On Thu, 3 Feb 2022 at 13:59, geislemx <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> I hope this mail finds you well in this trying times.
> Over the last month I invested some time and put a little project
> together for personal purpose. Long story short it is a small
> Wikidata/Wikibase App for Android.
>
> Currently it has similar capabilities to Termbox of the Webfrontend -
> add a new Item, searching for an Item, editing an Item, etc.
> The App is build in manner that it should be relatively easy to adapt it
> for any instances of Wikibase.
> Everything is written in Kotlin[1] and the data layer is forged in a way
> to facilitate Kotlin Multiplatform[2] and after turning some screws to
> support a given platform. This means writing an App for iOS with the
> similar capabilities or a Desktop App would be much easier. For myself I
> do not have a stable access to a Mac, otherwise I would made an iOS App
> as well right away.
>
> However the user journey is still bumpy, since parts are missing like
> loading bars and so on. Also the App only allows users to proceed
> without login. Also multi-language support of the UI is missing and the
> design needs a lot more love (like bring up a proper color system for
> theming). Summa summarum please consider it as an early alpha or an very
> very late prototype.
>
> I made a little screen cast which you can find in the endnotes[3]. If
> you wish to try it out yourself, you can go ahead[4][5]. But please be
> aware even if the packages are tightly tested, I have currently only one
> real device to test it on and emulators do not always tell the truth, so
> expect app crashes (even there should be none). Also the App is
> currently hooked against the test instance of Wikidata[6], so anything
> you do will not propagated to main instance of Wikidata and you will not
> be able to retrieve data from there.
>
> So why I am writing? Well, I would like to know, if the community has
> interest in such a thing - an App for Wikidata/Wikibase. Anything else
> can wait until this question is answered, since it will cost time to
> bring it into a publishable state. Please consider this would give the
> opportunity the obtain access to the sensors of a mobile device like
> geolocation, camera, etc and make them usable by Wikibase/Wikidata.
> If the community sees the value in this little project, I also like to
> ask for support/if there are people who are willing to embark on this
> with me.
> I hope you have a pleasant rest of the day.
>

Nice work! Hopefully over time there will be lots of apps that use
Wikidata. If there's a desire to have one central app, there's the natural
question of who it is for - readers or reader-editor-contributors?

The WWW in '90s sadly lost its early built-insupport for html editing, and
wikis were a big part of filling this hole. It would be good to see an app
that kept editing and contributing as high profile natural actions for all
wikidata users, even while trying to hide the more complex aspects that are
better suited to computers with keyboards.

So for example of contributor tasks easy enough for mobile use, quickly
flagging a typo, or routing an entry to a wikidata project or subcommunity
for review, or putting into a personal queue for later attention. Maybe
some tasks that exploit recently-viewed-entity history eg flagging
duplicates for review? Or integration of mobile-friendly things like
podcast and other media content of interest to the wikidata contributing
world?

On the technicalities - apparently Kotlin can run on WASM so there might be
a path to this code being usable in webbier settings too; desktop browsers
and other mobile platforms, PWAs (Progressive Web Apps etc.).

https://blog.jdriven.com/2021/04/Running-Kotlin-in-the-browser-with-Wasm

For example here is Doom running in a VR/XR browser in Oculus, via WASM:
https://youtu.be/9zBxWfb1ziU

I am sure there will be interesting things done with Wikidata in VR - eg
https://twitter.com/utopiah/status/1106238075095654402?s=21 - so in the
interests of avoiding massive scope creep in a single app it might be worth
discussing what kind of shared code / libraries / api could help all apps?

Dan


> Cheers
>
>
> Matthias
>
>
> Endnotes:
> [1]: https://kotlinlang.org/
> [2]: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/multiplatform.html
> [3]: https://box.hu-berlin.de/d/66b0055734c3485b8d22/
> [4]: https://box.hu-berlin.de/f/45c45774cff14c5fad55/?dl=1
> [5]: https://www.javatpoint.com/how-to-install-apk-on-android
> [6]: https://test.wikidata.org/
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