tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-120467142024-03-27T13:58:51.549+01:00Words and what notGerardMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14287269079265427282noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12046714.post-40461690894116296452015-04-10T08:40:00.002+02:002015-04-10T08:40:51.739+02:00#Wikipedia Zero - I am all for it II<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=13418780" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI2Nc-44_FMm-Lqaj4xDjitl6pWQPDMkpD0bfqEGrdfFTgjz05KOIQkN2p4m279XnhqVbOjPNSdEulxIZ3ajPl8uh1Q5jL3TU7fwVTjdZ1yu6_15q-DLO8JIZ68iTadOpR_E7lpA/s1600/Nairobi_-_Wikipedia_Zero.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
<a href="https://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=13418780">Wikipedia Zero</a> is a tool. Its purpose is to enable more people reading Wikipedia. The problem it solves is that many people have a limit how much data they can use on the subscription they have for their mobile phone. It does it by having the ISP's provide Wikipedia for free.<br />
<br />
There are other tools like <a href="https://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?q=Q559020">Kiwix</a>, it provides Wikipedia off line. Typically it is used in more formal settings like schools.<br />
<br />
They are different tools they are both splendid and they both deserve praise and support.<br />
<br />
Some say Wikipedia Zero is used largely by those who are already relatively wealthy and educated. The argument used is: "They use Wikipedia in English". This is a wonderful argument; it exposes the bias of Wikipedia for English and at most it is a perverse result.<br />
<br />
Having people use Wikipedia in English does not mean that they do not benefit from Wikipedia Zero. If you want to know if Wikipedia Zero fulfils its goal of enabling people to read Wikipedia, check out the increased use of Wikipedia for those countries. The tool does what it is designed to do; enable access.<br />
<br />
When the argument that more people should be able to access Wikipedia in their mother tongue, it means that the current bias for English is to be offset by investing in content in these other languages. <grin> These high horse arguments against Wikipedia Zero can be countered by un-orthodox approaches like paid editing and automated content </grin> Let the heated arguments commence !<br />
Thanks,<br />
GerardMGerardMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14287269079265427282noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12046714.post-85691269229238777362015-03-06T07:55:00.001+01:002015-03-07T09:30:43.700+01:00#Kiwix - getting #Labs ready for the #Wikipedia big time<div class="separator tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLx8lStJQ-pA3zaVibH0KxGaoWfyIJ6bXt-M34FVLUet-LewaxxOao7innaUbOydz6WclJUgyuQDSaZMalrNJlEIs-4XhA-_UUEK8QgdglGIoPsvbl17Htr99LvO7Ao10uJVogFA/s1600/big.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLx8lStJQ-pA3zaVibH0KxGaoWfyIJ6bXt-M34FVLUet-LewaxxOao7innaUbOydz6WclJUgyuQDSaZMalrNJlEIs-4XhA-_UUEK8QgdglGIoPsvbl17Htr99LvO7Ao10uJVogFA/s1600/big.jpeg" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
Offline <a href="https://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=10876391">#Wikipedia</a> received a big boost. It is updating monthly its images for most of the #Wikimedia projects. Most but not all. Emmanuel was asked to write up about his challenges and I am happy to share this with his permission. Developments like this make both <a href="https://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=15041928">Labs</a> and <a href="https://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=559020">Kiwix</a> even more strategic to out goals.<br />
Thanks,<br />
GerardM<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Following Yuvi's and Andrew's invitation, I write this email to explain what I want to do with Labs and share with you my first experiences.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><b>== Context ==</b></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Most of the people still don't have a free and cheap broadband access to fully enjoy reading Wikimedia web sites. With <a href="http://www.kiwix.org/">Kiwix</a> and <a href="http://www.openzim.org/">openZIM</a>, a <a href="https://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=15279140">WikimediaCH</a> program, we have been working on solutions for almost ten years to bring Wikimedia content "offline".</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">We have built a multi-platform reader </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">and have created ZIM, a file format to store web site snapshots</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">. As a result, Kiwix is currently the most successful solution to access Wikipedia offline.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><b>== Problem ==</b></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">However, one of the weak point of the project is that we still don't achieve to generate often enough new fresh snapshots (ZIM files). Generating ZIM snapshots periodically (we want to provide a new fresh version each month) of +800 projects needs pretty much hardware resources.