Wiki2Touch and Firmware 2.0.0/2.0.1

Maybe you already know but the current version is running only until firmware 1.1.4. Beside that the new Installer 4.0 didn’t recognizes the old installer configuration files so you can not install it on newer 2.0 devices. Or at least the installer didn’t allows you to install the 1.1.4 apps.

Yesterday I’ve updated my iPhone to 2.0.1 and installed a new developer toolchain on my Mac. I’ve made some changes to the sources because the new toolchain is using gcc 4.2 and complains sometimes. This is gone now and I have a working version for 2.0, but with some flaws.

Here is a little roadmap about what I planing to do:

  • A version 0.71 if Wiki2Touch for firmware 1.1.4 and below is compiled and once I’ve created and checked the installer I will release this. The “math” support is added, the OSD, some other stuff along with some minor bugfixes.It looks like that this will be the last version for firmware 1.1.4 and below.
  • I have to iron out a few issues when running under firmware 2.0.x, the automatic detection of installed languages isn’t working right now. Once I’ve fixed that I will release this version, too. I’m still unclear if I should support Installer, Cydia or none of them (manual installation).
  • Once we all have Wiki2Touch back on jailbroken 2.0 devices I will switch to using the AppStore in the future. Today I think this is the future.

34 Responses to “Wiki2Touch and Firmware 2.0.0/2.0.1”

  1. gulibamba Says:

    Hey Tom,

    you are simply the best! Thank you so much for continuing this project with such an afford!

    I can hardly wait for wiki2touch to support the new 2.0 standards! It is actually the only thing that keeps from switching from 1.1.4 to 2.0.1 :-)

    I appreciate your plans of first getting it to work on jailbroken devices and in my opinion you should go for a manual installation with a nice and easy to handle gui interface. The future is also in my eyes the Appstore…..and of course you should think about earning some bugs with it :-)

    I promise I will buy it, but at this point I can hardly imagine a law regulation proof way of getting it to the appstore, mostly because of file seize reason. Do you already have an idea how this could work out?

    And seriously…..is there any possibility to invest in this project :-) ???
    I would love to buy some “Tom wiki2touch stocks”!!!

    Keep on the good work!

  2. Smart19 Says:

    Hi Tom,

    thank you for your great work. I can’t wait to have Wiki2Touch back on my Iphone with firmware 2.01. I personally prefer “Cydia” as the install platform, but I will go along with any of your choices!

    Keep up the great work!

    Smart

  3. BlackWolf Says:

    Hi Tom,

    thanks for continuint this project, it’s really great! Can’t wait for an official 2.0 wiki2touch release (although it works pretty well with the current workaround mentioned in the support forum).

    Why don’t you just release on cydia and installer, this way you don’t have to choose?

    anyways, can’t wait for the relase!

    regards

  4. Dingens Says:

    Hey Tom
    thanks a million, I just installed 2.01 and then realized: OMG, I don’t have Wikipedia with me anymore! But this sounds fantastic. I would buy it through any form: Installer, Cydia or Appstore, I don’t mind as long as I have Wikipedia offline with me.
    Thanks again!

  5. JoPhone Says:

    Hey Tom,

    great to hear from you again and I am so happy that Wiki2Touch will be migrated to 2.0! I have to admit that I am still with 1.1.4 so far just for one single reason: Wiki2Touch does not run on 2.0 :)

    Having the Wikipedia on my cellphone is absolutely mandatory for me so I cannot upgrade until Wiki2Touch supports 2.0 :D

    Thank you very much for your great work, I really appreciate it!

    Best, Jonas

  6. BlackWolf Says:

    just saying: there is a workaround to make wiki2touch work on 2.x, check the discussion forums here on this page to see how it works, but it takes a little(!) efford to make it work.

    and btw: could there there be an “start with iphone” mode for the new version of wiki2touch? because what I really liked about that workaround was that the server automatically started when I booted my iphone, so a tap on “Wiki2touch” directly takes me into safari.

  7. Eckart Says:

    i´m already runnung wiki2touch under 2.0.1
    with the help of

    http://ipod.backshot.eu/2008/08/01/how-to-wiki2touch-auf-20

    it works fine,
    but haven´t tried it with more than German yet.

  8. Tom Says:

    Eckart-

    great instructions. But as you can see from the comments not easy to do for everyone.

    That’s why I’m converting Wiki2Touch to run on 2.0 out of the box.

    Anyway, thanks a lot for sharing the link.

    -Tom

  9. punchbuggy Says:

    Are u going to publish wiki2touch on the appstore

  10. gian Says:

    Any news??? :(

  11. roy Says:

    everybody is longing for the most useful app for iphone/itouch. pleeeeeeaaaase pleeeeeaase make as happy as soon as you can. and thanks for your great work!

  12. Pierre Says:

    Can’t wait for this masterpiece !!!

