Hi, everyone. Great news and thanks for the detailed report! I'm particular happy about the format improvements and the toolchain progress. Sorry I couldn't make this meeting; I'll _definitely_ make the next one... :)
Cheers, Asaf On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 6:24 PM, Manuel Schneider < [email protected]> wrote: > Dear all, > > last weekend the openZIM team held its Developers Meeting for 2010. We > planned to have two Developers Meeting per year, one in spring, one in > fall. But as there were too many events in and around spring and all of > us are volunteers we decided to better spend this weekend with our > families. So this was our first and only Developers Meeting in 2010. > > Participants: > * Emmanuel Engelhard (Kiwix maintainer and organizer of this meeting) > * Tommi Mäkitalo (openZIM main developer) > * Christian Pühringer (WikiOnBoard maintainer) > * Ralf Schmitt (developer of Pediapress) > * Manuel Schneider > > == Collections Extension for MediaWiki / Pediapress == > Ralf from Pediapress visited us on Saturday to discuss with us the > integration of the ZIM format into their Collections extension which is > used on Wikimedia wikis to create books (printed on demand or exported > as PDF or ODF). This idea was born on the Wikimedia Conference in April > 2010 when we had a Wikipedia Offline meeting. > > Tommi and Ralf exchanged thoughts about the implementation, Tommi made > some changes to the zimwriter to make it more modular while Ralf wrote a > Python wrapper for zimlib. In a test program Ralf was able to create his > first ZIM file using Python and the new modularized zimwriter. > > While Pediapress is in touch with the Wikimedia Foundation in order to > make a project with them for the integration of ZIM into their software > Ralf agreed to at least finish the test program in Python which can be > downloaded here: > http://github.com/schmir/pyzim > > We hope that WMF and Pediapress come to an agreement so the actual > integration can happen soon. > > == Documentation of the ZIM File Format == > As we made a lot of changes last year on the ZIM file format the > documentation was partly outdated and partly not detailed enough. We > spent roughly one day to improve the documentation, its size has doubled > during this weekend. > > A few parts of the format, notably the URL scheme and encoding, native > category handling, per-article meta data and the HTML layout was not > properly specified, so we spend some time to discuss the details and fix > these issues. They need to be implemented now, maybe the last major > changes to the ZIM format, but these changes don't break compatibility > as they were already prepared in the past. > > Another addition to the format - a new idea, but also > backward-compatible - was the checksum. Newer ZIM files can now be > checked by the new zimlib if they are corrupted. This was a request from > users in Peru which have a hard time to download ZIM files and as they > often have to resume transfers the files are likely to get corrupted. As > they still work in most parts but cause errors in specific situations > only it was hard to tell what the problem was. > > http://openzim.org/ZIM_File_Format > > == Reader Applications == > News on specific readers, this is not a list of all available reader > applications. > > === Windows / Linux === > Kiwix is already wellknown and works perfectly on both GNU/Linux and > Windows. It is a GUI application - a browser - to view ZIM files and > also features a webserver to view ZIM in a network using a standard > browser. > > Emmanuel's roadmap is to create big ZIM files in the next months > including all images for the selected articles. The next WP 1.0 release > will be produced soon, the selection process is almost done. He bought a > new server to do that, partly sponsored by Wikimedia Italia. The biggest > effort is to create and optimize all the thumbnails of the images, so he > is now trying to get a server at the datacenter of the Wikimedia > Foundation where he can read the image files directly from the > repositories. > > http://www.kiwix.org/index.php/Main_Page > > === Symbian / Android === > This year Christian published WikiOnBoard, a Symbian application to view > ZIM files. It works very well on recent Nokia phones. On Sunday > Christian presented us WikiOnBoard on Android - after he was able to get > Qt installed on Android WikiOnBoard can be compiled on Android without > any porting. > > The plan is to implement a touch screen GUI to WikiOnBoard, so it can be > used on never Nokia phones and on Android devices. The current version > of WikiOnBoard only works with a keyboard which becomes less and less > common. Once this is done WikiOnBoard will be published in the Nokia Ovi > Store and Android market. > > Christian asked for sponsorship for a new touch screen phone (about 150 > EUR plus the help to get it via Germany as it is not available yet in > many other countries). As the openZIM budget offers enough room for this > it only depends on the team to approve this sponsorship. > > http://wiki.github.com/cip/WikiOnBoard/ > > == MediaWiki API interface for zimwriter == > Emmanuel and Tommi want to write a proof-of-concept of a zimwriter > interface which uses the MediaWiki API directly to get all articles out > of a wiki. > > == ZIM File Library == > We want to start working on our ZIM File library to make it easier for > users to fine ZIM files. > > This involves finding mirror sites and writing a download page which > reads ZIM meta data, shows a searchable list of files and redirects > downloads to the mirror servers. > > == Events in 2011 == > === Developers Meeting === > August 2nd / 3rd > > We decided to have the next and only openZIM meeting in 2011 during the > Hacking Days which are prior Wikimania 2011 in Haifa, Israel. > > Asuming that we will be able to get the same sponsorship as this year we > agreed that in this case will reimburse travel costs for this meeting in > Israel. > > Registration to Wikimania will start in January, Manuel will send a > notification to the openZIM mailing list. Everyone interested is urged > to register and pay as soon as possible, as there will be a decent early > bird discount and accommodation is part of the registration. Then > everyone should book a flight. The receipts and invoices for > registration and the flights will then go to Manuel who will take care > of the reimbursement. > > === LinuxTag === > May 11th - 14th > > As always LinuxTag will take place in Berlin and we will be part of it. > We plan to have one or two talks about openZIM, Tommi will do again a > live-coding session to show how to use zimlib while Emmanuel offered a > talk about the steps of how to create an offline version of Wikipedia, > explaining selection, code cleanups, link rewriting etc. > > == End == > Ok, that's it. Quite a long report, but we actually did a lot of work > during these two days. Additionally it is always very valuable to speak > face-to-face and get to know new team members. > > This last year was not as active concerning features and development as > last year, but I consider it being a great progress nevertheless - this > year we were able to stabilize the format, get the implementation and > documentation right and reach out for new users such as Pediapress or > WikiOnBoard. > > The next year we will have to > * finish the last open items concerning implementation > * get the mobile readers released to the official markets / app stores > * get the toolchains between MediaWiki and ZIM running, such as > Collections extension and the MW API interface > > Pictures: See here http://openzim.org/Developer_Meetings/2010-2 > > Thanks for the participants to be there and help getting the work done > and to Wikimedia CH as our generous sponsor to make this possible. > > Thank you for your attention, > > > Manuel Schneider > > -- > Regards > Manuel Schneider > > Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens > Wikimedia CH - Association for the advancement of free knowledge > www.wikimedia.ch > > _______________________________________________ > Offline-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l > -- Asaf Bartov <[email protected]>
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