Wiki2Touch on 1.1.4
Yesterday I’ve updated my device to use the latest firmware 1.1.4. Using 1.1.2 before I really love the new features. Adding icons to the home screen and arranging them is great.
The good news is, that Wiki2Touch is running fine on 1.1.4. You only have to make sure that the articles.bin/images.bon and so on must go to “/var/mobile/…” instead of “/var/root…”. Same as in 1.1.3. If you’re using Sandfords installer source (recommended, the link is http://168weedon/i) you will be guide because it script created the folder structure below ~/Media/Wikipedia for you.
But there is one disadvantage. Wiki2Touch trys to create a folder named “cache” below every installed language folder (i.e. ~/Media/Wikipedia/en/cache) and stores preprocessed templates to that folder. That is way faster than processing them every time they are used. And that’s not working under 1.1.4. Wiki2Touch is actually not able to create the”cache” folder on it’s own. And that means it runs way slower than on 1.1.2 if you have templates enabled.
Workarounds:
- Disable templates (makes it faster but with a lot less information)
- Manually create a folder named “cache” below your language code folder and set the owner and/or rights in such a way that the user mobile is able to write file into that folder. “chmod -R mobile ~/var/mobile” may also work for you. You can tell if it’s working as soon as you see files inside that folder once you’ve displayed an article. You don’t need to stop/start the server, it will use the cache on the fly but be sure to have templates enabled.
- Live with it until the next version is out
Otherwise it’s working nice on 1.1.4.
März 20th, 2008 at 02:31
I had already managed to get things working on 1.1.4. Updated my iPod Tuesday evening and have spent a while since then reinstalling stuff and getting everything organised. I hadn’t amended the rights on the cache folder though so that was useful to know.
I have kept an eye on the possibility of having images included but it seems as if it just isn’t worth it at the moment. Nothing that you can help with. It’s mainly a lack of storage room for the amount of images Wikipedia contains, especially the english version that I use. There is a 32GB iPod Touch at the moment, but there is no way I can justify upgrading my 16GB version. Just having the text with the proper Wikipedia layout is more than enough though. Images would have just added an extra ‘wow’ factor but aren’t really that vital. Maybe in a year or so I can afford a 64GB iPhone!
I’d like to take the opportunity to thank you for all the work you have done (and continue to do) on this app. It really is a fantastic use for the iPod Touch, and in my opinion is the best app available for it.
Jason.
März 20th, 2008 at 04:16
I never enabled Templates because they always took FAR too long to load. Now with the cache feature, they load much faster. And more importantly “similar” articles also load more quickly.
For example, Load the article for “gold” and it takes a while to load all the templates. Now, load the article for “silver” and it loads very quickly. Likewise, load an article on Frank Zappa, and when you then query Peter Frampton, ot loads quickly.
I did the same for cities, and now most cities load much more quickly with templates included.
Maybe it would be an interesting project to somehow parse the dump file and extract out and “pre-load” the cache with common or most-used templates.
(One point of note: I loaded the article on John Glenn, and the templates are REALLY messed up.)
März 20th, 2008 at 10:48
Jim-
especially if you’re using the English edition there are some articles which are rendering very slow. But I never understood why you found it that slow until I updated to 1.1.4. Yes, without caching support it is slow.
Your simple idea of extraction (or preprocessing) the templates is brilliant. As usual with simple ideas. The problem here is not the large number of articles or the search. It’s the extraction of the compressed data. The images file is way larger but because the data is not compressed is way faster. Compressing the images is useless it jpg or so anyway.
I assume it would be best to not compress the templates. It depends on the number if that is suitable.
The next release will mainly deal with bug fixes of the rendering engine. I’ve already started on that subject. so until then don’t look at the article about “Al Gore”. The man simply not deserves that layout.
-Tom
März 20th, 2008 at 10:49
Jason-
thanks for your kind words.
-Tom