_3. How can I make these footnotes - or rather their positioning - namespace aware? Thanks. CharlesSpencer (talk) 15:23, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

@CharlesSpencer: By following our guidance for footnotes at H:REF. Short version: use <ref>...</ref> and {{smallrefs}}. Xover (talk) 15:36, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! All very clear... CharlesSpencer (talk) 15:55, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Sharing CSS between volumes

In Help:Page styles I see this:

You can redirect a `/styles.css` to another CSS page (for example if a set of volumes share the same styles) but the redirect page may need to have the "content model" changed to "wikitext" (from "sanitized-css"), which currently requires an admin.

Well, I'd like to share the CSS between volumes of EB456S... how can I get an admin to do the thing? Bloated Dummy (talk) 21:09, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

For admin requests in general, make them at WS:AN.

In this specific case, though, there's a way to do it without admins, though it's a bit hacky, with @import, with something like:

@import "https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=[insert page name]&action=raw&type=text/css";

— Alien333 ( what I did
why I did it wrong ) 23:08, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll give it a go. Bloated Dummy (talk) 00:06, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Despite the annoyance of having to ask an admin, it is generally preferable to use redirects for this purpose. @import has security implications that may conceivably lead to limiting that use of it in the future, and with redirects we can use the normal on-wiki tools for this (e.g. Special:WhatLinksHere) that do not work with @import.

PS. cf. Class naming conventions, use the _ prefix for class names in per-work styles to avoid collisions with classes from other sources. Xover (talk) 07:25, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

I created a redirect at vol. 2, but not the others since they do not exist yet. Please feel free to grab me, or post at WS:AN, when you create the index for subsequent volumes. Xover (talk) 07:29, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Okay, thanks.

Re: the naming conventions, I'll try to rename the classes I already added. Bloated Dummy (talk) 12:17, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

There's also another trick where if you create a page in a certain content model, it keeps it when you move it.

We can in this case create a page which will by default be wikitext, such as a userspace page, and then move it to an Index:/styles.css, and it'll still be wikitext. — Alien333 ( what I did
why I did it wrong ) 08:34, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Hmm. It'd probably also work to create the stylesheet in one of the subordinate indexes, then move it by turns through all of them until it finally ends up in volume 1 / its permanent location, and then manually update all the redirects thus created. But those are all hyper-complicated technical approaches that we can't subject our contributors in general to. Thus the guidance to just request it at WS:AN and let an admin sort it out. Xover (talk) 10:21, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

{{REDIRECT|Index:title/styles.css}} would do the same thing as moving the page would. Hmm. Maybe three curly brackets on each side. But "Move" just deposits one of these wiki directives and displays a suggestion for how to handle things after the move which should be ignored for this case.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 13:54, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Requesting assistance researching authors

We have three author pages for people named Duncan Campbell, and very limited information about any of them. If anyone would like to assist with researching biographical information for them, it would be appreciated.

• Author:Duncan Campbell (fl. 1756)
• Author:Duncan Campbell (fl. 19th century)
• Author:Duncan Campbell (fl. 1915)

—Beleg Tâl (talk) 14:59, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I found:

• "Campbell, Duncan," in Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, London: Smith, Elder, & Co. (1885–1900) in 63 vols.

but I'm not sure whether it actually refers to the first Duncan Campbell listed, or is a fourth one. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:45, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey@Beleg Tâl Assuming the fl. 1756 date is correct, based on the dates quoted in the DNB he's a fourth one. Chrisguise (talk) 12:41, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Correct, but only if the fl. date is correct, and it may not be. That date assumes the one publication we have was not published posthumously, or that it was not published under the name solely to capitalize on someone's fame. Hence, I am not sure whether it is the same person or not. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:15, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Allibone has a record for the first one with some additional works. MarkLSteadman (talk) 18:38, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Huh, interesting. He seems to think that Campbell (d. 1730) and Campbell (fl. 1756) are the same person, as EP suggested above. I'm skeptical, but maybe I'll take a page from Wikipedia and aim for verifiability rather than truth (shrug) —Beleg Tâl (talk) 19:45, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Actually, no—The Earth's Groans, &c. describes the 1750 London earthquakes, and was available for sale by the author in 1756, so I'm not accepting that it was written by a guy who died in 1730 regardless of what Allibone says. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 23:20, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

The British Museum Catalogue lists the two as separate, as Duncan Campbell of Holbourne, with three works (Time's Telescope, Earth's Groans and the Poem upon Tea). MarkLSteadman (talk) MarkLSteadman (talk) 23:49, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

@MarkLSteadman could you send me a link to this catalogue entry? I haven't been able to find it. Their search engines are a labyrinth lol —Beleg Tâl (talk) 17:27, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

https://www.google.com/books/edition/British_Museum_Catalogue_of_printed_Book/c9cQ4B2JBBsC pg. 206. MarkLSteadman (talk) 17:30, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Awesome ty :) I was looking here lol —Beleg Tâl (talk) 17:32, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Page links not displayed in Firefox 130.0

I have 'page links displayed' set on and 'page links beside text'. In Firefox 130.0 (64 bit) they are no longer displayed. I've checked Edge (128.0.2739.67 (Official build)) and they display and work fine there. Chrisguise (talk) 12:36, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Apologies - they seem to have started working again.

