dear w-o-r, there are some recent discussions about offline readers and writers, for mediawiki and other wikis ('mikmik' is a proposed platform for simple distributed offline editing, for instance, with plugins for different wiki architectures), on this wikireader list:
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/wikireader
just as wiki-offline-reader-l is nominally focused on offline wikipedia readers, the wikireader lits is nominally focused on wikireaders for offline students and schools using XOs ; but there is significant overlap.
you're all welcome to join the discussion there.
regards, SJ