Help:Collections

Overview

The Future Of Mankind is currently testing a new feature for managing collections of wiki pages. The create a book, shown in the sidebar, allows any user to build selections of wiki content, and to export them as a single PDF file. This is great if you want to create a customised e-book for reading on your laptop or at work.

With this new feature you can:

• add or remove pages from a collection;
• generate and download a PDF file from your current collection;
• produce a PDF from a single page or whole category; or
• save your page collections for later use or to share them with your friends.

The feature is still experimental, and may not work on some pages, typically those containing large amounts of custom HTML.

If you notice pages that do not work, please help us by adding them to our Bug report.

Quickstart

To save time, we provide a few shortcuts for you to test this feature.

First log into the wiki (if you haven't got a login, create an account first). Then do the following:

Step 1: Print these instructions for using the PDF feature

• Click on the Download as PDF link under the toolbox on the left hand side of your screen. This will generate a PDF version of this page.

Step 2: Build a collection from the selected pages below:

• Go to Contact Report 251. Click on the Add wiki page link in the create a book toolbox on the left-hand side of your screen.
• Go to Interview with Billy (1998) and Add wiki page to your collection.
• Click on the Show collection link.
• Click on the Download PDF button on the right side of your screen.

Step 3: Load an existing collection (previously saved)

• Go to MediaWiki:Collections/Sample_collection_1 - click on the Load Collection link on the left-hand side of your screen.
• Click the Overwrite button.
• Click on the Download PDF button on the right side of your screen.

Add and remove articles

When you are on an article page, you see a small box titled "create a book" on the left. Here you can add the current article (in the currently shown revision) to your collection by clicking the "Add wiki page" link. If the article has previously been added to the collection you can remove it instead.

Manage the collection

Click "Show collection" to go to the Special:Collection. Here you can manage your collection:

• enter a title and a subtitle for the collection
• create chapters
• rearrange the articles and chapters in the collection
• remove articles and chapters from your collection
• sort the collection (chapter-wise)

Download PDF files

To download a PDF version of a single article, just go to the article page and click on the "Download as PDF" inside the toolbox on the left.

To download an entire collection as a PDF file, go to the Special:Collection page and click the "Download PDF" button.

Save and load collections

You have to be logged-in to save a collection. Go to the Special:Collection page, choose whether you want to save the collection as a subpage of your userpage or as a subpage of Billy Meier:Collections, enter a title and click the save button. Collections are automatically added to the Collections category.

If you are on a collection page, the "collections" portlet on the left contains a "Load collection" link to load the shown collection.

Format of saved collection pages

A collection with title "My Collection" and subtitle "Just an Example" consisting of two chapters "Foo" and "Bar" each containing three articles will be saved as a page with the following wikitext:

== My Collection ==
=== Just an Example ===
;Foo
:[[First_article]]
:[[Second_article]]
:[[Third_article]]
;Bar
:[[Fourth_article]]
:[[Fifth_article]]
:[[Sixth_article]]
[[Category:Collections]]

Advanced features and uses

• Add all the articles in a Category to the Collection - Categories can be used to add multiple articles.
  Display the Category page listing all the articles with that Category. Select Add category in the my collection box. All the articles are automatically added to the collection.
  
  
• Adopt a collection with WikiEducator Package Export
  Use this handy dandy tool to reformat a WikiEducator Collection for import into a course management system such as Moodle.