Very interesting concept. I assume you've seen [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team], which is closely related. Couple of questions:
* It can edit offline articles — to what end? Does it push these articles when the device goes online? How does it handle edit conflicts? Which version is the user editing (i.e., for high traffic articles, it's rather impractical to be editing a database dump that is ~days/weeks old, considering all the changes made since)?
* It downloads images on demand — so someone needs to browse to a page before downloading the images for it? How long are these images cached? Adjustable?
These are just a couple of thoughts that popped into my mind at first. It might be worthwhile talking to the (English) WP 1.0 folks (we can meet on IRC if you want, let me know) about integrating this with that project... adding a link to a XOWA install with just the pages selected for WP 1.0? I can see the benefit of having a version of WP 1.0 that is cross-platform/doesn't require addition software/self-contained...at least as a first use for your work. See [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_0.8/downloads]
Thanks, Theo
See also: * [http://library.kiwix.org/wikipedia_en_wp1/]
On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 5:47 PM, gnosygnu gnosygnu@gmail.com wrote:
I'm hoping this forum is a proper place for this message. My apologies if it is not.
XOWA is a new open-source offline Wikipedia app which I wrote in my spare time over the past 20 months. You can view screenshots here ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/xowa ) or here ( http://imgur.com/a/OydBK/layout/blog ). Its notable features are:
- It is a full-fledged offline HTML reader for English Wikipedia (or
any other Wikimedia Foundation wiki)
- It works directly against the data-dump files (such as those at
http://dumps.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html)
- It downloads images from Wikimedia on demand (or locally from a
Wikimedia image tarball at http://ftpmirror.your.org/pub/wikimedia/imagedumps/tarballs/fulls/20130101/ )
- It can edit offline articles (to update content, correct vandalism
or just to experiment)
- It navigates between offline wikis (Click on "Look up this word in
Wiktionary" and it will open your offline version of Wiktionary)
I'm posting here because I'm looking for feedback. So far, I have a few good users, and one exceptional user from German Wikipedia (Schnark: who added MathJax and sortable/collapsible tables). I'm currently looking for others who will try offline images, test English Wikipedia, or review wikis in other languages.
The most recent version of XOWA is contained in one zip file. It takes one click and about 3 minutes to download Simple Wikipedia for offline use. XOWA also has a page that lists 596 other wikis that can be set up with one click. English Wikipedia is the largest and it will take between 4 and 5 hours, but most of that time is to download and unzip the 9 GB .bz2 file.
If you're interested and have some time, please give XOWA a try. I post Windows-specific instructions below. XOWA also works on Linux (and possibly Mac OS X), so if you want to run on that OS, the instructions are similar except you will need to run "java -jar xowa_linux.jar" or "java -d32 -DstartOnFirstThread -jar xowa_macosx.jar"
If you have questions or comments or problems, please post and I will reply.
Thanks for your attention.
Instructions
Requirements:
- 1 GB free space: XOWA (5 MB) + XUL Runner (32 MB) + Simple Wikipedia
(500 MB) + ImageMagick/Inkscape (400 MB)
- Windows XP or higher
- Java 1.6 or Java 1.7. If Java is not installed on your machine, you
can get it from http://www.java.com/en/download
Steps
- Download xowa_app_windows_v0.2.2.0.zip from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xowa/files/v0.2.2
- Unzip the file to C:\xowa. When you are done, you should have a file
called C:\xowa\xowa.exe as well as many other files and directories
- Double-click C:\xowa\xowa.exe. The app should launch and the XOWA
Main Page should load.
- Click the link for "Set up Simple Wikipedia". Wait about 3 minutes
for the wiki to download and install. When it is finished, it will open Simple Wikipedia
- Browse Simple Wikipedia. When you are done, click on the Main Page
link under XOWA in the left hand navigation bar.
- Click the link for "Set up images (Windows)". Wait about 3 minutes
for the image programs to install.
- Click on Page history on the left hand nav
- Select Main_Page for simple.wikipedia.org. Images will now download
automatically for any page you visit. Here are some example pages to visit (you can copy and paste these into the address bar): "simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/World History", "simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess", "simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic architecture", "simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn (planet)"
- If you want to try other wikis, click on "list of data dumps" on the
XOWA Main Page
Offline-l mailing list Offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l