Hi
Like most of you probably know, an intensive effort is currently led to
replace our oldest piece of software: Kiwix Desktop 0.9 for
Windows/MacOS/Linux. We will skip the version 1.0 because this is full
rewriting of the UI, using a new approach and a new UI design.
This time, we have decided to propose a MacOS version using Apple native
UI components and we have achieve to make it :) It is now available on
iTunes http://macos.kiwix.org/. You can also download it from here
https://download.kiwix.org/release/kiwix-desktop-macos/kiwix-desktop-macos_….
This version for MacOS does not offer all the features which were
available in 0.9 but is a lot more stable and works fine so far we know.
It is also really easy to install thanks to the availability on iTunes.
More advanced features (in particular the content management) will come
back later in 2019. Please report any problem to
https://github.com/kiwix/apple/issues.
For Windows and Linux, we are almost at the same stage, we just have
published an alpha3 version here:
https://download.kiwix.org/release/kiwix-desktop/. Like for MacOS, it is
still not full-featured, but our ambition is to release the 2.0 for end
of October with the content manager included. Please give it a try and
share your feedback here: https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-desktop/issues.
I'll keep you inform in the next weeks about further test releases.
Regards
Emmanuel
--
Kiwix - Wikipedia Offline & more
* Web: http://www.kiwix.org
* Twitter: https://twitter.com/KiwixOffline
* more: http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Communication
A few of us met to discuss offline roadmaps and challenges today, and
noting that no user gropu exists [and that other overviews of offline
projects on Meta are a bit out of date] we started a user group. This is a
very low-overhead group to provide a name for the network of all offline
projects.
Please add links to your own active projects from this page.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_wiki_user_group
SJ
Hi
Here are the last mobile maintenance releases. They have been rolled out
last week.
1.9.4 for iOS:
* NEW: sort languages in library language filter both by count or
alphabetically
* NEW: search for a zim file by name in library online catalog
2.4 for Android:
* FIX: External SD card problems
* FIX: Some UI translation
* FIX: Download manager process sporadic problems
* FIX: Support of most recent 4GB+ ZIM files
* NEW: Display download time estimation
* NEW: Many improvements in fulltext search
* NEW: Allow manual update of storage location
* NEW: Sort Bookmarks alphabetically
* NEW: Option to download only via WIFI
Kiwix for Android still suffers of a massive stability problem in the
download feature. Something we plan to fully fix in next version 3.0.
Regards
Emmanuel
--
Kiwix - Wikipedia Offline & more
* Web: http://www.kiwix.org
* Twitter: https://twitter.com/KiwixOffline
* more: http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Communication
If you remember the old offline-wiki google site, it's been rewritten and
is back online. I met Kevin, its maintainer, at the DWeb summet last week:
he's still thinking deeply about these things. [elsewhere at the event we
talked about effective ways to distribute incremental updates to
knowledgesets like this; something that should be connected to the related
thinking withink kiwix :)]
https://offlinewiki.app/
SJ
Hi all,
A quick note to announce that Kiwix and the Wikimedia Foundation have decided to enter a more formal partnership to replace the limited, project-based approach we had until now. The official announcement is here:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/07/18/wikimedia-foundation-and-kiwix-partne…
The TL;DR of it is that we'll be able to continue to build on the massive improvements we made over the past 18 months. We have 3 million users, and there are 4 billion people without reliable access: there certainly is room for more growth.
This is a first, small step, but an important one : for this year we'll focus on improving user experience, and make it easier for people to access content offline (aka zim farm). If this works well, I'd like us to look into incremental updates as early as next year.
Thanks to everyone on this list that helped make it happen!
Emmanuel and Stephane
Hi
Two weeks ago we have made a new waves of releases of many core
projects for both openZIM and Kiwix.
Here are the bits of changelog:
libzim 4.0.0
============
* [Writer] Remove a lot of memory copy.
* [Writer] Add xapian indexing directly in libzim.
* [Writer] Better API.
* [Writer] Use multi-threading to write clusters.
zimwriterfs 1.2
===============
* Revert "Add leading '/' at indexer url.
* Move to meson build system.
* Addapt to new libzim's writer's API.
* Add travic CI.
* Add redirect articles after "normal" articles.
* Explicitly use icu namespace to allow use of packaged icu lib.
* Fix help/log typos.
* Better README.
zim-tools 1.0.0
===============
* Remove warnings.
* Compile zim-tools with travis.
* Add zim-check tool.
* Addapt zimDiff and zimPatch to new version of libzim writer.
* [zimSplit] Do not create a new ofstream for each part. (Do not need gcc5)
* Do not use `std::to_string` (Allow compilation with gcc4.8)
kiwix-lib 2.0.1
===============
* Fix parsing of url.
* Remove unused static resources.
* Correctly decode reserved characters in URLs.
* Explicitly use icu namespace to allow use of packaged icu lib.
kiwix-tools 0.6.0
=================
* remove kiwix-install tool.
kiwix-serve
-----------
* Improved taskbar #160
* Fix global page when using the option `--nosearchbar`
* Return 404 for missing resources
* Fix compilation for gcc 4.8.
kiwix-manage
------------
* Returns proper exit code (not always 0)
Preparation of next wave has already started :)
Regards
Emmanuel
--
Kiwix - Wikipedia Offline & more
* Web: http://www.kiwix.org
* Twitter: https://twitter.com/KiwixOffline
* more: http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Communication
Hi
We have published a new maintenance release of Kiwix for iOS 1.9 branch.
