Brion Vibber wrote:
FWIW I think a bootable linux+Wikipedia would be *awesome*. But, the data needs to be accessible from an existing OS as well (and not all of us are running an x86 machine!) or we get the above scenario of extremely limited usefulness.
Brion is dead-on here, as usual. While a bootable knoppix disc is a great idea, the WP data residing on the disc needs to be kept in a format that can be read by multiplatform reader applications that are also on the disc.
For instance, something like RealBasic [http://www.realsoftware.com/] will compile an application for both Mac and Windows, so if it can also live on the CD, I think the combination (Mac, Windows, Linux) is very satisfactory coverage. An alternative, of course, is Java - but I think sticking red-hot needles into our respective eyes might be more pleasurable.
Cheers, Ivan.