Offline-l December 2017

offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org

5 participants
5 discussions

by Anne Gomez

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>. *

6 years, 4 months

Re: [Offline-l] [Wikisource-l] FYI - WMF pausing and deprecating some functionality

by Martin A Walker, Ph.D.

Bjoern, That looks like an great project! I spoke to some of our offline group, and there are a couple of people who know MWoffliner well, and who could help with this. I’ll be in contact to see if we can set up a Skype or other group call. Cheers, Martin Prof. Martin A. Walker Dept. of Chemistry SUNY Potsdam Potsdam, NY 13676 USA +1 315 2672271 walkerma(a)potsdam.edu ORCID: 0000-0001-9202-0356 (walkerma on Wikipedia) From: Offline-l [mailto:offline-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Bjoern Hassler Sent: December 06, 2017 07:31 To: Using Wikimedia projects and MediaWiki offline <offline-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Cc: Olga Vasileva <ovasileva(a)wikimedia.org>; Nicolas VIGNERON <vigneron.nicolas(a)gmail.com>; textbook-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org; discussion list for Wikisource, the free library <wikisource-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Offline-l] [Wikisource-l] FYI - WMF pausing and deprecating some functionality Dear friends, We use mediawiki to host teacher education resources for sub-Saharan Africa, see http://oer.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/OER4Schools. The teacher programme has had a wide impact, but on the technical side, we really struggle to maintain the site, especially with regard to export to PDF/ePub/ZIM. We've had some expert help some yeas ago from Emmanuel and a WMUK grant, and made some progress, but esp. the PDF export wasn't really ready for prime-time. We would really appreciate a suite of tools that was well integrated into mediawiki, being able to produce good clean XML/HTML5 (per page), PDF/ePub/ZIM (ideally respecting the various 'hooks'). In fact, we're quite desperate to make progress on this, as we have a new programme starting in Zimbawe. Often it's said that Wikipedia/CC has a 'global reach'. However, we look at the 'legal freedom' (CC licensing, which gives "global legal freedom') vs. the 'technological freedom', the ability to export etc. Yes, "no connectivity" is very slowly disappearing, bu this isn't the issue: Connectivity remains expensive, intermittent, and slow for a large part of the planet, so "technological freedom" often remains elusive - many thanks to e.g. the Kiwix team working on such issues. We do work in SSA day-to-day, and we'd also love for somebody to work with us to look at our requirements, and see whether they could feed into the overall requirements. If there's any way in which we can engage with those processes at WMF or elsewhere, we'd be very happy to do so. Looking forward to your thoughts! Bjoern On 6 December 2017 at 11:28, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki(a)gmail.com<mailto:nemowiki@gmail.com>> wrote: Nicolas VIGNERON, 11/10/2017 20:32: should we try to integrate WSexport functionalities into more general tool? (for the second option, we need to exchange about our specific needs and desires). This was already done with mwlib for ZIM and EPUB, but then WMF trashed it. Three years ago we were told "ePUB and ZIM are likely to return", now how much do you believe PDFs will ever work again? https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2014-September/0… https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T97672 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T73660 The Italian Wikisource users have used PDF exports nonetheless for a few things, although they are not as useful as the ZIM exports. Please don't rely on assumptions about uselessness of something for you to decide that it's fine to make that something worse. Federico _______________________________________________ Offline-l mailing list Offline-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:Offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l

6 years, 4 months

Fwd: Re: [Textbook-l] FYI - WMF pausing and deprecating some functionality

by Dirk Hünniger

-------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] [Offline-l] FYI - WMF pausing and deprecating some functionality Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2017 12:28:13 +0100 From: Dirk Hünniger <dirk.hunniger(a)googlemail.com> To: Wikimedia textbook discussion <textbook-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki(a)gmail.com>, Using Wikimedia projects and MediaWiki offline <offline-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Jon Katz <jkatz(a)wikimedia.org> CC: discussion list for Wikisource, the free library <wikisource-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Hi, my tool is also a solution to the problem. https://de.wikibooks.org/wiki/Benutzer:Dirk_Huenniger/wb2pdf Yours Dirk On 06.12.2017 11:52, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote: > Jon Katz, 22/11/2017 03:29: >> The issue you raise, is a known issue being tracked and worked on here > > The issue I raise is that you should not make a change that makes life > worse for all users. The feature is currently useless in 100 % of > cases, so you should have rolled back immediately to the previous > system as long as it works even in 0,1 % of the cases. > > For now, I'm telling people to use the PediaPress book builder and > ignore the PDFs produced by Wikimedia Foundation. This is not > sustainable. > > Federico > > _______________________________________________ > Textbook-l mailing list > Textbook-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l

6 years, 4 months

Re: [Offline-l] [Wikisource-l] FYI - WMF pausing and deprecating some functionality

by Federico Leva (Nemo)

Nicolas VIGNERON, 11/10/2017 20:32: > should we try to integrate WSexport functionalities into more general > tool? (for the second option, we need to exchange about our specific > needs and desires). This was already done with mwlib for ZIM and EPUB, but then WMF trashed it. Three years ago we were told "ePUB and ZIM are likely to return", now how much do you believe PDFs will ever work again? https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2014-September/0… https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T97672 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T73660 The Italian Wikisource users have used PDF exports nonetheless for a few things, although they are not as useful as the ZIM exports. Please don't rely on assumptions about uselessness of something for you to decide that it's fine to make that something worse. Federico

6 years, 4 months

FYI - WMF pausing and deprecating some functionality

by Anne Gomez

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>. *

6 years, 4 months

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Offline-l December 2017