Petr, do you think it would be an option to   use git version control as a
storage format instead of openzim? Which would facilitate edit and merge
back changes?

Rupert
On Jan 23, 2015 11:59 AM, "Petr Bena" <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I know most of you hate reinventing a wheel so I first send it here,
> before I launch that project :)
>
> Some of you probably know kiwix - kiwix.org which is offline wikipedia
> reader. I think the idea of this reader is cool, most of you probably
> sometimes wanted to access wikipedia while being offline somewhere,
> but couldn't. Kiwix can help with this, however it has one big problem
> and solution for it is so complex that it would basically need a
> rewrite of whole thing.
>
> That problem is that you need to download pretty huge file (40+GB) in
> order to use it for en wikipedia for example. And if you wanted to
> update those few wikipages you are interested in, to a latest
> revision, then you again need to download that huge file.
>
> 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)
>
> I think this approach would work much better and it's sad kiwix
> already doesn't support it. At some point, if it worked I think this
> new code could be merged back into kiwix, I am going to use C++ in the
> end, which kiwix uses as well.
>
> What do you think about it, is it worth of working on? Is there
> actually a community of "offline wikipedia readers" that would
> appreciate it?
>
> Thanks
>
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