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">This might look like a detail but it's not. The lack of up-to-date snapshots brakes many action within our movement to advert more broadly our offer. As a consequence, too few people are aware about it reported last Wikimedia readership update. An other side effect is that every few months, volunteer developers get the idea to build a new offline reader based on the XML dumps (the only up2date snapshots we provide for now), which is near to be a dead-end approach.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><b>== Goal ==</b></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Our goal with </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Labs </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">is to have a sustainable and efficient solution to build, one time a month, new ZIM files for all our projects (for each project, one with thumbnails and one without). This is at the same time a requirement for and a part of a broader initiative which has for purpose to increase the awareness about our "offline offer". Other tasks are for example, storing all the ZIM files on Wikimedia servers (we currently only store part of them on </span><a href="http://download.wikimedia.org/" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;" target="_blank">download.wikimedia.org</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">) and improve their accessibility by making them more visible (WPAR has for example customised their sidebar to provide a direct access</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><b>== Needs ==</b></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Building a ZIM file from a MediaWiki is done using a tool called mwoffliner which is a scraper based on both Parsoid & MediaWiki APIs. mwoffliner, after scraping and rewriting content, store them in a directory. At the end, the content is then self-sufficient (without online dependencies) and can be then packed in one step in a ZIM file (using a tool called zimwriterfs).</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">To run this software you better have:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">A little bit bandwidth</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Low network latency (lots of HTTP requests)</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Fast storage</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Pretty much storage (~100GB per million article)</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Many cores for compression (ZIM, ZIP and picture optimisation)</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Time (~400.000 articles can be dumped per day on a machine)</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">My guess is that we need a total of around a dozen of VMs and 1.5 TB of storage.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><b>== Current achievements ==</b></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">We have currently 3 x-large VMs in our "<a href="https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nova_Resource:Mwoffliner">MWoffliner</a>" project:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">With them we are able to provide, one time a month, ZIM for all instances of Wikivoyage, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikiversity, Wikibooks, Wikispecies, Wikisource, Wiktionary and a few minors Wikipedias.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Here are a few feedbacks about our first months with </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Labs</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Labs is a great tool, it's fully in the Wikimedia spirit and it works.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Support on IRC is efficient and friendly</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">We faced a little bit instability in December but instances seem to be stable now</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">The Documentation on wikitech wiki seems to be pretty complete, but the overall presentation is to my opinion too chaotic and stepping-in is might be easier with a more user-friendly presentation.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Mediawiki Sementic & OpenStackManager sync/cache/cookie problems are a little bit annoying</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Overall VM performance looks good although suffering from sporadic instabilities (bandwidth not available, all the processes stuck in "kernel time", slow storage).</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">In general, Labs does the job, we are satisfied and think this is an adapted solution to our project.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><b>== Next steps ==</b></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">We want to complete our effort and mirror the biggest Wikipedia projects. Unfortunately, we have reached the limits of a traditional usage of </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Labs</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">. We need more quota and we need to experiment with the NFS storage because an x-large instance in not able to mirror more than 1.5 millions of articles at a time. How might that be made possible?</span></blockquote>
GerardMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14287269079265427282noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12046714.post-74540580893762289902014-11-20T09:19:00.000+01:002014-11-20T11:01:10.424+01:00#Wikimedia & Project #Gutenberg - the sum of all knowledge<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=22673" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK4xy6E-lLRfrfX1km390YFxrXfRy62bmGXf8F-kY1FpJDilyopXECxWGtkp_nigN1oKb4xyXm0z-xvd5fd4eLy3-2r4kIN7QdidQLM6tMZNbCNM_rE-AAvc8PCje9Jow61rvbQg/s1600/Gutenberg.gif" /></a></div>
"<a href="https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vision">To share in the sum of all knowledge</a>" is the vision of the <a href="http://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=180">Wikimedia Foundation</a>. The <a href="https://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=15279140">Swiss chapter</a> does understand this really well. It has adopted <a href="http://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=559020">Kiwix</a>, an off line reader for content that is published in the <a href="http://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=784695">ZIM</a> format.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?&q=22673">Project Gutenberg</a> is a well established organisation dedicated to the digitisation of books. Its catalogue of 50.000 public domain books is now available to everybody, everywhere and offline as well.<br />
<br />
Thanks to a hackathon, all books are now available in the ZIM format, you can search in all the books at the same time. The best news is that not only has this work been done for a first time, it is build in such a way that it can be easily repeated.<br />
<br />
Future deployments may include all the books of Wikisource, books from other sources and even copyrighted works as well. The point of Kiwix is that it is an enabler, it allows for the dissemination of knowledge and to achieve THAT is what our aim is.<br />
<br />
Congratulations to the Swiss Wikimedia chapter for providing the sustained support of this valuable project.<br />
Thanks,<br />
GerardMGerardMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14287269079265427282noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12046714.post-80297396738514644372012-07-02T15:35:00.000+02:002012-07-10T22:56:43.833+02:00#Kiwix - the interview<a href="http://kiwix.org/">#Kiwix</a> is the tool that allows you to read the content of a Wiki offline. It has been developed with <a href="http://wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a> in mind but is equally usable for <a href="http://wikisource.org/">Wikisource</a> or <a href="http://wikibooks.org/">Wikibooks</a>. I am really happy to have interviewed Emmanuel who knows all the ins and outs of this wonderful piece of software.<br />
Thanks,<br />
GerardM<br />
<b><br /></b><br />
<b>What is Kiwix and what is it used for</b><br />
<a href="http://kiwix.org/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUFCkehl6wUbaEgPxW63E7MPyOYaNbMhIfQxmLIds2Hut7jfbACxBLTXDCmKYrVipaKTZckK50VcRKXRPUPrU55usyrvcVpiPVsRX6VJJK2H2thVE3HW-_UoefrabVvrsYRXRg6w/s200/Kiwix_logo.png" width="200" /></a>Kiwix<span style="background-color: white;"> is a software that wants to enable people
to read Web contents without internet connection. It's a reader which
works with ZIM files containing all the content. It's used to access
Wikipedia offline, by reading </span><a href="http://tmp.kiwix.org/scr/kiwix_current_version_screencast.ogv" style="background-color: white;">pre-packaged Wikipedia ZIM files</a><span style="background-color: white;">. It's
mainly used by people who want to have an encyclopedia, but are too poor to
have access to the internet. It's also used,for example, by travelling people
(plane, ship, train), prisoners and students at school. </span><br />
<br />
<b>Can you tell us something about its popularity</b><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">We have users all over the world and the audience is increasing quickly: we have had </span><a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/kiwix/files/stats/timeline?dates=2006-08-21+to+2012-05-31" style="background-color: white;">25.000 downloads of Kiwix in May</a><span style="background-color: white;">. </span><br />
<br />
<b>In how many languages is Kiwix supported </b><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Thank to the <a href="http://www.translatewiki.net/">Translatewiki Web site andits community</a>, Kiwix is localised in more than 80 languages. We also
provide content (ZIM files), mainly Wikipedia, in around 25 languages.
But we want to do more: thanks to a grant of WMCH soon we will offer
<a href="http://www.kiwix.org/index.php/ZIM_Autobuild">ZIM files of Wikipedia in all languages</a>. </span><br />
<br />
<b>How do you support languages written in scripts like Malayalam, or
Tibetan</b><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Contents are Web contents and Kiwix itself is a sort of browser getting
the Web pages from the ZIM file instead of the Web. So, we do not
have special handling in Kiwix itself to render the contents. Everything
should be well organised in the ZIM file, for example by using Web fonts.