  13. redius Says:

    please dude ur soft is a drug for me i need it dude fast on 2.0.2 and if there is any trick to do to get it on my 2.0.2 plz post it i saw it on a german forum but i dont understand german

  14. wertzuk Says:

    Hi Tom!

    I just visited Rome. What an amazing support it was to read every popes biographie (I was interested in) thank to wikipedia offline.

    I can’t wait to install your upcoming appstore-app without jailbreaking my new 3G that I bought in Rome!

    All the kowledge on my Iphone: Make it real!

  15. gulibamba Says:

    Servus Tom,

    it’s been now over one month since your last post. Myself and I guess a few thousend other people can hardly wait for the next wiki2touch version supperting firmware 2.x!

    I know it’s a waste of time to post something for a maybe unfinished project, but I really think it would be nice for the waiting idiots like me to get a little status report!

    Please do us the favor!

    Thanks a lot and best regards from Münster!

    gulibamba

  16. Tom Says:

    Gulibamba-

    I’ve installed 2.0.1 and found out that my device was very very slow then. Then I’ve fixed the problems with Wiki2Touch and had a version working on 2.0.1.

    Soon after that 2.0.2 was release and the file system structure has changed. So Wiki2Touch has to be changed again. 2.0.2. was also so slow as 2.0.1. On top my device crashed a lot and I had to download the apps from the AppStore again and again. The just stopped working. I don’t found out why.

    So finally I got a little bit angry and returned to 1.1.4. Wow! Fast and reliable. Currently I stick with 1.1.4. There will be no version for 2.0.x anymore because now 2.1 is released. And I’m not sure after my experiences with 2.0.x if I ever will make a “native” application.

    -Tom

  17. Achim (abu) Says:

    So are you going to improve the 0.71 version for 1.1.4 any further?
    There are still some rendering problems with templates, so we could start a new thread on the forum to collect them. But that only makes sense if you want to work on this at all.

    BTW: The newly released iTouch does only work with 2.1, there is no downgrade possible.

  18. gulibamba Says:

    Hey Tom,

    thanks a lot for the quick reply!

    I really appreciate it and wish I could help you somehow!
    I absolutely agree that it’s a waste of time to create a version for 2.0.x ! That’s why I named it 2.x in my last post :-)

    I can surely understand that as long as apple is changing the file system structure with each firmware upgrade, it’s a fight against windmills. But I think a running version for 2.1 would be just perfect, due to the fact that 2.0.x versions were all pretty buggy and every user of a 2.0.x firmware will upgade as soon as possible (winpwn, etc.).

    So….in my position, I am definitely interested in some of the appstore software, but none of them makes it worth worrying about if it means to loss my most loved wiki2touch :-)

    Thanks for everything Tom! Can hardly wait to see your masterpiece on 2.1!

    Any progress in making wiki2touch an officall appstore app?

    Take care and try to find back the good old spirit :-)
    -Arne aka gulibamba

  19. Phrod Says:

    Tom,

    your app i awsome! We love you for putting it out.

    Looking very much forward to a 2.1 version.

    As a matter of fact, i can’t sit still, i can’t wait, ahhh!

    ;-)

  20. zm8 Says:

    Tom,

    Thanks for your outstanding work.

    I think wikisrvd alone is stable enough for 2.x firmware, even if template expansion is enabled. And the only missing part is the UI. Would you mind to release it through cydia? Or do you plan to release on iTunes AppStore?

  21. Tomas Says:

    Yes, release it as soon as you can :). I used wiki2touch with my 1.1.4 and I can say that I miss it VERY much. There are a lot of people that would be happy to see it for 2.1.
    When can we expect it?
    I would be grateful if you could estimate how much time we have to wait, 2 weeks, 2 months?

    Thanks for all your work.

  22. Tom Says:

    The code for 2.0.1 will not work without modification on 2.0.2. I guess this is true for 2.1 also. I haven’t checked that.

    Currently, to be honest, I don’t know when there will be a version for 2.1.

    -Tom

  23. Norbert Says:

    For those who are interested in images:

    I have compressed the images from imageGetter to get to
    a managable total size. Most images are OK if not enlarged.

    You can download DE and EN versions from:

    http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/Wiki2Touch/DownloadFilesW2T.html

    (Thanks to Erik)

    DE contains 534000 images (95% of total)
    EN common+language specific 1040000 images (85% of total)

    Rename
    en-common to image.bin,
    en-specific to image_en.bin,
    de to image_de.bin

    and use Tom’s transfer Tool to copy to iPod/iPhone

    If you want DE only you need image_de.bin.
    If you want EN only you need image.bin and image_en.bin.
    If you want both you need all three …bins

    Any feedback is welcome…

  24. iain Says:

    hi Norbert

    that’s awesome, thanks very much for sharing the images :)

  25. Thomas Says:

    Tom, wiki2touch works quite good on my 2.1 touch. Only math support is missing. Please have a look at this:
    http://ipod.backshot.eu/2008/09/23/how-to-wikipedia-auf-fw-2xx-sehr-einfach/

  26. Hai Says:

    Well tom wiki2touch works **** great on my fw2.1 using the instruction from the website which thomas gave.

