On 7/232/06, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
> Emmanuel :
>
> A simple offline reader ready in time for wikimania would be
> excellent. What language are you working in? Is there a public code
> repository?
>
> Some people at One Laptop per Child are working on an offline
> reader/writer for mediawiki style dumps in python; this will be used
> to read ebooks, other texts, and wiki dumps... perhaps some coding
> collaboration is possible, where the specific specs of different
> projects overlap.
>
> SJ
Hi!
I don't have technical skills (even-english-writing-skills), but want
to share my adventures :-)
Last November i was invited by Gleducar and the organizers of V
Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre, a congress organized by FLOSS
community in Rosario, Argentina, to speak about wikimedia projects.
Gleducar is an argentine association who promotes the collaborative
knowledge construction, using MediaWiki to create free content for
schools [1].
To take advantage of my visit, argentine wikipedians organized a
meetup [2] [3]. We discussed about the project and searched help from
Gleducar and FLOSS community to create a Wikipedia CD version in
spanish. Last year, Chilean and Argentine governments started a new
project called "My First PC", a plan aiming to create a cheaper
personal computer that low-income people could purchase. An OhMyNews
report said [4] :
"The plan, in the same vein as those adopted by India and Malaysia,
which have reported having success with theirs, was not very welcome
in Chile. The reason for the anger is that "My First PC" incorporates
Microsoft Windows XP Starter Edition, making the license price 20
percent of the total price of the computer. Open-source defenders say
that you can get a better operating system for free. "My First PC"
also includes the Encarta Encyclopedia, tacking on another 12 percent.
Critics say users could save their money if they use, for example,
Wikipedia, or search for information on the Internet."
As a response to the bloggers and media support, we thought that could
be a great idea to search a solution to create the spanish CD version.
In the meetup we evaluated the germany version, that I saw at 'mania
05, and we didn't like it. We thought that our solution would not have
to be based in a LAMP-like technology, and we preferred a simple HTML
static dump. Finally, we found Tim Starling's static dumps [5] [6].
Tim's solution is just what we needed, but it doesn't have a search
engine included. That dump can be navigable offline by any web
browser. If you do a wget of that site now, and burn a CD with the
contents, you have a Wikipedia CD version, including the images from
Commons. Tim hasn't made any new dump since November 2005. You can
navigate this dump, for example in french, here [7]. Since then, we
are searching any solutions [8]. We count with Pilaf, the creator of
Live Preview, that Lupin uses in his popups tool, as a technical
member. Also Educalibre, a chilean Gleducar-like project, is working
with us.
Gleducar has made a static dump test and has burn it, with success.
But we are stopped by the search engine! We thought in a javascript
solution, maybe AJAX. I found an online wikipedia browser called
Gollum [9] (GPL, but they don't have a downloadable version) that uses
AJAX for autodiscover articles name in the search field. I like Gollum
and maybe it will be a great tool for a Wikipedia CD version. Now we
have more interest, because argentine FLOSS comunnity is working with
a OLPC laptop prototype, and they are developing social and
educational projects for its use in those laptops. Maybe an OEPC in
spanish could be a great project.
We know that we will need the WMF help at certain moment, and we won't
publish any solution before discussing it with spanish community, SPC
and WMF.
Well, we will continue our searching and will helping you as much as possible.
Kindly regards
[1] http://www.gleducar.org.ar
[1] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Encuentros/Encuentro_de_Wikipedistas…
[2] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:Zuirdj/Rosario_2005
[3] http://english.ohmynews.com/ArticleView/article_view.asp?menu=A11100&no=243…
[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Parsers#A_non-parser_dumper
[5] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Static_dumps
[6] http://static.wikipedia.org/fr/index.html
[7] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_en_CD
[8] http://gollum.easycp.de/en/0,,00.html
--
Juan David Ruiz
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:Zuirdj