Chrisguise (talk) 12:49, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Request for admin assistance for an image deletion

Could an admin please delete https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/File:Fawkner.jpg ? I have now (correctly) uploaded it to commons. Thanks and apologies. CharlesSpencer (talk) 15:15, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

For such images, tag then with {{sdelete|A1}} (more info at WS:CSD) (and for admin requests, post them at WS:AN). Cheers, — Alien  3
3 3 15:48, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Done —Beleg Tâl (talk) 16:04, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

corrections

There are many misspellings in the pdf format of this page one is on page 176 item 63 and it's written Lime and I believe it should be time. 24.189.233.205 23:42, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Which page are you talking about here? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:43, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

The page is that the PDF was downloaded was this one: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Pocket_Manual_of_Rules_of_Order_for_Deliberative_Assemblies 24.189.233.205 00:09, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Fixed it, it was indeed an OCR error at Page:Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative Assemblies (1876).djvu/168. You can also help fixing pages, we're constantly looking for volunteers. (readding this section, as it's not usually done to delete sections that quickly, and it keeps other people from answering). — Alien  3
3 3 05:37, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Replace the Source File

Hello. I created the "Comparative Vocabularies of Barma, Maláyu and Thai" index yesterday, but today I found that the quality is quite bad and the source file was already deleted from Internet Archive. I found a better quality source file from Google Books. How to replace the existing source file with the better one? Thank you. Mbee-wiki (talk) 05:40, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

• Mbee-wiki: You can use the “Upload a new version of this file” button on Wikimedia Commons. I have already done this. The new scan had a few extra pages at the front and end scanned (blank pages), so the pages which have been created are moved a bit. These can be moved by administrators if you make a request at the Administrators’ noticeboard. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 13:16, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

  @TE(æ)A,ea.: Hello. I saw that you already re-uploaded the better source file to Commons and fix the index. Thank you very much for your help 🙏🏼 I think I will just copy-paste the page I have proofread as it's only one page. Mbee-wiki (talk) 06:36, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

  @TE(æ)A,ea.: I just checked and the file is better but some pages too pixelated. I uploaded it to Internet Archive but I cannot find any way to create DjVu file there. Do you know how to create DjVu from IA? Mbee-wiki (talk) 10:03, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

  • Mbee-wiki: IA no longer automatically makes DjVu files from uploaded PDF files. To get a DjVu file you can use an on-line converter or you can make a request at the Scan Lab. (Sorry for bouncing you around between so many different places.) For this, of course, you would need to upload a new file and make a new Index (DjVu instead of the current PDF). DjVu files have a lot of advantages in terms of readability and accessibility on Wikisource, so that will be a good change. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 13:50, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

    Thank you. Would you mind to suggest a trustworthy online converter for PDF to DjVu? I would like to try make a DjVu file by myself, but some sites I found are too fishy... Mbee-wiki (talk) 03:25, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

    • Mbee-wiki: I usually use pdf2djvu. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 14:36, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Weird syntax issue?

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T375043

Could someone please help me figure out why the following text is being displayed on a single line?

{{lang block|la|
{{xxx-larger|APOLOGIA}}

{{x-larger|Confessionis Augustanae.}}
}}

APOLOGIA

Confessionis Augustanae.

—Beleg Tâl (talk) 17:22, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

{{Lang block}} is a div and {{xxx-larger}} and {{x-larger}} and spans. A div is a block-level element, like a paragraph and a span is an inline element. If you want to make a line break in the middle, you can use {{br}}. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:25, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

To clarify, I am trying to figure out why the empty line (\n\n) is not being parsed as a paragraph break. As you say, I could put a <br> for a line break, but that doesn't answer the question of why the double line isn't being parsed as expected. If I use {{lang block/s}} and {{lang block/e}} instead of {{lang block}}, it works as expected. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 17:30, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Near as I can tell, this is a product of how Module:Lang has the feature local inline = yesno(args.inline or "yes") and the default value is no to strip out or suppress certain elements. Compare:

{{lang block|inline=yes|la|

{{xxx-larger|APOLOGIA}}

{{x-larger|Confessionis Augustanae.}}

}}

Which results in:

APOLOGIA

Confessionis Augustanae.

Which I believe is the outcome you want. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:43, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Huh, that seems to be it, though I find it very unintuitive that the feature allowing it to behave as expected for a block element is to specify inline=yes lol. Thanks! —Beleg Tâl (talk) 17:48, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

This is a bug in the way the template is coded. I recently fixed {{asc block}}, which had the same issue. Templates of the form

<div ... >...</div>

Have an issue with paragraph breaks.

However, templates like

<div ... >

...

</div>

Do not have this issue.

In this case, I added \n's in two places, and now it works. — Alien  3
3 3 18:07, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

You didn't fix it. The side effects of your change have broken over 2000 pages!.. Next time ask someone to check your code FIRST!. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:31, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Could you please be more specific and explain which calls adding whitespace broke, and how? Thanks, — Alien  3
3 3 18:35, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

By adding in the "\n" for both DIV and SPAN varaints of lang, you put whitespace inside a SPAN which the parser really really doesn't like. You should be checking for the block variant of the template/module call and only applying the "\n" on the block variant. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:38, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Ooo, forgot that, sorry. will do right away. — Alien  3
3 3 18:41, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00: Forgot to add text if inline. In sandbox, what do you think now? — Alien  3
3 3 18:50, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Looks good. But I'd seek an administrator to review your code first.. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:52, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

A side note, but to avoid future reckless editing, maybe also request protection of module? Looks high-traffic enough to me. — Alien  3
3 3 18:54, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

 Support Protection. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:55, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

As @Alien333 said, this seems to be a general issue with line spaces within div elements. I have reproduced it outside of any template, at User:Beleg Tâl/Sandbox#Div bug?. I think it should be reported to Phabricator, and I'll open a bug later if I don't see one already. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 18:50, 17 September 2024 (UTC)