Wikisource:Scriptorium/Help

Index:EFTA00005586.pdf

it's a really stupid document to transcribe, but how do i make every page black (preferably without gaps when transcluded)? ltbdl (talk) 16:57, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

Put {{redact|full}} for about as many lines as you think are on a page. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:56, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

mm, that leaves gaps between the lines. ltbdl (talk) 04:59, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

That's fine. This is supposed to be a typographical reproduction, not a photographic one. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:41, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Page:The Mysterious Mr. Quin.djvu/7

It looks fine, but in The Mysterious Mr. Quin, it's offset. Is there a way to fix it? Nighfidelity (talk) 12:19, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

This is something that commonly happens when the page is transcluded, especially if it's over 500px. You can tinker with the page and then reload the work and slide it around. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:47, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

When I view them now - in both places the diamond and the bottom line are over-lapping text. -- Beardo (talk) 19:36, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

That is not what I see (Firefox, Linux). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:28, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

They look fine now. The latest change must have sorted it. -- Beardo (talk) 18:21, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

Is this {{PD-USGov}}?

I'm referring to this 1996 letter from Senator William Philip Gramm. Nighfidelity (talk) 20:00, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

Looks like that was in their official capacity, so I think yes. SnowyCinema (talk) 20:17, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

Library books

I have been working on marking pages as no-text, and I was wondering if a library book with a bookplate (saying what library the book is from) counts as text or not? Spaghettiman2017 (talk) 15:01, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

Pages with stamps from libraries or pasted-in "This book belongs to..."s or handwriting in the margins are all not text for the purpose of books here at Wikisource. We're trying to reproduce what the book actually was as it was printed, not whatever someone marked up on it later. Good question. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:47, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

You can safely mark those as "no text". — Alien  3
3 3 23:53, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

1001 Nights (Burton translation)

I noticed on the Index pages for The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night that some of the volumes are from different editions:

• Volume 1 is from a censored "Library Edition", edited by Leonard Smithers, Internet Archive identifier: bookofthousandni01burtuoft;
• Volume 2 is from the 547th set of the "Shammar Edition", Internet Archive identifier: arabiantranslat02burtuoft;
• Volume 3 is from the 367th set of the "Bassorah Edition", Internet Archive identifier: plainliteraltran03burt;
• Volume 4 is from the 547th set of the Shammar Edition, no source info given, but probably Internet Archive identifier: arabiantranslat04burtuoft;
• Volume 5 ditto Shammar Edition, no source info given, but probably Internet Archive identifier: arabiantranslat05burtuoft;
• and so on.

The Shammar and Bassorah Editions of Volume 1 are both available on IA. How should this be handled? —Tosca-the-engineer 18:55, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Ideally only one edition of the total work should be used. Ideally choice of which would be based on where work has already been done (assuming all editions are entirely available). — Alien  3
3 3 23:55, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

The only volume that has any significant work done on it is volume 3. If the file on Commons gets overwritten, what happens to the existing Page: namespace pages? —Tosca-the-engineer 03:35, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Commons is happy to have multiple different versions, so their files should not be overwritten.

How different are the different editions? Might we want to have both the "Library Edition" and a fuller one - or at least allow space for that ? -- Beardo (talk) 03:50, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

In the Editor's Note for volume 1 of the Library Edition, Smithers says:

In Lady Burton's edition, which was a reprint of the first ten volumes only of the original issue, it was thought advisable to omit no fewer than 215 pages; in this edition, which comprises the whole sixteen volumes (the entire work), more than four-fifths of these omitted passages have been restored.

