Intuition - Home of Wiki2Touch

This is mostly a bug fixed version. But you’re now able to get the list of hits right from the start. So I removed the “Go” button because it’s not necessary anymore.

The “article not found” bug for the English edition is also history.

Image support is in and a packager for images is also available (OS X and Windows) but the spider, which downloads the images, is not ready yet. But the indexer spills out a list of used image names now.

So if you’re focusing problems (mainly the users of the English edition) update to this version. Otherwise stick with the previous one. Over at Goodle code I’ve added a list of changes.

I’ve spent the day to add better image support to the Wiki2Touch reader. The old style is still working (simply put the images you like to the “Images” folder). The new style is one file where all the images (only thumbs) are in. Just like the articles.

I’ve also written a program to download the images from Wikipedia. But that takes a while! It’s not done here.

In the end not every image will be available. Here’s why:

• Some images are to large, even as thumbs. A lot of animated gifs for example. Yes, we can try to reduce the size.
• A few number of images can’t be found at all. That’s because it’s unclear where the images are stored. “Commons” or other areas.
• Last but not least: For some images I can’t get the name without completely rendering the article. If an image is used only inside a template it’s not easy to find the image. Because there is no Wikipedia style link. This link is created after the template is expanded. Yes sure, there are the database dumps for the image database.

While we’re on templates: The “facts” are nearly all the time displayed using templates. Infoboxes like company information, cite information, plant information and so on are templates. Not having template support is more worse than not having pictures. Look at the screen shot below: The facts about Apple are not display without having template support. You simply don’t get the information you want.

Only the text but not the facts.

I’ve continued the work to get the application more user friendly. This time not the indexing process but the application itself. I know you will love that new feature:

In fact, some AJAX style code which gives you a list of the first 25 found articles after you’ve entered the 4th letter.

One more feature: A magnification glass gets you back to the home screen. On a long article simply touch the title bar and then the new icon. Ready to enter a new search phrase. Yes, you can return to the top of a web page by touch the title bar. Here is a picture of my beloved article about “Apple”. Also notice that an annoying rendering bug was fixed (the phonetic text link is now displayed correctly):

So grab yourself a copy. It’s already up at google code. Because the indexer has not change (much) you don’t need to build a new index. Copy and start!

P.S.: Hiding the browsers address bar didn’t works on 1.1.3 so I left that feature out.

P.S.S.: Now when I look at the first screen shot I think to myself: The go button isn’t necessary anymore. I will remove that in the next version.

As promised I’ve uploaded the newest version. Download it at the google code page.Whats new?

• A new indexer makes it a lot more easier to use. Simply download the desired articles bundle from Wikipedia and start the indexer with “indexer [name-of-the-downloaded-bundle]”. After a while (English app. 50, German 12 Italian 6 minutes) there is only one file called “articles.bin”. Put that on your device and your done.
• The indexer is available as an executable file (Windows version is coming soon is included). No development tool or experience necessary anymore.
• A build-in Wiki database which displays error messages a lot nicer and also has a help page.
• You can turn of the feature that templates will be expanded. Sure, a lot of info is lost then (for example the nice period system on the articles about an element) but it is much faster. The decision is up to you.
• The port can easily changed and is now 8080 by default. This prevents problems with Apache (if installed but that is NOT necessary for Wiki2Touch).
• The home page has a “Help” button.
• Cleaned up “Media/Wikipedia” folder. Only the folder for the installed database files are left. Everything else…
• … is gone to the “Wiki2Touch.app” bundle. That makes installation much easier.
• Wiki2Touchis now “Open Source”, based on the GNU license V3. Source is freely available.

Certain rendering issues will be addressed in the next version. Thanks to Nicolas (from iphone-ticker) for running the forum. Also thanks to Kim and Uwe for starting to help. Before I forget: Uwe is working on an installer package. But he’s also busy IRL.

Over at google code you now can download the sources of Wiki2Touch. The project is open source now under the GNU public license V3. Hopefully we’re seeing a lot of nice new features and fixes.

So everyone who like to contribute is able to do it now:

• Coding features or removing bugs. Maybe a better search, history or what else
• Writing documentation or other articles
• Designing the homepage of Wiki2Touch
• Creating new images or so
• …

If you cannot contribute anything but are felling that you like to do something consider donation. Not to me but to the “Tierschutzverein München e.V.”. This is an incorporated society which take care for animals. Donate directly on there homepage. A reason like “wiki2touch-tom haukap” is fine. The page is in German language but you should identify the PayPal/Credit Card signs on the right hand side.

Drop me a mail if have you donated. I will compile a list of donators and put it somewhere.

I really wanted to be sure: Not breaking anything. So I’ve checked the wikipedia dumps for de (ok), it (ok), es (ok), en (ok), fr (ok, but I can’t figure out the prefix for templates) and zh (which is Chinese, for the template prefix see fr).

Chinese is cool and it is working because of UTF-8 encoding. It simply works, Safary is able to display the letters. Wikipedia style linking works fine. I’m impressed! My first search phrase was the number “7″. A good start. I really can’t imaging how Chinese people enter letters. Maybe I will see it sometimes.

Maybe you ask yourself: Do I really upload every language specific database to my telephone? No! The sources for Wiki2Touch are compiling fine and running well on my Mac.

Nicolas was so kind and created a forum for discussions. Currently it’s empty but I think it much better to ask and answer inside a forum than in this blog.

So head over a have a look at http://wiki2touch.ipodhelp.de.

Although the domain is “.de” please use English language. As you see, I’m really not “da man” when it comes to write in English. So don’t be shy and have respect to international users. Thanks!

Yippy! Only one file! Fast as before. Cannot say if it is faster or not.

The codes for the indexer are already up on Google code. The url is http://code.google.com/p/wiki2touch/. Should be compile with MacOS, Windows or Linux. As soon as everything is ready I will upload compiled versions.

So expect a new version this weekend. Some more changes:

• Uwe will make an installer package. Great! Thanks a lot!
• I’ve cleaned up the “Media/Wikipedia” folder. Only the folders for the languages are left. I’ve moved the rest to the “Wiki2Touch.app” folder. You still can use the Wikipedia-Folder as the root for a webserver. Also true for Images.
• Out of the box there is a mini wikipedia database which holds help and better error messages. So after you’ve installed the version there is at least this database. So you get something else than “Article not found”. You get the reason why and how to fix it.
• Default port is now 8080 and can be changed.
• Default behavior of the server itself is to run a daemon. Just in case you need the command line.

Does anyone knows a good, free bulletin board which we can use as a “home” for discussion about the Wiki2Touch app? My “web space” didn’t allows installing application so we can use it. And the provider didn’t offers such a software.

It would be nice because we could easily maintain faqs or so and the discussions and comments may be handle and/or displayed a lot better.

Any suggestions?

Although the code is not bound to the iPhone/iPod Touch platform I’ve chosen to use that name. Basically because when I created the repository on google code the name “wikiserver” was already in use on sourceforge.

That also means that I’m going to upload the sources as soon as I learned how to set up a cvs system on my Mac. The project itself is up already.

I checked some of the suggestions here in the forum with not success.