Forking Wikipedia for Wiktionary mobile app?

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Michael Chen

22 Jul 2020 22 Jul '20

6:42 p.m.

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Stephane Coillet-Matillon

23 Jul 23 Jul

8:45 a.m.

Hi Michael, This might not entirely answer your question, but FYI the Kiwix team has been actively working on making a wiktionary app (offline). There are some extra hurdles to deal with, but I’ve got good hopes we will be able to come up with a first MVP by the end of this year. Cheers, Stephane

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Le 22 juil. 2020 à 19:42, Michael Chen <flamingdescent(a)gmail.com> a écrit : Hi, As an avid Wiktionary user and editor, I was wondering: how difficult would it be to fork the Wikipedia app into a Wiktionary app? If MediaWiki doesn’t want to make an official Wiktionary app, I might still want to make my own fork, because I think Wiktionary has a lot to offer compared to other dictionaries available in mobile app stores. Looking through Phabricator, https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T205727 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T205727> (“Decide on the future of Android Wiktionary app”) was declined in favor of https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T165495 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T165495> (“Generic MediaWiki Android app”), and that was closed in May 2020 because “Since the app is now wholly dependent on Wikipedia-specific RestBase services, we can no longer officially support a generic mediawiki flavor.” https://blog.go2tech.de/2016/02/how-i-customized-the-wikipedia-app-to-match… <https://blog.go2tech.de/2016/02/how-i-customized-the-wikipedia-app-to-match-the-needs-of-droidwiki-de/> makes it sound like all it takes to make a Wiktionary app is some simple text replacement, but that was in 2016. If the Wikipedia API has since substantially diverged from the Wiktionary API, perhaps it would be a lot harder now. Other related bugs: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T124602 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T124602>: asking to add Wiktionary in the Wikipedia app as a pop-up dictionary https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T215097 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T215097>: Dedicated view for Wiktionary search in Wikipedia mobile apps There are some apps in the app stores which source data from Wiktionary, such as Livio on Google Play, but they don’t replicate the full Wiktionary experience. Thanks for your time and any insights you may be able to provide! _______________________________________________ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l>

Kaartic Sivaraam

11:02 a.m.

On 23-07-2020 13:15, Stephane Coillet-Matillon wrote:

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This might not entirely answer your question, but FYI the Kiwix team has been actively working on making a wiktionary app (offline). There are some extra hurdles to deal with, but I’ve got good hopes we will be able to come up with a first MVP by the end of this year.

That's nice. If someone wants something similar (offline) right now, there's Aard2 which can be used to browse many sites, including Wiktionary, offline. Links === Project page: http://aarddict.org/ GitHub page: https://github.com/itkach/aard2-android Play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=itkach.aard2 Dictionaries: https://github.com/itkach/slob/wiki/Dictionaries -- Sivaraam

Jan Berkel

12:54 p.m.

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As an avid Wiktionary user and editor, I was wondering: how difficult would it be to fork the Wikipedia app into a Wiktionary app? If MediaWiki doesn’t want to make an official Wiktionary app, I might still want to make my own fork, because I think Wiktionary has a lot to offer compared to other dictionaries available in mobile app stores.

The organization of content on Wikipedia is very different to the structure on Wiktionary, so I'm not sure if simply forking the app will produce something useful. The same might be true for Kiwix, but it sounds like they plan to do some Wiktionary-specific customizations. It's sad to see that development efforts for generic solutions / apps for sister projects don't have a high priority at the WMF right now, it just reinforces the view that Wikimedia = Wikipedia.

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There are some apps in the app stores which source data from Wiktionary, such as Livio on Google Play, but they don’t replicate the full Wiktionary experience.

What's the biggest feature you're missing from these apps? If you're on iOS, you can check out motî, it's a Wiktionary-based app I've been working on the last few years: https://motî.net/ <https://xn--mot-xma.net/> Jan

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Jan Berkel
Kaartic Sivaraam
Michael Chen
Stephane Coillet-Matillon