Export Journal

[vlion]

I have a draft design for solving Bug 32 up here:

http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/Export_Journal_Notes

It looks like it is a medium-sized project with three areas of expertise(DW server configuration, programming and graphic design).

There are several open questions about how an export should look, and I've left those for someone who is good at graphic design to write.

I would appreciate comments and review.

Comments

[mark]

1) Five minutes is unreasonable to expect. Doing a full dump of someone's journal is going to take much longer, especially since we'll have to prioritize it to run on the inactive slaves. If a lot of people do it, you can expect the wait to be up to hours.

2) You want to consider whether this is a paid user feature (probably) or if all users can do it.

3) I'm not familiar enough with LaTeX, so: how do you put images in it? Do we have to download them and include them in the zip file, or do they get embedded in the LaTeX file? Further, what are the copyright concerns with downloading and reproducing images that are merely linked on Dreamwidth?

Otherwise, I think this sounds fine. The biggest challenge will be coming up with the proper LaTeX output that will faithfully render the user's content in a way that is readable and useful. (Also, aren't there licensing concerns on using PDF?)

Another thing to consider is whether or not we want to try to partner with people who print books ... my gut says yes, but that's probably a business consideration that is not going to be part of this bug in particular.

[vlion]

(1) Clarification. I was thinking that a given user can't request an export more than every 5 minutes.

(2)Noted.

(3)Standard procedure is that the images + Latex file are combined into an output file. Typical scientific procedure is to use Postscript images, I *think*. It can get gnarly.

(3b) Linked off dreamwidth copyrights: I don't know. It's a good question. How do other sites do that sort of thing?

(4) PDF is a published standard now from what I noticed this weekend on Wikipedia.

(5)Partnering: doesn't sound like a bug. :)

[peoppenheimer]

Usually encapsulated postscript, which tells TeX where to put the thing, how big it is, and so on.

[vlion]

Following up:

- PDF is an ISO standard now: http://blogs.adobe.com/insidepdf/2007/12/iso_ballot_for_pdf_17_passed.html

- Paid user feature. This sounds closer to a business decision than a code decision. In a technical analysis view, it seems to me that requiring it be a paid user feature would avoid exploiting the system by people from other places autoloading their blogs in, exporting, and nevermore touching DW. It would also reduce exporting load. Another option would be have it be a pay-per-export for non-paid users; that would accomplish similar avoidance of exploiting.

[denise]

I think it should be a combination paid user/non-paid user feature: "export all contents in the journal in a single format (.pdf) once per year" should be something everyone can do, while "export more frequently/whenever you want", "export in html/latex/other esoteric formats", "export by privacy level", "export by tag", etc etc, should be a paid user feature.

[zvi]

Er, do you mean that whoever is running the site should be able to peg how often exports of what kind are done by each account level? Dreamwidth really needs to keep heavy use cases to paid (although I do think an annual free export is an awesome idea!), but somebody's special purpose install may not need to be that restrictive and somebody's completely hobbyist site may want to forbid it all together.

[denise]

Yeah, sorry, that was what I meant -- controlled by config options, with dual "how many times per {month/year} someone could export" and "can use advanced export tools" caps.

[vlion]

I've updated the wiki page. Further thoughts?

[foxfirefey]

Note: we've just started putting Template Toolkit into the system, and it looks like it has some LaTeX hooks. This may interest you.

http://search.cpan.org/~andrewf/Template-Plugin-Latex-3.02/lib/Template/Latex.pm
http://search.cpan.org/~andrewf/Template-Plugin-Latex-3.02/lib/Template/Plugin/Latex.pm

[vlion]

Interesting. I will explore it in depth when time comes.