Wikipedia Offline - a technical framework - User:80686
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An overview about several possibilities on using Wikipedia content offline. The talk focuses on the new Zeno file format used by the german Wikipedia DVD for which an open source reader is available since 2007. The team around this new reader is now working on a free indexer tool so in future Zeno can be used freely to create your own offline distribution of whatever Wikimedia project you wish, be it on DVD or an electronic device such as an iPod touch, an OLPC or any other computer without internet connection.
Since years several offline distributions of Wikipedia exists, in paper or digital form. We want to look at the digital versions. Several possibilities do exist, publishers and developers in several used very different tools to achieve the same goals: Distributing Wikipedia on DVD or keep it on electronic devices which do not have an internet connection.
Beside several proprietary developments from publishers also free and open source software was built and used in several niches. Also complex setups of customized MediaWiki installations with Apache and MySQL servers have been seen.
To consolidate these efforts and to provide a powerful toolkit for different scenarios the tntZenoReader has been developed. First it was made as a replacement of the closed source ZenoReader application from DirectMedia, first used in the german Wikipedia DVD 2006/2007. The cooperation between the publisher DirectMedia and the open source developers was fruitful, also the Zeno file format could be improved and tntZenoReader was included in the german Wikipedia DVD 2007/2008 and provided an open source reader for Linux and Mac OS X. Based on this a reader library is available which can be used in your own software or as an (embedded) webserver on you own host or in a network.
Other projects which want to bring Wikipedia content to offline users now support the development of an open source Zeno indexer which will hopefully be working till the end of 2008. By then it will be possible for everyone to distribute content from any Wikimedia project to small devices (iPod touch, iPhone, OLPC,