But, from the Kiwix fulltext search engine point of view, this is
challenging. Natural languages have a lot of particularities. Kiwix uses
the <a href="http://www.xapian.org/">Xapian</a> search engine and tries to integrate
<a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/clucene/">CLucene</a>. We do our best with
them to offer the smoothest user experience possible. </span><br />
<br />
<b>Do you provide fonts with Kiwix for the languages that use these <span style="background-color: white;">scripts</span></b><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">The Wikipedia ZIM files we are preparing still do not provide the Web </span><span style="background-color: white;">fonts. Already for a few months, the integration of Web fonts has been a </span><span style="background-color: white;">part of the Wikimedia projects, so we have to fix that ASAP, this is <a href="http://draft.blogger.com/goog_1118270937">not a big </a></span><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3537719&group_id=175508&atid=873518">challenge</a></span><span style="background-color: white;">.</span><br />
<br />
<b>For some languages like Chinese and Serbian, we show the content in<span style="background-color: white;"> two scripts ... Can Kiwix do this as well ?</span></b><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Kiwix does not provide any transliteration tool for now, but all the </span><span style="background-color: white;">technology is already there in the soft. We use a powerful unicode </span><span style="background-color: white;">library called ICU (http://site.icu-project.org/) which can do that. We</span><br />
want to use it to allow users to do <a href="https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3537720&group_id=175508&atid=873518">custom transliterations</a><span style="background-color: white;">. </span><span style="background-color: white;">C++ developer wanted there!</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.openzim.org/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGUEk3SWrCOpllEFV78WyJsdxjakG6v_-wEZhnfiTga8PdGA_to9gMxVniAMRZ0Z50FSDnBAPjVOh-IggDFJqvX7qi3b4_jYAQD2JX8bECzeHQjV5VhjvTOFcQZ4-RQp5fGdy2Ug/s1600/openZIM-logo.png" /></a></div>
<b>Kiwix uses the OpenZIM format ... can you tell us more about this <span style="background-color: white;">format</span></b><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">The format is called ZIM. There is a volunteer driven project called </span><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://www.openzim.org/">openZIM</a> created a few years ago to </span><span style="background-color: white;">specify the format and develop a standard library. The ZIM format allows </span><span style="background-color: white;">to put millions of contents together, to compress a part of them, and add </span><span style="background-color: white;">Metadata. In the end, you get only one file, which is, at the same time, </span><span style="background-color: white;">extremely compressed and allows a constant and quick random access.</span><br />
<br />
<b>Nowadays, many publications are in the EPUB standard ... can Kiwix<span style="background-color: white;"> handle this as well</span></b><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Kiwix is not able to deal with EPUB, but in the future it will. We think EPUB & ZIM </span><span style="background-color: white;">format are complementary and we want Kiwix being able to perfectly deal </span><span style="background-color: white;">with EPUB. Our plan is to integrate "<a href="http://monocle.inventivelabs.com.au/">Monocle</a>" to do that</span><span style="background-color: white;">. Also there, developers are wanted.</span><br />
<br />
<b>How do people find content available for Kiwix</b><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Kiwix has its own content manager</span><span style="background-color: white;">, </span><span style="background-color: white;">so you can download content from Kiwix itself. But you may also download the </span><span style="background-color: white;">ZIM file from the Kiwix Web site (http://www.kiwix.org) or using the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Book" style="background-color: white;">Mediawiki Collection extension</a><span style="background-color: white;">.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO_oV9E26Ka_4SSQ3XJEFy4wAR5OFdRayQXvBkSZFwjoZDNGnzvdQLt2HtNJLTnO4baFX_IGRlNcay_dn7K0cfcrl-aHEUPyKak7JG5-7yvFMGp4cM69oixFHzHLZMfEyXu8QFgg/s1600/download+manager.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="528" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO_oV9E26Ka_4SSQ3XJEFy4wAR5OFdRayQXvBkSZFwjoZDNGnzvdQLt2HtNJLTnO4baFX_IGRlNcay_dn7K0cfcrl-aHEUPyKak7JG5-7yvFMGp4cM69oixFHzHLZMfEyXu8QFgg/s640/download+manager.