2025:Program/MediaWiki to LaTeX

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Session title: MediaWiki to LaTeX

Session type: Lecture

Track: Technology

Language: en

🎥 Session Recording: https://w.wiki/FB92 🎥

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

Description

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.

How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 – Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?

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.

What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?

Everyone can participate in this session

Resources

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MediaWiki2LaTeXTalkEnglishRevision3.webm
• https://wikimedia.eventyay.com/talk/media/wikimania2025/submissions/7T83W8/resources/MediaWiki2LaTeXTalk_vXwwgcJ.pdf

Speakers

• Dirk Hünniger

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