Transcribing period (out of copyright) pattern systems?

Period ‘pattern drafting’ works can be transcribed from scans, if a mediawiki extension is set up.

Currently the Wiki uses what appears to be a relatively standard Mediawiki install.

This means that assuming someone is willing to do some configuration it may be possible with some effort to provide transcriptions of old ‘cutting’ and pattern drafting works. ( Essentially the old period works which are nominally out of copyright, which is most pre 1923 works on tailoring, dressmaking etc. published in the US.)

The relevant media-wiki extensions are:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PdfHandler

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Labeled_Section_Transclusion

There’s also an extension for doing OCR (but I’ve not been able to find which open source engine mediawiki uses.)

I’ve used a wiki set up with the extensions extensively, and the ability to transcribe old (non-tailoring works) has been very useful. Given that English Wikisource (en.wikisource.org) is Creative Commons Share Alike licensed, it may even be possible to use some of the same scripts/templates and lua modules on the Valentina wiki if there’s a volunteer willing to set them up and configure it (I’m only a user of the wiki, not an admin/developer though.)

A very long-term wishlist item would be for someone that understands both Mediawiki and Valentina’s file formats, is to write a Mediawiki extension that would allow simple patterns to be written as text directly or for VAL/VIT files to be handlled directly in a mediawiki page without having to render them down to PDF/SVG/DXF etc…). Developers working with mediawiki have previously developed extensions to allow the direct display/rendering of charts, TeX math formluae, lillypond style music scoring amongst other things.

Many things are possible if someone is able to do the configuration…

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