    It’s way too awesome and I was considering to go back to fw 1.1.4 because I read that wiki2touch doesn’t work with fw 2.xx yet. But I thought let’s give it a try with the instruction on the website which thomas gave and if it does’nt work I will go back to 1.1.4 and what the **** it works **** good.

    Thank you very much tom

    Well for the people who can’t read german I will translate the instruction(although I can’t read it quite well but just a little, can’t speak german though it just very familiar with the dutch language and it was obligatory on the secondary school to learn german and french for minimal 2 years.) So here it goes

    requirements
    - 1GB gb free space(depends on which language you choose for english language u need at leadt 4 gb)
    - iPod Touch or iPhone jailbroken
    - Firmware 2.0, 2.0.1, 2.0.2 or 2.1
    - Wifi

    Step 1 Download bossprefs and Wikisrvd from cydia
    Step 2 Download the wikipedia articles and comvert it into articles_xx.bin with the wiki2touch transfer tool(xx stands for the language for example in my case it would say instead of xx NL for english users it would be EN)
    Step 3 SSH into you device with which program u want to use and copy the bin file into the following directory var/mobile/Media/Wikipedia/xx
    Step 4 go to bosspreffs and toggle wiki2touch on and reboot your device
    Step 5 go to the folowing link on safari http://127.0.0.1:8080/index.html
    And if everything went ok then you should see something very awesome

    Well the articles you just uploaded are without images. I dont know how to put the images in wiki2touch though but I have read that you have to extract it with imagegetter with the file wiki2touch made for you so I am doing it right now but it takes a really long time to extract the images. Where to put it, in which directory is still unknown for me though so I ca

  27. Thomas Says:

    Well, it got even simpler in the meantime.
    wikisrvd is on Cydia now, so you can just install it like any other software and then transfer the wikipedia file using abu’s transfertool (part of Tom’s original distribution)

  28. Ted T. Bear Says:

    I have been looking for the mentioned transfer tool, but unfortunately, I could not find it. Does it run on PPC and/or Intel Macs? 10.4 and/or 10.5? TIA. TTB

  29. gruke Says:

    You can use IfunBox to transfer your articles.bin

  30. Norbert Says:

    Hi,
    for those who are interested in images:

    There are new image packages based on the October 2008 dump.

    You can download DE and EN versions from:

    http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/Wiki2Touch/DownloadFilesW2T.html

    (Thanks to Erik)

    DE contains now 600448 images .
    EN common+language specific 1339389 images.

    Rename
    en-common to image.bin,
    en-specific to image_en.bin,
    de to image_de.bin

    and use Tom’s transfer Tool to copy to iPod/iPhone

    If you want DE only you need image_de.bin.
    If you want EN only you need image.bin and image_en.bin.
    If you want both you need all three …bins

    Can be used on 1.1.4 and 2.x

    There are also new math packages at:
    http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/Wiki2Touch/Math/

    This can only be used for 1.1.4.
    (Tom and Thomas, are there any chance you put wiki2touch 0.71 on 2.x ?)

    Have Fun,
    Norbert.

  31. Thomas Says:

    Hi Norbert,

    do you mean me when you say Thomas? I have nothing to do with the programming of wiki2touch, I’m just using the Cydia version on 2.1, which unfortunately lacks math support.
    How did you manage to convert the october dump? The indexer always stops at a little less than 600.000 articles (tried on two different computers).
    And does anybody know where the forum has gone?
    I always get to www.ifun.de when I try to open wiki2touch.ipodhelp.de

    Thomas

  32. Norbert Says:

    Hi Thomas,

    Who then did the “wiki2touch hack” for 2.1/Cyntia ?

    I have Windows XP and the ImageGetter from the wiki2touch package.
    Nothing special, everything runs fine for DE and EN .
    ( My computer is very new … not much installed yet …)

    I do not know how to help you ?!
    I can send you my version …

    Norbert.

  33. Thomas Says:

    Hi Norbert,

    the hack was done by zm8 from the forum if I recall correctly (as I already said, the forum seems to be down).
    Thanks for your offer, but I think I’ll just wait for the next dump and then try again.
    If you want to contact me by mail, it’s valen at fantasymail dot de.

    Thomas

  34. loveblunts Says:

    Anybody know how i can transfer the images to the iphone 2.x on a mac.
    In the download section there seems to be only a transfer tool for windows.
    can it be done manually per drag and drop like with the articles?

    @thomas….yeah kind of a bummer that the forum is gone. by the way it kinda sucks that the other offline wikipedia made it to the appstore before your project…you always did much better work. anyway thx for your work

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