Good work, Nicolas. The need for offline access during travel is acute indeed.

- Sundar
 
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."
- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture

From: Nicolas Raoul <nicolas.roule@gmail.com>
To: wikivoyage-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 1:56 PM
Subject: [Wikivoyage-l] Wikivoyage Offline: Android app based on OxygenGuide-transformed Wikivoyage articles

Hello all,

I am Nicolas Raoul, 8 years of wiki travel/voyage editing.

I just released this non-official Android app (free, open source):
It lets people read Wikivoyage even when offline.
Like a paper guidebook, but stored in your phone.

At first run, it downloads OxygenGuide (a ZIP of all Wikivoyage text, 80MB).
Then you can enjoy the articles offline.
Bonus: Offline is much faster, because data is loaded from the SD card, not from the Internet.

Offline is vital for travellers, because roaming is expensive.
Wikimedia's official app is great, but not offline, making it no-go for most travellers... there is a "Save page" feature, but it is difficult to know in advance every place a travel you lead you to. Imagine selecting and cutting pages from a paper guidebook one-by-one... rather take the whole book if it is not heavy, right?
Special:Book generates monolithic EPUB files with images, too heavy for a phone if you select a lot of articles.

The app is functional, but ugly and many features could be added.
If anyone is interested, you're very welcome to join the team :-)
If Wikimedia wants to overtake the app, I would be flattered!
If I violate any trademark or license, please let me know.
Also, any feedback is very welcome!

By the way, non-Android users can also copy the HTML articles manually to their phone/reader/laptop: https://code.google.com/p/oxygenguide

Cheers!
Nicolas Raoul
http://nrw.free.fr

_______________________________________________
Wikivoyage-l mailing list
Wikivoyage-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikivoyage-l