Hello!
I recently made a "book" via the PediaPress Book Creator[1] prior to my
trip to India, and it has been delightful to use and read on the flight and
in my hotel room here. It had been awhile since I tried to make one, and I
wanted to say great work and good job to PediaPress! Also, the integration
with Kiwix was wonderful, and I love that it now shows up so seamlessly in
my "Library" within Kiwix.
I am not sure if you are aware, but in the recent Readership survey of
Wikipedia readers (from Sept 2011, which is only just now being analyzed),
the *number one request by readers was saving of articles for offline use
(as a PDF): *40% of readers said they would be MORE LIKELY to use Wikipedia
if such a service was available (note: this % is even higher in target
areas like India (50%) and Brazil (52%).* *This is fascinating, for it
shows that we (a) have a broader desire for offline content than just those
without Internet access, and (b) indicates there is great opportunity for
marketing the "Book Creator" tool.
*
*
I want to discuss the points needed to get to (b). The Book Creator tool is
great, and I think is the exact right type of tool to meet the needs of our
readers; but there is much room for improvements. Right now, I personally
find the experience getting to and from the Book Creator tool to be not as
straight forward as would be most beneficial. As this service has such a
huge demand, I think there are some opportunities for the refining of the
"book creator" tool and process. I'd love thoughts on the following and
more:
- *Rebranding: *What are our thoughts on the title "Book Creator"? I
wonder if the title itself is a bit confusing, since people are apparently
unaware of the ability to download as PDF at all! Plus, I personally don't
utilize the tools as a means for creating an actual book, though I
recognize this was the initial purpose: I view it as a way to read a couple
specific articles offline. I think using the word "collection," which we do
informally anyway, is likely more appropriate here. Perhaps "Offline
Collection Creator" or "Article Aggregator" (both terrible ideas, I know,
but I'm just throwing things out there:))
- *Website placement: *I think it is obvious the space the Book Creator
takes on the Left Hand tool bar is not enough to draw attention to the
feature. I wonder if we should attempt to have some sort of a "Save for
Offline Use" button on each article, which would then open a new window
into the collection creator screen? This could look similar to the "Share
this" links which exist on most information websites (for Facebook,
Twitter, email, etc.). This could be next to the "Print" button.
- *Marketing: *Once we feel a bit more confident about usability, it
would be great to market the tool. We can do this in three phases:
- Phase 1: emails to different mailing lists announcing the project,
and asking for suggestions and feedback on the tools
- Phase 2: "pilot" testing of the tool, with banner advertising to
logged-in users
- Phase 3: advertise this functionality via a banner at the top of
Wikipedia!
- *Measurement*: clearly, we should have careful tracking of *books
created* and *downloads by file type* by day. @PediaPress: is this
available yet?
I have some other ideas as well, but wanted to throw these out there for
some immediate reactions. What are people's thoughts? Any other ideas?
Anyone good with website design who could help with rearranging of the
"Book Creator"?? :)
Looking forward to the discussion (which should be moved onto a wiki soon) -
Jessie
[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Book&bookcmd=book_creator…
Hello,
If I can re-open this thread, I am very interested in moving towards a
read-write offline platform. After helpful feedback from people in this
community, I have decided to start two wikis in the hope of a collaborative
implementation, (content transcluded below)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects/Offline_Editorshiphttp://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Offline/Wiki
==============
Motivation
Offline reader software packages lack the ability to edit. The wiki concept should not be abandoned even in this seemingly marginal use case. Collaboration becomes possible from any remote situation, really interesting applications include a small community's school contributing back to Wikipedia, or scientists who use a wiki to coordinate their work.
Strategies
Note that these approache are exclusive.
* Browser-based editing saves to an HTML5 cache
* Alternative to mediawiki page rendering
* Edit mode for Kiwix
=========
this is great too hear! I really love to have distributed version control
included in the thoughts, I.e. git or mercurial.
an idea would be to have one repository holding one subrepository per page.
it stores (at least part of) the history. an edit is then committed on top
of it whole edits coming from the central site are a natural branch when
you next time synchronize.
to edit the page (which is a text file on disk) anything can be used with
varying level of comfort.
an example for such an implementation where an external unique reference is
stored is when git or mercurial are used as clients to subversion. and
that you address this unique reference as well is hularious :)
rupert.
On Feb 17, 2012 12:58 AM, "Adam Wight" <spam(a)ludd.net> wrote:
You can download the WikipediaFR activity, with a recent article
snapshot, here:
http://activities.sugarlabs.org/es-ES/sugar/addon/4540/
Feedback on the content selection would be welcome!
Sadly, this continues to be a read-only activity for now. But see
Rob Ochshorn's latest work on the Hyperopia model for offline editing:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hyperopia
SJ
Hi guys,
I'm working on setting up a wikipage for my research lab and our tech
support gave us the interface of mediawiki. Due to the university
constrain rules, I cannot access the backend files such as configure php
files etc. However, I have such a function that need to be implemented.