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">In the future, we want to have a platform (something like Itunes) to </span><span style="background-color: white;">offer really easy to find and download contents (both ZIM and EPUB </span><span style="background-color: white;">files). We have <a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipublish">started a project</a> in that perspective. We need your </span><span style="background-color: white;">support! </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><b>What is your biggest challenge at this moment in time with Kiwix</b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Building <a href="http://www.kiwix.org/index.php/Android">Kiwix-mobile for Android</a>. We will have a first release in </span><span style="background-color: white;">autumn. But we have many other </span><span style="background-color: white;">projects running at the same time and others for which <a href="http://www.kiwix.org/index.php/Volunteers_program">we still need volunteers</a>.</span><br />
<br />
Thank you<br />
EmmanuelGerardMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14287269079265427282noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12046714.post-70623553104595228642012-06-03T11:49:00.001+02:002012-06-03T11:49:46.937+02:00#wmdevdays - finished a book a source, then what?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqmaAEPbEjz4J-vrpklnwvQlpSXHFv14qXne8XAEf5KVinEK6QALnGQvFtnCvDkQoOm1QQ73eOReEXqtHBmgbwCYRhHC0pGudQonam_aa5jqiNOFO4-ZSEBSY9C-zfyK5zro32jA/s1600/marketing_wijsheid.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqmaAEPbEjz4J-vrpklnwvQlpSXHFv14qXne8XAEf5KVinEK6QALnGQvFtnCvDkQoOm1QQ73eOReEXqtHBmgbwCYRhHC0pGudQonam_aa5jqiNOFO4-ZSEBSY9C-zfyK5zro32jA/s320/marketing_wijsheid.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
Both <a href="http://wikibooks.org/">#Wikibooks</a> and <a href="http://wikisource.org/">#Wikisource</a> do a terrible job promoting their finished product. The Wikibookers and Wikisourcerers move on to the next book or source. A new source may get a moment of glory as a featured text or as a new text. A new book may be featured.<br />
<br />
The problem is not so much with the Wikibooks and Wikisource projects, it is with what these projects actually are. They provide a workflow for the transcription, the proofreading and the final touches for the creation of digitised books and sources. As long as these are works in progress, they are not the finished product the general public is looking for.<br />
<br />
The finished product of both projects is beautiful, lovable and deserves attention. The finished products deserve the attention of the public, they should be provided it in formats like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB">EPUB</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIM_(file_format)">ZIM</a> and it should be really easy for people to find and use them.<br />
<br />
It is important to bring the best of what Open Content has to bring in sources and books to the public. Finding a big public will motivate many of our volunteers and it may bring us more volunteers. As we publish more titles, our projects gain relevance. As the final product becomes a more polished product people will love what we do. We already do.<br />
Thanks,<br />
GerardMGerardMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14287269079265427282noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12046714.post-41698052967328306182012-01-03T21:56:00.001+01:002012-01-03T22:35:03.235+01:00Preferential treatment<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw9sLt8LHKAvxm4Kh5orM6Hy90Z0dfwOdR0z_f6PO7qEZLCPMF1wDgPKwp2Z8d_3PhHtR9f-48zFZTpqcvqjmeJHt-kemHTZ-dVl1MfaQQ2hIa3XbGkrZQll4w0JwfRlaE7hHCIg/s1600/pole+position.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw9sLt8LHKAvxm4Kh5orM6Hy90Z0dfwOdR0z_f6PO7qEZLCPMF1wDgPKwp2Z8d_3PhHtR9f-48zFZTpqcvqjmeJHt-kemHTZ-dVl1MfaQQ2hIa3XbGkrZQll4w0JwfRlaE7hHCIg/s320/pole+position.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
The latest <a href="http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Project:Rally-2011-12">#translatewiki.net localisation rally</a> had a twist. To qualify, the localisation for the <a href="http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Kiwix">Kiwix</a> and the <a href="http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:WikipediaMobile">Wikipedia Mobile</a> applications had to be completed for the language before <a href="http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:MediaWiki">MediaWiki</a> messages were accepted.<br />
