Hello Wikisourcerers,
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 Wikisource websites. 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 <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 supports 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 books 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 Wikisource contributors 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)