Release Notes for Socialtext 2.11: Export to Word and PDF

Socialtext is pleased to announce the ability to export wiki pages to both MS Word and PDF formats. This makes it possible to author documents collaboratively in the wiki, and then to publish for broader audiences.

Export a Single Page to Word or PDF

The Tools menu at the top of the sidebar on each page has new items 'Export as PDF' and 'Export as Word'. Left-clicking on those items will cause the page to be output in either PDF format, or RTF format, which can be edited by Microsoft Word. Depending on your browser type and configuration, the document will open in the browser or a dialog will appear to open or save the document to your workstation.

Export Multiple Pages to Word or PDF

Any page list, such as What's New, Watchlist, All Pages, or a page list generated by search, now has checkboxes next to each list item. A new Export menu, with 'Export as PDF' and 'Export as Word' items, is in the upper right corner of the list view. Select the pages you wish to export by ticking their checkboxes, and select the export from the Export menu. Depending on your browser type and configuration, the document will open in the browser or a dialog will appear to open or save the document to your workstation.

Hints

• The topmost checkbox is a Select All/Clear All checkbox to aid in rapid selection of pages.
• The pages will be exported in the order they appear in the list, top to bottom. Use the column sorting links to sort alphabetically by title, or by date, or by editor to control page ordering.
• To artificially create a particular ordering for pages, save them one by one in the desired order, then use date sort to order them by Last Edited Time.
• Pages that contain dynamic content, such as included pages, search results, or RSS feeds, will be exported with the dynamic content fetched when the Export operation is invoked, which may not be the same as when the page was loaded into the browser.

Known limitations on Export

There are some known limitations on export functionality for this release. They are:

1. PDF files are limited to around 30 pages. Your mileage may vary. This is due to an internal error in the third-party software used to create PDF files.
2. Fonts are not preserved. Word documents are in serif font only, PDF in sans-serif only.
3. Page breaks are indicated by horizontal rule separators in RTF. Page breaks are preserved in PDF.
4. There are no headers or footers in Word documents. PDF documents have the title of their first page as their header throughout.
5. UTF-8 character sets are not supported in PDF documents.
6. Tables that are wider than the document page width may not show properly.

These limitations will be addressed in future releases.

It is not possible to create a perfect match between wiki page display, and display in PDF or Word, particularly with regard to the exact placement of images and tables.

Other Updates for Socialtext 2.11

• RSS feeds may have 100 items per feed (up from 50).
• "All Tags" view columns are sortable.
• Weblogs print. Look for the printer icon at the top of weblog displays.
• Display of email addresses in public wikis is obfuscated.
• Raw HTML appearing in Copy/Paste from MS Office 2003 is gone.
• Revision Compare display failure in IE 7 is fixed.
• Intermittent browser error displaying All Tags and All Files in IE is fixed.
• Other internal bug fixes and reliability improvements throughout the application.