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A comment on Wikipedia is getting a new look. Parent comment

Re:Wikipedia is getting a new look by WilTimSon on Wednesday September 23, 2020 @01:15PM (#24569391)
I think the only times I use it is to go to random articles, which can be quite fun if you're in the mood to discover new things. However,I couldn't tell you a single other function they have on that side bar even with a gun to my head. Just went to check it and apparently they let you print pages out as PDF, news to me. Wikipedia really doesn't advertise its features much.
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Re:Wikipedia is getting a new look by trynewideas on Wednesday September 23, 2020 @03:05PM (#24570687)
Like almost every MediaWiki feature, there's a massive pile of Wikimedia drama behind it. They went through at least three major iterations, almost all behind the scenes, for exporting content for offline viewing, including PDF at all stages, and eventually kind of gave up.[1][2][3][4]

This also encompassed the mostly ill-fated PediaPress system to get printed books of wiki content collections, the Collections MediaWiki extension,[5] and various back-end rendering engines that came and went (some without ever being fully deployed in production).

All to have a link that, in the span from OCG to Proton, was made mostly redundant by browsers implementing "Print to PDF".

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Offline_content_generator

[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ElectronPdfService

[3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/proton/

[4] Confusion over knowing who owns or maintains the PDF service: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T247310

[5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T256071

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Re:Wikipedia is getting a new look by intrepidhero on Wednesday September 23, 2020 @01:25PM (#24569554)
Ooh! I recently discovered the "Print to PDF" feature too. I used it to print out some pages for offline reading when I took the kiddos on an adventure outside cell network range. It worked really well.
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Re:Wikipedia is getting a new look by zozbot234 on Wednesday September 23, 2020 @01:37PM (#24569709)
It's actually an obsolescent feature. With modern browsers, you can just use the native "Print page" feature and the content will be styled in a paper-friendly way.
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