<br />
Our thinking was: the most used messages are typically already complete and at this time growth of our content is very much taking place off-line or on a mobile phone.<br />
<br />
For mobile phone use we have statistics that show <a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyMobile.htm">a growth of 144%</a> compared with last year December. Our support for mobile phones and the support for different <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_system">writing systems</a> on mobile phones is improving. As more people buy increasingly sophisticated mobiles, this growth may even increase.<br />
<br />
During the localisation rally 30 additional languages were completed for Kiwix bringing the total to 65. For Wikipedia Mobile we now support 68 languages completely. We hope that our December 2011 rally sets the stage for a wonderful 2012 with even more people sharing in the sum of all knowledge.<br />
Thanks,<br />
GerardM<br />
<br />GerardMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14287269079265427282noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12046714.post-33771748159485897592011-09-12T20:10:00.000+02:002011-09-12T20:10:24.723+02:00#Localisation rally for #MediaWiki and #Kiwix<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://nl.wikimedia.org/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHZtuHJ1raG8SPDaOQl6s6zvrWeizf_oLQ8fNyFyPEw_ycoO1i7tu1newy7z6MlIFsrETnvkwMnvqKmIbXzvF-0xG75wCiN_vlbS57DAM92YEdfYa8P7pQTwL1m_jPMmYOo3qLTA/s1600/logo-WMF-Nederland.png" /></a></div>
The <a href="http://translatewiki.net/">#translatewiki.net</a> localisation rally is finished. The results particularly for <a href="http://kiwix.org/">Kiwix</a> are great. Thanks to the addition of 2,672 messages Kiwix is now <a href="http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Kiwix/stats">fully localised in 53 languages</a>. This makes it much easier for people to use our content off-line.<br />
<br />
When you read the <a href="http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Thread:Project_talk:Rally-2011-09/translatewiki.net_September_2011_Translation_Rally_results">announcement of the results</a>, it is particularly smaller languages that have benefited with the exception of traditional Chinese. When you look at <a href="http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Group_statistics">the statistics</a>, there are more languages that could have benefited from the rally and/or from more localisations.<br />
<br />
This time the benefit to translators is EUR 37.50. The benefit to the users of the 20 languages however is where this rally makes a real difference.<br />
Thanks,<br />
GerardMGerardMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14287269079265427282noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12046714.post-35522952477418493282011-09-05T18:57:00.000+02:002011-09-05T18:57:53.767+02:00#Localisation rally for #MediaWiki and #Kiwix<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://nl.wikimedia.org/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHZtuHJ1raG8SPDaOQl6s6zvrWeizf_oLQ8fNyFyPEw_ycoO1i7tu1newy7z6MlIFsrETnvkwMnvqKmIbXzvF-0xG75wCiN_vlbS57DAM92YEdfYa8P7pQTwL1m_jPMmYOo3qLTA/s1600/logo-WMF-Nederland.png" /></a></div>
The <a href="http://en.wikimedia.org/">Dutch #Wikimedia chapter</a> sponsors <a href="http://translatewiki.net/">#translatewiki.net</a> regularly to run a translation rally. Such a rally serves multiple purposes;<br />
<ul>
<li>to bring the necessity of localisation to the front</li>
<li>to support the localisation of <a href="http://mediawiki.org/">MediaWiki</a> and <a href="http://kiwix.org/">Kiwix</a></li>
<li>to make the MediaWiki projects more usable</li>
</ul>
Internationalisation and localisation together make it possible for software to be used by people who do not understand the default language used for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface">User Interface</a> of software. When these two factors are an integral part of software development like they are for MediaWiki, it becomes possible to support <a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias">Wikipedia in over 270 languages</a>.<br />
<br />
The translatewiki rallies give an additional incentive to our localisers to do a little bit more. Many languages, including big ones like Spanish or Hindi can do with more effort. Both languages are used as "fall back" languages when the localisation of a language is not adequate but they need to be complete to do their job.<br />
<br />
