Wikibooks:Reading room/Assistance

Welcome to the Assistance reading room where Wikibookians help each other solve problems encountered while contributing to books or otherwise taking part in the Wikibooks community.

LaTeX book compilation

I have extracted the source code of the book as it says in the first page but when I try to compile it writing "pdflatex main.tex" it says that pdflatex isn't installed. What does it mean that the book has a configured version of pdflatex then?

Moving Caramel

I edited the cookbook Caramel and I want to move the version I edited to the old one and I need permission. --Ltblood (discuss • contribs) 18:39, 8 August 2015 (UTC) Ltblood

You don't need any special rights to move a page. Any autoconfirmed account has this right which means any account over 4 days old and 10 edits can move a page. Click Special:MovePage/User:Ltblood/sandbox. If it gives you the move page screen then your problem is not permission related. I have checked and confirmed that your account is autoconfirmed. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 07:50, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

All that does is put a redirect in my sandbox. --Ltblood (discuss • contribs) 00:34, 18 August 2015 (UTC) Ltblood

@Ltblood: No, that's what it leaves in your sandbox. The page is now here Cookbook:Ltblood/Caramel - which is where you just moved it to. Therefore you are able to move pages. Please now move it to a proper name (e.g., Cookbook:Caramel, without the 'Ltblood' in the name). QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 10:17, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Page Cookbook:Caramel already exists. The two pages are similar: compare; the difference is that Ltblood has added a number of links to wikipedia pages. Those probably aren't desirable edits, since Wikibooks does not link heavily to Wikipedia; but if they were, it wouldn't be difficult for Ltblood to cut-and-paste the changes into Cookbook:Caramel, using the raw editor interface (which, frankly, should always be used anyway because VisualEditor discourages users from learning how to do things). --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 10:37, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Oh boy, I didn't realise that was happening. Therefore, I presume they copied the original page into their sandbox breaking the attribution. In which case the only option - assuming the edits are desirable - is a history merge. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 13:02, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

There would be no need for a history merge if Ltblood were to make the edits to Cookbook:Caramel, since the attribution to Ltblood would then be in the edit history and nobody else has edited Ltblood's page. (I, of course, doubt the desirability.) --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 15:42, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Given the lack of response here, I've moved the page back to the user's sandbox until they decide what to do. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 10:21, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Is it possible to delete the existing Caramel cookbook and replace it with mine; because it won't let me move the page because that name has already been chosen and it says to not cut & paste. And I need someone to undo my last move. Ltblood (talk | contribs) 00:32, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

I have fixed the move and merged the histories. Please avoid copying material around in future and make the edits directly to the page you want to change. Thanks. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 07:38, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

new pages

As some totally new to WikiBooks, I have some of my notes on my user page titled User:LABoyd2. As part of this I created some new pages following the instructions I found. I thought they would be subservient to my user page, but apparently they were not. I received this message:

Please do not create stand alone pages. Pages that are part of a book need to be "indented." For example, the four pages you just created should have been named OpenSCAD User Manual/Your Page Name and not Your Page Name. I have moved the ones you created into the book. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 08:02, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

These pages are not intended to be part of the book OpenSCAD User Manual.

Can they be subservient to my user page, and if so, how? If not, what are my other options? LABoyd2 (discuss • contribs) 20:54, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

@LABoyd2: Hi, we're happy to have you. You can definitely move a page like OpenSCAD_User_Manual/2D_Primitives (which you created) to User:LABoyd2/OpenSCAD_User_Manual/2D_Primitives. If you want, you can workshop the page there and then move it back when it's ready to go live. Please let me know if you need any more help or if what I've written is unclear. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:47, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Justin Thank you. I have yet to find instructions on moving pages, perhaps you could direct me? Justin Never mind, I found where Move was hidden under More. LABoyd2 (discuss • contribs) 12:22, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Donating a book to wikibooks

A collegue of mine, an academic, is willing to donate an entire unpublished statistic textbook to Wikibooks. Unfortunately, neither he nor me have time to format it, and he would also like to remain totally anonymous (which is a bit tricky given the requirement to licence the work - he is ok releasing it to public domain, though). How should be go about it? Licencing-wise, is there a specific wikibooks OTRS address? And uploading-wise, is there anyone who would like to work on the documents (we can provide a .doc file)? I'd appreciate if any replies here were pinged to me at w:User_talk:Piotrus. Cheers, --Piotrus (discuss • contribs) 05:33, 24 September 2015 (UTC)