99% of the users that would export a wiki page, will choose a PDF export - for printing or sending by email
Would it be possible to add another menu entry, beside Export, like Export to PDF (or Export to -default- where “default” is something that can be set from the Administration section) that goes directly to the Export as PDF modal?
Thanks for the feedback.
It would essentially means replacing the first step of the Export dialog by corresponding entries in the menu, something like:
Actions
|_ Exports
|_ Export to PDF
|_ Export to XAR
|_...
|_ Annotate
|_ ...
It would make the menu more complex, and add a bit of time to navigate. It also doesn’t scale that well if the number of exports grow but that’s probably not going to happen a lot in practice (even if it’s easy to have 5-7 entries already).
I think we could definitely imagine that passing the export type as a parameter in the export URL would skip the first step of the Export dialog. This might already be possible, haven’t checked the code. Then you could use the “More Options” UIX to add a new menu entry in your wiki: https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/DevGuide/ExtensionPoint/More%20Options
I’m curious to know what other users think and whether they think it would be worth the tradeoff. At first sight, choosing in a menu or choosing in a dialog doesn’t seem to be too different but I could be wrong.
Thank you.
Ah, I too often forget to add an example of what I mean and only rely to a textual description. And given that I know a bit of HTML that’s really lazy of me 
What I really meant was just moving from the existing:
to simply adding one more entry:
The Export to… is the existing export entry (*) and keeps the actual behaviour: clicking on it brings up the format dialog, where the PDF can, and should, still be there (much like a “Save as” entry in many applications allows you to keep the same filename).
The new Export to PDF entry would act like you described, bypass the first step.
*: I didn’t think of a proper label here, but it should suggest that clicking on it allows choosing among several formats beside PDF.
So it would be a shortcut to go for PDF; I won’t add a submenu for each possible format, since as you already noticed it would mean going from a modal to a submenu.
I hope that’s more clear now.
Yes, I didn’t propose this because I thought it wasn’t logical to have several Export at the same level. I don’t see how to rationalize this inside the product. Of course, if you do this only in your wiki then there’s no problem! For you wiki, it’s easy to add a menu entry by using the UIXP I mentioned but there are 2 problems to make it point to “Export to PDF”:
cc @mflorea who probably knows.
Another point is that we have several “Export to PDF” (we have 3 in total, the server-side PDF export - deprecated now -, the client-side PDF export - the new one -, and a LaTeX-based PDF export. I know some users who use the LaTeX one and having this “Export to PDF” using the client-side PDF export for them wouldn’t work, so this can’t be hard-coded in the product. It would need to be, as you mentioned, some configurable default Export, which makes it more complex.
And I agree with this. I was just thinking abount a single entry, like the most used export.
Sure, and thanks for the mentions, I’ll wait to know more to try this possibility.
Fine, but aren’t they alternative with each other?
Mmh, maybe you’re not talking about these when you say “several”:
Is it this extension https://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/LaTeX/Exporter/ ?
I see it needs Docker to generate the PDF. I do not have it so I can’t try it.
I see your point now: exports to the same format (e.g. PDF) can be provided by so many components (extensions) that there’s no single default.
For example yes.
Docker is the simplest to use it but you can use it without docker. See https://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/LaTeX/Exporter/#HExport which says:
Exporting to PDF requires one of the following:
- Docker is installed, see the LaTeX to PDF documentation. If Docker is not set up on the XWiki server, then no “Export as PDF” button will be shown.
- The LaTeX extension is configured to convert to PDF by using a local process.
Yes. The most used one is for sure the new client-side PDF export but it’s not the only one.