Outline designer does not work unless the book already has a child

This is an issue I wish I could fix. It's actually a problem w/ core Drupal for version 6 and has been documented. Others have pointed it out too but unfortunately it's not something that I think I can fix as it's a problem w/ Drupal itself. I'd accept fixes to it if they existed but I'm not sure they do.

This has been fixed in 1.1 and later! Only project that accounts for this core issue :p

The bug is still present (or back) in 6.1.3
OD only works if a book has at least one main child page

I don't believe this is an issue, you'd need to show me a screencast or something running 1.3 in order to prove it to me as I run this on hundreds of sites and haven't had this issue using stock 1.3. Workflow should be creating an empty book and then going to the admin book outlines page. Click edit order and titles and it should force you to create a new child node as the default, then redirect back to the book outline with the working outline designer.

Thanks for head up
I am just discovering this splendid module, and I really appreciate the quantum leap it accomplishes toward usability

I might have missed something, but this is how I am using OD (with OG groups only)

1) go to an OG group page
2) create a content type that is book enabled and make it a new book
3) go back to the group page
4) click on the "Edit books" tab that just appeared after creating this new book
5) Clik on the book: I get this warning :"Books need to have at least one piece of content in them in order to work correctly with the outline designer"

So I create a first page in this book and everything works fine next.
Maybe it is the way this should work, but I thought that this post was just about this slightly annoying problem.
I would have also dreamed about creating books directly from OD

I also found at admin/content/book/list an OD "Add book" button. Pressing it just displays "Create content", but do not present an edit form.

You mentioned sites and haven't had this issue using stock 1.3. Workflow should be creating an empty book, just wondering:
- what is "stock 1.3" ?
- is Workflow module needed (not activated on the site)?

Thanks for help

Oooooo. I thnk I see what you're saying. I'm talking outline designer 1.3, just the main module when I say stock. What you're describing is that the organic groups integration doesn't take into account the core drupal 6 glitch. Can you confirm if you use just the outline designer w.o. the groups integration that this works as expected? It'll basically be rolling the same check into a different path since right now it just triggers for admin/content/book/{nid}

I found something:
- the only content type that is book enabled has a machine name wiki_page
- if I go to admin/content/book/list and press "add book" the url /?q=node/add/wiki_page wich is wrong, so I get the empty page "Create content"

So I removed the underscore n the content type name. After that

1) I can create a book normally outside groups using the add book button at admin/content/book/list
2) In a group context, If I select an empty book from the Edit books tab,
- I still get the message "Books need to have at least one piece of content in them in order to work correctly with the outline designer",
- A book page form appears with an outline under the book itself - an attempt to create a first child apparently
- The group context is not set

By the way, everything work fine in OG as soon as a book has a correct child.

OD will function as normal at the admin/content/book/list way. If you use the OD-groups integration to do edit books in the context of a group, the group will automatically be assigned correctly. I'll accept a patch to get the admin/content/book/{nid} forcing a child page to be added functionality into the od-groups module. Otherwise it'll be awhile til I fix this as all my systems using books and groups (ELMS) automatically generate some stub content / tell you you need to add a page first w.o. issue.

So it works as designed: the automatic child page creation is not implemented in OG integration. In fact, a book creation function should be added to mimic the non-OG feature.
I might consider issuing a feature request for that, but for the time being it works well enough.

However, there is still a bug in the standard (non OG) implementation: underscores in the content type name have to be replaced by a dash in the URL (bizarre Drupal requirement apparently). For example, my content type wiki_page needs an url like url /?q=node/add/wiki-page to work. Passing the underscore fails.
With the current implementation, the book creation does not occur at all if the content type name has an underscore.
I could create another issue, but it looks like it is part of this one.