Essentially, the Library Edition only omits the super scandalous stuff (by the standards of the 1890s), rather than all of it. The Bassorah/Shammar editions are all "limited to 1000 sets", so they might just be different print runs of otherwise identical content. My main concern really is the file names; it would be much clearer if they had something like (Library Edition) or (Bassorah Edition) added to them. —Tosca-the-engineer 04:39, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

{{sfrac}} issue

I was trying to use an inline {{sfrac}} here, but the text is shifted to the left of the bar (which is in the correct location). Is there a way to fix this? TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 17:42, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

Never seen this behaviour before and I use sfrac a lot. I assume it's conflicting with the plainlist template. Consider using {{mfrac}} instead as it does things a little differently for a similar effect. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 23:11, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

I had this issue when I did the TOC for First Theory Book. The solution was adding .frac .tion { text-indent: 0; } to the CSS style page for Index:First theory book (1921).djvu —Tosca-the-engineer 04:00, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

The Mysterious Mr. Quin short stories

I've proofreaded many of the short stories, but am not sure what to do to the unscanbacked versions. (see The Mysterious Mr. Quin/The Sign in the Sky and The Sign in the Sky, as well as The Mysterious Mr. Quin/At the Bells and Motley and At the 'Bells and Motley') Nighfidelity (talk) 17:02, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I'd redirect them to the scanbacked versions. ToxicPea (talk) 18:40, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Those look like they are taken from a different edition of the same book. I agree, if you are happy that there are no significant differences, you can make the standalone story pages into redirects to the scan-backed versions -- Beardo (talk) 18:43, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

+1. — Alien  3
3 3 19:10, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Ok Nighfidelity (talk) 19:15, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Problem with transclusion of index:Gallant exploits of Lord Dundee.pdf

The assembly of the original work is incorrect (the printed publication, not the assembly of the page scans), so the pages are disordered (the actual page numbering appears to be correct). In order to properly transclude the content, the required image sequence is (apart from the title page):-

2,11-12,5-10,3-4,21-22,15-20,13-14,23-24.

However I cannot get this to work properly.

<pages index="Gallant exploits of Lord Dundee.pdf" include="2,11-12,5-10,3-4,21-22,15-20,13-14,23-24" /> does not produce this order, it simply displays the pages in image numerical order.

<pages index="Gallant exploits of Lord Dundee.pdf" include="2,11-12" /> works OK, but as soon as I add 5-10, it joins the images in numerical order (can't cope with going back?).

Listing each page separately in the right order works, but does not join the pages/paragraphs together properly.

Similarly, having a separate '<pages>' line for each 'cluster' of images also works, but it doesn't join the groups together properly.

Any suggestions? Thanks. Chrisguise (talk) 09:41, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Short of reordering the pdf pages, I think the best option at hand is resorting to manual transclusion with {{Page:...}}. — Alien  3
3 3 09:54, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for this. I've successfully used the method you suggested. One point of note; the automatic joining of words split across two pages doesn't work using the manual method, you have to use hws/hwe. Regards. Chrisguise (talk) 02:23, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Only part of .pdf file is showing up

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T419322

Recently for this file: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:The_London,_Edinburgh,_and_Dublin_Philosophical_Magazine_and_Journal_of_Science._%E2%80%93_Series_5,_Volume_36_(1893).pdf, the entire page is not showing up in the viewer when I edit a page. For pages I've already edited, the entire page shows up, but not for new ones. Other projects on wikisource don't seem to have this problem for me. Any suggestions? IanVG (talk) 17:54, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Which pages are giving problems? -- Beardo (talk) 18:10, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

That's an interesting bug. It is probably a failure somewhere in the thumbnailing process. I'll leave a task.phab:T419322.

@IanVG: Could you say for how long it's been happening exactly (or approximately)? Various things happened in the last few weeks; some could perhaps be linked. — Alien  3
3 3 18:21, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Modern spelling edition of John Ball's "A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace"

Over 5 years ago this was discussed at Wikisource:Scriptorium/Help/Archives/2020#Modern_spelling_edition_of_John_Ball's_"A_Treatise_of_the_Covenant_of_Grace" . The need to have a "clean" version first was emphasised. This has now been completed at A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace.

I am wondering whether someone can set up a new project or sub-project for the modern spelling edition for me (and potentially others) to work on. People in the original discussion included @Prosfilaes and @Billinghurst PeterR2 (talk) 01:17, 9 March 2026 (UTC)