There is a publication page which contains all the publications we had
the lab. My boss asked me to make it:
1. edit once affect everywhere;
2. can be sort by time or authoer name or type (conference, journal,
thesis.);
3. can be colored by different publication type;
4. can be referenced in each person's wikipage but only with a subset of
the publication list (the paper appears in one's page only if he/she was
the author of the paper. Thus, it creates synchronize challenge with
goal 1.)
I know that we could create a mysql database and use php files to do
that (exactly what we did before.)
I know it is too much to ask, but I'm really dancing with the "handcuff"
on since I cannot access the backend and only via the mediawiki
interface. Are there any other ways to finish this task?
Any suggestions are appreciated.
--
Regards,
531
Zichen "Frank" Xu
Electrical and Computer Engineering
College of Engineering
Ohio State University
Dear Jeremy,
Thank you very much for your e-mail. Please let me see your output for the
following commands:
1) Please execute
(shell) # clisp -q
[1]> *features*
[2]> (quit)
I am hoping to see a list including the keywords :asdf2 and :asdf.
2) Please execute
(shell) # clisp -q
[1]> (asdf:asdf-version)
[2]> (quit)
I am hoping to see a version number such as "2.011".
3) Please let me know if your `cl-asdf' package came with any
documentation. I would expect it to be found under
`/usr/share/doc/cl-asdf'. There should be a README.Debian, and a directory
with html pages, both of which discuss configuration.
4) Please try configuring asdf by adding the following line to your
`/root/.clisprc' file (if any):
(load "/usr/share/common-lisp/source/cl-asdf/asdf.lisp")
Alternatively (or better yet), please insert that line of code into
`wp-mirror-0.2.lisp' just above line 46, which reads
;;(push "/usr/share/common-lisp/systems" custom:*load-paths*).
Sincerely Yours,
Kent
Dear openZIM hackers,
our project is little bit in hibernation. Although the growing interest
for offline readers and offline free storage format, only a few things
were achieved on our side in 2011.
In 2011, we made our openZIM meeting during Wikimania in Haifa and the
majority of the audience was composed from new-comers. The consequence
was that we did not have spoken a lot about tech. but more about offline
in general. So this was a successful first offline meeting, but not a so
successful openZIM meeting. In the future, we will have certainly
different meetings for general offline discussions and for technical
ones. On the reader side, Kiwix had in 2011 around 150% of growth,
wikionboard was released in the Symbian app. store, we have the
prototype of a decoding library in Java. pyzim is in prod. on all
Wikimedia Web sites (in the Mediawiki:Collection extension).
So the format is really successful an helps every days thousands of
people to access to Free knowledge offline. This show us that both, the
format and the reference implementation are good. Does it mean that we
have finished? Do we still have features to implement? What should we
do? What are our available resources?
Currently, the situation is like following: we still have things to
implement in the zimlib which are described in the format like native
category handling or templating. We also have long standing things to
implement like everything necessary to provide efficient incremental
updates (zimdiff/zimpatch). Around the format we should also work on the
packaging and provide additional tools like for example a php binding or
a binary to transform a static directory of HTML in a ZIM file (without
using a DB). I'm sure this list is not exhaustive.
Like we can see, the problem is not the work to do. The problem is on
the side of the resources. Manuel & Tommi had/have both less available
time for openZIM and they were both the key people for logistic and code
writing. On the accounting side, WMCH, which was our traditional
sponsor, asked us to find other financial sponsors.
On my side I have more time than in 2011 and I proposed myself to help
Manuel in the organizing work ; I could also certainly do part of the
coding work. Christian is also there and continues his work on mobile
readers. We could alos find new external contributors - on a paid or
volunteer base. On the financial side, I think that if we have a clear
project and reasonable wishes, we could certainly get help from the WMF
or Chapters.
I think, it does not make sense to keep costs running and project open
if nothing happens. So wee need to discuss, take decisions and make next
step.
Your opinion matters, please share it!
Regards
Emmanuel
Hey everyone!
Does anyone have contact with the GNU project or FSF?
They are revamping efforts in Free Software for Education, and it would be
great if we could be plugged in as the open education resource which we
are! Particularly in areas of the world they are reaching out to that have
limited Internet access and funding - our Offline WIkipedia for Schools
would be a *great* edition to their suite of resources.
I emailed the generic address listed at the bottom of the blog ("
education(a)gnu.org") and got back a generic response saying it would be
weeks before they would get to my email, so I thought I would try to see if
there was a more efficient track!
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/gnu-education-website-relaunchhttp://www.gnu.org/education/
Thanks-
Jessie
--
*Jessie Wild
Global Development, Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
*