Hello Wikidata community,
It gives us immense pleasure and excitement to you that the *Wikisource
Reader mobile application
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.cis_india.wsreader>* is
now released for Android users at the Google Play Store for them to read
books which are completely proofread and transcluded on the digital library
websites of Wikisource. The Github repo is here
<https://github.com/cis-india/wikisource-reader> and a website for the app
<https://cis-india.github.io/wikisource-reader-app/> is also created.
The metadata of the books are *fetched directly from Wikidata* and strictly
follows the bibliographical book model
<http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Books> of Wikidata. So to appear in
the app, any completed book must fulfill the three mandatory criteria
mentioned below. They need to have corresponding:
- Wikidata items
- Wikisource sitelink with proofread or validation badges
- P1957 <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P1957> property linked
in the items.
A sample Wikidata item of one such book is here
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q51614301>. A sample SPARQL query to list
the books to be displayed in the app for one specific language is here
<https://w.wiki/F4Av>. A detailed documentation can be found on this Meta-Wiki
page <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource_reader_app/Selection>.
The app currently hosts more than 7300 books in 22 language Wikisource
editions like Assamese, Bangla, Catalan, Czech, Danish, English, French,
Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Javanese, Marathi, Malay, Polish, Punjabi,
Spanish, Sundanese, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. More
languages will be added in next releases as and when they fulfill the
mandatory criteria in due course for at least 1-5 books as a start.
The app has the following features
1. Clean and beautiful user interface
2. Dark and Light theme
3. Option to browse free e-books in multiple languages
4. Option to import books from non-Wikisource external sources
5. Option to filter books in different literary forms
6. Option to download books for offline access
7. Option to store, read and delete books from library
8. Option to jump through chapters
9. In-built e-book reader
10. Customization of font color, size and weight
11. Light, Dark, Sepia and customized color mode for reading
12. Adjustment of page margins
13. RTL and LTR support
14. System default typeface along with options for Literata, Sans Sarif,
IA Writer Duospace, AccsiibleDfa and OpenDyslexic typefaces
15. Option to choose among left, right and justified text alignments
16. Customization of line height, paragraph indent, paragraph spacing,
word spacing and letter spacing
17. Options to highlight, underline and annotate texts
18. Option to bookmark
19. Text to Speech in different languages with customizable speed and
pitch
The app is dependent on
- WSindex API <https://wsindex.toolforge.org/books/>, which was built
specifically to fetch metadata of books from Wikidata for the app. The
source code is here <https://codeberg.org/ph4ni/wsindex>.
- WS export <https://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:WS_Export> tool to
generate Epubs
- Myne app <https://github.com/Pool-Of-Tears/Myne/> by Shivam
<https://krsh.dev/> for user interface
- Readium mobile <https://github.com/readium/kotlin-toolkit> by The
European Digital Reading Lab (EDRLab)
<https://www.edrlab.org/software/readium-mobile/> for the actual reading
experience.
The development of the app was initially financially supported by Centre
for Internet and Society <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K> until
March 2025, who also host the app on Google play store now. The app is now
developed and maintained in volunteer capacity and we welcome all open
source developers and experienced Wikisourcerers to contribute to the
development of the app for the future.
We sincerely thank everyone who was involved in supporting the app in
different ways, without whom this app could not have been developed.
Regards,
Sai Phanindra and Bodhisattwa
(both as volunteer capacity)
Hello all!
The Search Platform Team usually holds an open meeting on the first
Wednesday of each month. Come talk to us about anything related to
Wikimedia search, Wikidata Query Service (WDQS), Wikimedia Commons Query
Service (WCQS), etc.!
Feel free to add your items to the Etherpad Agenda for the next meeting.
Details for our next meeting: Date: Wednesday, August 6, 2025 Time:
15:00-16:00 UTC / 08:00 PST / 11:00 EST / 17:00 CET Etherpad:
https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Search_Platform_Office_Hours Google Meet
link: https://meet.google.com/vgj-bbeb-uyi Join by phone:
https://tel.meet/vgj-bbeb-uyi?pin=8118110806927
Have fun and see you soon!
--
Peter Fischer (he/him)
Senior Software Engineer, Search Platform
Wikimedia Foundation