MediaWiki does gain relevant functionality over time; off line support with Kiwix and mobile telephone support now integral to MediaWiki are recent examples. This support is not restricted to Wikipedia, it is available to Wikimedia and non-Wikimedia projects alike.<br />
<br />
You can join in the fun of the rally, you can make the user interface in your language more usable. The <a href="http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Project:Rally-2011-09">info can be found here</a> but all your contributions are welcome for <a href="http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Template:Projects">any and all the projects</a> we support at translatewiki.<br />
Thanks,<br />
GerardM<br />
<ul>
</ul>
GerardMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14287269079265427282noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12046714.post-2444385313741337472011-08-22T14:19:00.001+02:002011-08-22T14:19:31.196+02:00There are few messages to localise for #Kiwix<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://kiwix.org/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUFCkehl6wUbaEgPxW63E7MPyOYaNbMhIfQxmLIds2Hut7jfbACxBLTXDCmKYrVipaKTZckK50VcRKXRPUPrU55usyrvcVpiPVsRX6VJJK2H2thVE3HW-_UoefrabVvrsYRXRg6w/s200/Kiwix_logo.png" width="200" /></a></div>
<a href="http://kiwix.org/">Kiwix</a> can be localised at <a href="http://translatewiki.net./">#translatewiki.net.</a> and it started with 14 languages already localised. Two days later, 18 languages are completely localised and for 6 languages the localisation is underway.<br />
<br />
With only <a href="http://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&group=out-kiwix">79 messages to localise</a>, there is not much effort needed to localise Kiwix. Given that it is the client that does support the <a href="http://openzim.org/">openZIM</a> format, it helps support the <a href="http://wikimediafoundation.org/">Wikimedia Foundation</a> in its effort to have a credible off-line strategy.<br />
<br />
Check out <a href="http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Kiwix/stats">the status</a>, and help us to create the best off-line experience for your language.<br />
Thanks,<br />
GerardMGerardMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14287269079265427282noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12046714.post-19715787134489248132011-06-18T20:46:00.002+02:002011-06-18T20:49:34.701+02:00#Kiwix is preparing for #translatewiki.net<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.kiwix.org/index.php/Main_Page/en" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUFCkehl6wUbaEgPxW63E7MPyOYaNbMhIfQxmLIds2Hut7jfbACxBLTXDCmKYrVipaKTZckK50VcRKXRPUPrU55usyrvcVpiPVsRX6VJJK2H2thVE3HW-_UoefrabVvrsYRXRg6w/s200/Kiwix_logo.png" width="200" /></a></div>
At the <a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Berlin_Hackathon_2011">Berlin hackathon</a>,we talked with the <a href="http://www.kiwix.org/index.php/Main_Page/en">Kiwix</a> developer and he indicated that making Kiwix ready for localisation at <a href="http://translatewiki.net/">translatewiki.net</a> is one of his priorities.<br />
<br />
As it one of those jobs that just does not go away, it is at some stage easier to give it a whirl. The good news is that a first iteration has found its way to translatewiki.<br />
<br />
It is now a matter of making sure that new messages and localisations can find its way to and from Kiwix before the translatewiki community can work its magic.<br />
<br />
More news when we have it :)<br />
Thanks,<br />
GerardMGerardMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14287269079265427282noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12046714.post-73498134139350019112011-05-15T12:08:00.000+02:002011-05-15T12:08:46.978+02:00#Kiwix loves #WebFonts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://kiwix.org/index.php/Main_Page" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUFCkehl6wUbaEgPxW63E7MPyOYaNbMhIfQxmLIds2Hut7jfbACxBLTXDCmKYrVipaKTZckK50VcRKXRPUPrU55usyrvcVpiPVsRX6VJJK2H2thVE3HW-_UoefrabVvrsYRXRg6w/s200/Kiwix_logo.png" width="200" /></a></div>When <a href="http://kiwix.org/index.php/Main_Page">Kiwix</a> targets a website for off line presentation, it takes all the attributes of that website in order to show it as is.<br />
<br />
When a website does not use web fonts like <a href="http://wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a> at the moment does, the result of the exercise will also be determined by the quality of the support for a script on the local host. This is often patchy.<br />
<br />
When Wikipedia installations use <a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WebFonts">WebFonts</a>, it will use the fonts selected as default for a language. Some people will prefer a different font for reasons best known to them.<br />
