Petr Bena benapetr@gmail.com writes:
That suck. Especially with GPRS internet and similar connectivity and it also suck because mobile phones don't even have space for so much data. My idea is to create app similar to kiwix, that would use SQLite DB and using wikipedia API it would (slowly, apache friendly) download contents of any mediawiki installation based on user selection, so that you could download just a 1 page for offline reading, or 1 category. Or 1000 categories. Or precompiled sets of pages created by users (books). You could easily update these using API anytime to latest version. You could get media files for these pages, etc, etc... (You could probably even edit the pages offline, and then update them when you are online, but that is just extra feature)
Also see the application that WikiEM (Emergency Medicine) is working on. Dan Ostermayer (CC'd -- Link to original[1]) recently applied for a PEG Grant[2] to continue development on their non-Kiwix alternative for offline Wiki reading[3].
They didn't get a grant, but, from past conversations with Mr. Ostermayer, I understand that content from WikiEM is already being used offline in the Emergency Room and he will continue work on this by getting funding elsewhere.
If nothing else, this would probably be a good place to start.
Mark.
Footnotes: [1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/81173
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Offline_MediaWiki_search_for_NASA...
[3] https://github.com/ostermayer/offlinexml