Here is the short changelog:
- Use Realm in replace of CoreData as database
- Added Wiktionary, Wikiquote and Wikisource categories
- Fix: unable to detect embedded index in some situations
- Fix: unable to cancel erroneous download tasks
The app is available on iTunes at http://ios.kiwix.org.
Enjoy
Emmanuel
--
Kiwix - Wikipedia Offline & more
* Web: http://www.kiwix.org
* Twitter: https://twitter.com/KiwixOffline
* more: http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Communication
Hi
We just have released updates for our Javascript based Kiwix
ports for Chrome & Firefox browsers, Windows mobile and Xbox devices as
for UBports (Ubuntu Touch).
As a reminder, these ports are not full featured like native code
based Kiwix ports and might be a bit slower, but offer other nice
properties, like for example an excellent portability.
You can find the new Browser extensions:
* Chrome:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kiwix/donaljnlmapmngakoipdmehbfci…
* Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/kiwix-offline/
Kiwix JS 2.3.0 Changelog:
* Add a cache on CSS stylesheets to improve performance in jQuery mode
* Change the technical way to display articles, so that all CSS styles
can be loaded, and to avoid other technical issues
* Make the content visible only when CSS styles are read, in order to
avoir repaints that can be very slow
* Fix redirections in ServiceWorker mode in ZIM files like
StackExchange, and make the ServiceWorker handle all the articles
(including the main one, and the first displayed after a search or
random search)
* Fix links with an anchor in the URL
* In recent wikipedia and other wikimedia ZIM files, open all the
sections when using a small screen (mobile stylesheet), so that the
content remains readable (it only works in jQuery mode, this should be
fixed in ServiceWorker mode in next version)
* Fix CSS UTF-8 encoding
A full changelog can be found here:
https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-js/milestone/18?closed=1
Work continues on our forge at https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-js and
https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-js-windows.
Hope you will enjoy all or part of these new apps, features and bug fixes.
Regards
Emmanuel
--
Kiwix - Wikipedia Offline & more
* Web: http://www.kiwix.org
* Twitter: https://twitter.com/KiwixOffline
* more: http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Communication
Hi
The Kiwix team is proud to publish the first version of its Kiwix-plug
installer (also called Pibox installer). A tool with both command line
and graphical user interface to easily setup a Kiwix-plug on a RaspberryPi.
Using a PC on Windows/MacOS/Linux and having a good connection to
internet, you can with a few mouse clicks configure a SD card for a
RaspberryPi3. You then just have to wait (The Windows version is still
really slow due to the virtualisation) to get your offline library WIFI
hotspot with the content of your choice.
Give it a try, just download Kiwix-plug installer from here:
https://download.kiwix.org/release/kiwix-plug_installer/v1.0/
Software code is open-source, please open tickets if you have any
bug/question/remark: https://framagit.org/ideascube/pibox-installer
Do you want to know more?
Kiwix plug is a portable server. With it, you can create a local network
and deliver content to users. Kiwix plug allows you to share files
easily: once they are connected to the Kiwix network, content is
available for anybody through their own Web browser.
Kiwix-plug has been created 5 years ago and integrated first
kiwix-serve, the HTTP daemon serving ZIM files and a custom based set of
system scripts and HTML pages. It has been distributed in hundreds of
schools and cultural centers, mostly in Africa but not only. This is,
for example, the solution on which ran the devices distributed within
the WikiFundi project. You can find a few more technical details here
http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Kiwix-plug.
Kiwix-plug installer v1.0 is not only a disrupting new way of creating
this kind of offline libraries, it is also a new solution motorising the
Kiwix-plug. Using Ideascube (https://framagit.org/ideascube/ideascube),
we have been able to provide a much nice user interface and fix many of
our long standing bugs.
Kiwix-plug installer v2.0 is already in development and its release is
planned in a few weeks. The features will be really similar, but the
overall speed/performance will be greatly improved.
We are also working on a cloud version of the Pibox-installer, allowing
to create the SD card images from a web page... but we will tell you
more about that in an other email :)
Regards
Emmanuel
--
Kiwix - Wikipedia Offline & more
* Web: http://www.kiwix.org
* Twitter: https://twitter.com/KiwixOffline
* more: http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Communication
Hi
We just have released a new version of Kiwix for iOS.
New Library Design:
* ZIM files are grouped by topic categories
* ZIM file detail view
* Downloading content and catalog are displayed in one place
* On iPads, using a split view with ZIM file / categories on the left
and detail on the right
Bookmark:
* Now displayed as a side panel on iPad
* Add / remove bookmark interface is now presented as a HUD and does not
cover up all the screen space
Reading:
* Now ask users for confirmation when opening external links. Can be
turned on or off in settings
Core:
* Massive multiple improvement of the ZIM file mgmt through introduction
of Kiwix lib 2.0.
iOS:
* An effort has been made to keep compatibility with iOS 10.
The app is available on iTunes at http://ios.kiwix.org.
Enjoy
Emmanuel
--
Kiwix - Wikipedia Offline & more
* Web: http://www.kiwix.org
* Twitter: https://twitter.com/KiwixOffline
* more: http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Communication