Hello!
The New Readers team at the Wikimedia Foundation has been offered volunteer
development by a student group from UC Berkeley, called Diversatech.
They'll complete this work within their semester (ending in December).
Given results from the research into offline support in the Wikipedia
Android app
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Offline_support/V1_User_resea…>
(which I shared recently on this list) and the many requests from this
group, they're going to develop a prototype for consideration around what a
tool might look like that allows content curators for offline files to
develop a list of articles.
I'd love your feedback for what considerations they should take into play
as they're looking at this. Remember that this work is exploratory and the
scope will end up being smaller than what I imagine we all would like from
a tool like this :)
If you're interested, you can out my quick pass at requirements, and add
requirements there or other thoughts to the talk page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers/Offline/Content_curation
If we decide to invest further in something like this, we will be sure to
run a fuller consultation as well. I'm also going to encourage them to keep
their progress updated on that page, but can't guarantee that that'll
happen given the short timeline and exploratory nature of the work.
Thanks,
Anne
--
*Anne Gomez* // Senior Program Manager, New Readers
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers>
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. Donate
<http://donate.wikimedia.org>. *
Hey offliners,
In case you're interested, the Foundation will be working to replace OCG
over the coming months. I wanted to make sure you're aware in case you rely
on any of this infrastructure and/or have plans for further development
dependent on it.
What this means in the short term is that PDF book rendering (through Book
Creator) will be shut off for a few months at least while a suitable
replacement is researched, tested, and built.
Here's the full write up:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/PDF_Functionality
Let me know if you have any questions or if this has major impact to your
work.
Cheers,
Anne
--
*Anne Gomez* // Senior Program Manager, New Readers
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers>
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. Donate
<http://donate.wikimedia.org>. *
That's right, Nicolas.
Wikisource and Wikibooks do not use OCG for most of their PDF rendering.
This pause of functionality will only impact PDFs created through Book
Creator, and not impact the workflows you describe as you're using
different rendering services for PDFs. Books previously generated using OCG
will not be impacted, either.
Wikibooks does have the book creator tool, called "Creation Collector,"
which will be impacted. I'm not sure how much it's used there.
Unfortunately, OCG is in a state where it can't be maintained and we need
to deprecate it in order to maintain security. There are other reasons for
moving to a new service. For example, OCG can't render tables. If you look
at the mediawiki page I linked earlier[1] you can see the rest of the
rationale and the timeline for the changes.
I'm adding Olga Vasileva, the product manager leading this work, for any
further questions.
Thanks,
Anne
1- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/PDF_Functionality
On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 2:01 AM, Nicolas VIGNERON <
vigneron.nicolas(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> Maybe I'm misunderstood the situation but I'm not sure to understand the
> problem: does anyone use OCG?
>
> I thought that not one use it anymore (if it was ever used... at least onf
> the French wikisource it never really worked well as it didn't understand
> the 'pages' tag we use on almost all pages) and we have our own
> PDF/ePub/mobi generator (https://tools.wmflabs.org/wsexport/tool/book.php).
> SO don't we all use WSexport?
>
> I see very few pages on https://en.wikisource.org/w/
> index.php?title=Special:PrefixIndex&prefix=Wikisource:Books/ , most of
> them generated a long time ago, so I don't think that this will have any
> impact on Wikisource.
>
> Cdlt, ~nicolas
>
--
*Anne Gomez* // Senior Program Manager, New Readers
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers>
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. Donate
<http://donate.wikimedia.org>. *
Hey All
Hardware arrived today for 100 devices. I have 12 assembled so far.
Final average cost of the hardwards is 27 USD.
I am planning to accept orders through a Google doc form.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdmSX2TOhwAhIRCGfkIv2Don5o58vVcv5q…
I will than email people and inform them of the exact cost with
shipping and taxes included. They will than be asked to deposit money
into WPMEDF's paypal account and the device will than be shipped.
Further thoughts?
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian