2025-08-08 –, KISUMU (🗣️ ar, es, fr, sw)
Language: English
Converting MediaWiki content to the LaTeX typesetting system. LaTeX is a professional typesetting system heavily used in science and technology. See here to play with it: https://mediawiki2latex.wmcloud.org/ . The talk going to be played at the Wikimania 2025 conference is already recorded and can be viewed on the following website https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MediaWiki2LaTeXTalkEnglishRevision3.webm
We developed mediawiki2latex, a tool to convert from the MediaWiki syntax to the LaTeX syntax and care about everything needed to create a professional PDF file from a Wiki article. We will describe the software from a users point of view but also dig into the details of the way it works. We will also get in touch with theoretical computer science briefly to understand the limits of parsing MediaWiki syntax.
- What program track best fits your session? This is your session’s primary thematic category.
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Technology
- What other themes or topics does your session fit into? Please choose from the list of tags below.
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Product development
- What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
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Everyone can participate in this session
- How does your session relate to the event theme: Wikimania@20: Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?
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The project provides a way to create professional PDF documents from MediaWiki articles. While the process is more expensive than just using a web browsers PDF generator, it is still orders of magnitude cheaper the printing the PDF as a book an shipping it by mail. Cheaper in the context means both in terms of CO2 emission as well as in terms time.
- How do you plan to deliver this session? You will be asked to confirm this closer to the date in case of changes to the format.
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Pre-recorded video followed by live Q&A
- Should your session be selected for the program, do you agree to release your session and supporting materials on-wiki and on the eventyay platform under CC BY-SA 4.0?
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I agree
I graduated in physics with focus on astronomy. I worked on the German translation of the Wikibook on Basic Physics of Nuclear Medicine. During this project the need for a high quality PDF version of the this Wikibook became obvious. So I stated to work on mediawiki2latex a converter from MediaWiki to the professional LaTeX typesetting system. I used the converter to create many PDFs on the German an English Wikibooks projects. Some examples may viewed here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Created_with_MediaWiki_to_LaTeX