Book management 2013/Features
Organizational form edit
Editors will organize individual books using a form. This form will collect data about the book's structure, such as chapter titles and the pages included in the chapter. It will also be used to collect the metadata about the book.
- Allow for different divisions than chapters for different types of works—probably best accomplished by allowing various levels of sections to be created with any name.
- Sections will not necessarily need to be subpages of the main book.
- Allow for chapters to be re-ordered
- Allow a range (or several ranges) of pages to be included in a subpage (effectively add the
<pages index="filename" from=# to=# />tags automatically)- Allow editors to do this manually in case they have more specific formatting needs
- Allow sections to be renamed
- This may be challenging, as simple moves will leave behind messes of redirects, and deletions require administrative privileges
- Allow addition of empty pages/chapters (to be populated later)
Metadata edit
Various types of metadata will be collected about each book. These can be used to populate the fields on Wikisource Index pages, as well as potentially interface with projects like Wikidata. There are many metadata collection templates and forms that can be used to decide what types of data should be collected:
- English Wikisource's Template:Book, Commons' Template:Book
- English Wikisource's index pages
- English Wikidata's books task force properties
- schema.org's book schema
This could also be an opportunity to generate data about the book. This data could include:
- Length/size (number of pages, size in bytes?)
- Completion status for projects like Wikisource (e.g., 25% validated)
- Development status for projects like Wikibooks (e.g., 25% developed)
Plan to include edit
- Author
- Translator
- Editor
- Illustrator
- Title
- Alternate titles
- Subtitle
- Series title
- Volume
- Edition
- Publisher
- Printer
- Publication date
- Publication city
- Language
- Description
- Source
- Permission
- Other versions
- ISBN
- LCCN
- OCLC
Once the structure of the book is established, navigation headers will be optionally auto-generated. These will look similar to the current {{header}} templates on the English Wikisource, or to the Módulo:Nav on Portuguese Wikibooks. Each navigation bar will include a button to toggle a dropdown showing metadata information, as well as a dropdown showing a chapter listing. The previous and next pages will be shown on each side to allow for chronological navigation.
Tables of contents edit
If time permits
Many books feature a table of contents to facilitate navigation. With an organized book structure in place, a table of contents can be automatically generated. This could be created on a separate page, then transcluded where the editor desires.
- Is it wise to try to allow various formatting changes to the TOCs? For example, on Wikisource, many editors try to emulate the work's table of contents style, something that would not be easy if the table is auto-generated.
Print books edit
If time permits
The contents of each subpage can be pulled and collected into a single document, to be exported and/or printed. Currently, there is a limitation on printing works using "Print view" and Extension:Collection, in which multi-wikipage works cannot easily be printed. If the organizational structure of the work is easily accessible, this can be overcome.
One-click actions edit
If time permits
It is currently difficult to perform one-click actions on a book:
- Watchlisting
- Deleting
- Moving
- Protecting
- View recent changes
This too can be improved by a standard structure, so that one of these actions can be performed on an entire book instead of a subpage or individual work page.
Collect books for later use edit
If time permits
A "bookshelf" in which books can be stored for later use would be ideal.
Edit an entire book at once edit
If time permits
Collect subpages of a book into a single location, where it can be edited as part of the entire book.