@Lea_WMDE, @Bmueller and probably @Jan_Dittrich need to figure out how that hint should look like exactly and what exactly it should contain.

This is the mock:

Change 290395 had a related patch set uploaded (by Addshore):
Split rendering finsihed i18n messages

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/290395

Change 290417 had a related patch set uploaded (by Addshore):
WIP DNM DRAFT Include hint about excluded tables

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/290417

Okay, so this message now seems wrong for the extension..

The extension can talk to a configurable OCG service to render things.
That OCG service may or may not render tables.
The messages in this ticket do not make sense for both cases.

So @Addshore came up with a nice way to show the message only when OCG renderer service is not able to render tables.
But there is also a plain text rendering mode. In plain text output tables are also excluded completely. Wouldn't it make sense to cover also plain text rendering mode? For instance the message could not mention particular rendering format. Also, the suggested workaround is only valid when user asks for PDF. Or is it intended to show the message as in the task description for PDF rendering only, and not change anything for the plain text rendering?

My recent comment might not actually be a problem. I didn't notice that Wikipedias offer only links to PDF rendering.
According to https://github.com/wikimedia/operations-mediawiki-config/blob/master/wmf-config/InitialiseSettings.php#L11718 all WM production wikis only PDF rendering is available.
And as per https://github.com/wikimedia/operations-mediawiki-config/blob/master/wmf-config/CommonSettings-labs.php#L235 all wikis on Labs (e.g. beta wikis) offer both PDF and Plain Text rendering.
There might also be non-WM wikis that use Collection extensions and WM OCG renderers, and have both PDF and plain text (and why not some other formats) rendering enabled.

Possible solutions:

1. Do not change the message (ie. have it saying explicitly about excluded tables in PDF documents) and have it displayed whenever $wgCollectionShowRenderTableNote is true. Disadvantage: as long as this will not affect WM production wikis, it would show PDF-related message on TXT rendering on beta wikis, and possibly on non-WM wikis.
2. Rephrase the message so it is generic enough to serve as a warning shown for other formats than PDF. I believe that "PDF workaround" could still be used but that would require some smart wording, so it would not confuse users ("I am rendering TXT, why it bothers me about some PDFs here?!").

What seems tempting is to make wgCollectionShowRenderTableNote rather some kind of PDF- and table-related flag and only show messages for PDF rendering. But as far as I know the extension doesn't really know what kind of renderer it uses (is it mwlib or OCG or whatever else), and what is the output format. So apart from hacky (and rather WM-specific) solutions like checking what is the value of writer parameter passed to the extension (for WM wikis it doesn't even contain "pdf" word in it!) which should be in my opinion avoided, it looks like it is not possible to have message shown only for PDF message.
Or do you happen to have some completely different idea @Addshore?

Making the message more general may make sense (removing the word PDF).
It might be possible to pass this through as message parameter but I feel that might be more effort than it is worth.

@Lea_WMDE what are your thoughts here. It looks like we need to reword the message a bit!

@Addshore @WMDE-leszek What do you think about:

Currently documents do not contain tables, for example when you use the functions "Download as PDF", "Download as Plain Text" or "Create a book". There is a workaround to include tables in PDF documents.

and keep the workaround part as is. We mention all cases that tables don't exist, and offer a workaround for the pdf case.

Change 290395 merged by jenkins-bot:
Split rendering finished i18n messages

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/290395

Change 292484 had a related patch set uploaded (by Addshore):
Include optional hint about excluded tables

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/292484

Change 292484 abandoned by Addshore:
Include optional hint about excluded tables

Reason:
This was a resubmit of https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/290417/ which is still failing for some reason....

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/292484

@cscott could you please have a look at https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/290417/ ? That would be great!

At least we want to show a hint, that tables are not include when generating PDFs.

Change 290417 merged by jenkins-bot:
Optionally include extra notes after rendering

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/290417

Change 305012 had a related patch set uploaded (by Addshore):
Add Collection render note for articles & rdf2latex

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/305012

Change 305012 merged by jenkins-bot:
Add Collection render note for articles & rdf2latex

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/305012

Mentioned in SAL [2016-08-22T13:39:04Z] <hashar@tin> Synchronized wmf-config/CommonSettings.php: Add Collection render note for articles & rdf2latex -t - T135613 (duration: 00m 49s)

Mentioned in SAL [2016-08-22T13:40:51Z] <hashar@tin> Synchronized wmf-config/CommonSettings.php: Add Collection render note for articles rdf2latex -t - T135613 (duration: 00m 48s)