<br />
The use of fonts supplied with Kiwix is being considered at the moment. When they do, they may choose to adopt all the fonts collected to support Wikipedia as they will all be freely licensed.<br />
Thanks,<br />
GerardMGerardMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14287269079265427282noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12046714.post-8213117008739463432011-04-06T23:31:00.000+02:002011-04-06T23:31:53.799+02:00#Okawix makes it a two horse race<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.okawix.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxOeaofS1b4JBZwQpyYD59RI-BPTIYIdhHZDe4W2ur7gurV1ImxsWdUU31Q4pH-lKr0PFUJlNmzgtlEUU6TSsKVm6kNfcIe37Qn11PzMGcv2C5AeRPqEWaXKfgX62of8rDfToDQg/s1600/Okawix+logo.png" /></a></div>Going from an announcement to committed code makes <a href="http://okawix.com/">Okawix</a> the second off line program that supports <a href="https://openzim.org/Main_Page">openZIM</a>. At this moment it is only the Linux client that has <a href="https://okawix.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/okawix/trunk/libzim/">its initial code</a>, but Okawix has the benefit of <a href="http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Okawix/stats/trunk">localisations in many languages</a>.<br />
<br />
When the software is stable for all the platforms, it will be interesting to see if the <a href="http://wikimediafoundation.org/">Wikimedia Foundation</a> will acknowledge Okawix and give it the same status of that other open source product that supports openZIM, <a href="http://kiwix.org/index.php/Main_Page">Kiwix</a>.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mango_pudding.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijH23lpBTCj6KlWRnwX04ZXyB36_wDpWOuPp1gGK4QdT3xOtW2c5IOqr82Sc3nEoESCK-TbVxGXftDaG0fiNQAY4T1JR1SSMm51Voq2m9yRDwIIvJ9KS23m84eZOr_AF-ZQZJHpQ/s400/Mango_pudding.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />
In the end, the pudding is in the eating and when all the other things are equal, the difference will be in the quality and number of the localisations. Okawix has the advantage that is localised at <a href="http://translatewiki.net/">translatewiki.net</a> while Kiwix is localised using a text editor. Given that for many languages the localisation is not done from English and that there are no utilities that make the life of a localiser easy, Okawix has the best cards.<br />
<br />
To be fair, we want a two horse race and handicaps are at the moment evenly divided. The race would be more interesting without handicaps; the Kiwix localisations deserve proper tooling and Okawix deserves support from the WMF.<br />
Thanks,<br />
GerardMGerardMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14287269079265427282noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12046714.post-24281718517501608782011-02-09T15:40:00.001+01:002011-09-15T12:53:15.474+02:00Localisation for #Kiwix<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://kiwix.org/index.php/Main_Page" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiibq-06JaQuofMsNliwWOgKOhcWSD4QElEVGipWBI6doMHkYR0vrj3v0uFJoPZX2s6WEpPT9V90BDKH2uxKQTT2OclujQKw_L-Uryqp2yo6c1huc5KbZOcNzpd1EozGfaOX1p9tQ/s200/Kiwix_logo.png" width="200" /></a></div>
Now that the #Wikimedia Foundation has decided to concentrate on <a href="https://openzim.org/">openZIM</a> for off line readers, <a href="http://kiwix.org/index.php/Main_Page">Kiwix</a> has gained a lot of prominence because it is still the only software that uses it.<br />
<br />
Functionality to make a selection of articles for off line reading is being developed by <a href="http://pediapress.com/">PediaPress</a>. This will be done by extending the <a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Collection">Collections extension. </a><br />
<br />
The good news is that work is now under way to internationalise Kiwix. This will make it possible for Kiwix to be localised at <a href="http://translatewiki.net/">translatewiki.net</a>. <br />
<br />
As the presentation of data in the openZIM format is separate from the data, other off line readers like <a href="http://thewikireader.com/">WikiReader</a> or <a href="http://okawix.com/">OkaWix</a> have the option to adopt this format as well. When they do, they will profit from the work by the Wikimedia Foundation as well and when they do there will be a healthy competition for the hearts and minds of our off line readers.<br />
Thanks,<br />
GerardMGerardMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14287269079265427282noreply@blogger.com2