I’ve just compile and uploaded the latest and last version of Wiki2Touch. I created a new installer source because I don’t know in which package Wiki2Touch is currently listed.

In order to install this version it’s a good idea to first remove the old one. But keep your data files. You will be asked this during uninstall.

Then add source url “i.wiki2touch.com” to your installer as shown here:

After the source was added you have a new category called “Wiki” and inside you will find Wiki2Touch 0.71.

This version, the number is 0.71, includes

• Support for “math”
• The last search phrase is save
• Some minor bug fixes

As I’ve already said, this will be the last version for 1.1.4. I will add a short description how math is working. But don’t expect getting it out-of-the-box. You need the data like you need it for images. Basically an MD5 checksum is calculated form the contents of the math-tags and that is the filename for an image. Norbert has helped a lot here and maybe he provides some “math”-packages.

Right now I’m going to fixi and prepare the version for jailbroken 2.0.x devices.

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.

Norbert added support for mathematical and chemical symbols to Wiki2Touch. Wiki2Touch is an offline Wikipedia reader for the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch.

Background: If you’re editing articles in Wikipedia and like some symbols you add TeX commands into a <math>-tag. This is then rendered by the Wikipedia software using TeX. The result is finally displayed as an image. TeX is great in producing nice formulas or other special symbols.

Norbert did the add-on without any changes to the current version. He exchanged every <math>-section inside an article with a link to a picture. He let TeX created the proper image from the original tag contents. This picture is added with a certain id to the image database. This works quite well. But you had to use a modified “articles.bin” database.

Norbert told me that he used some code from Erik Zachte. So Erik should be credited, too.

Wiki2Touch is now modified and the ids of the math sections are now calculated on the fly, the sections are removed and the proper images are inserted (if installed of course). Works like a charm:

Wiki2Touch featuring TeX rendered symbols

Because the background of the images currently isn’t transparent you can easily spot what is a image and what is text.

A couple of things still have to get changed. But math support is now added to Wiki2Touch. While on that subject: I think there’s finally enough stuff together for a new version now. So stay tuned.

Thanks for all the support!

Tom

Here is the story:

I have a free day today. I’ve planed to start a new indexer for Wiki2Touch. Some reasons are to get more control over the articles contents and metadata. Further to join downloading and indexing article together with image retrieving into one application. Then taking the article categories into account in order to create packages only containing some but not all articles. Think of all medical related ones or all excellent ones. Support for some special namespaces (i.e. “Portal” or so) along with math support in the end needs a new indexer, too. And yes, uploading the results to the device.

I’ve decided to use the .NET framework from Microsoft. There were a couple of other option: C++, Java, PHP and so on. I like the .NET framework best and developing is much faster and less prone to errors than using C++. And also I love my Mac I still think the VS.NET developing environment from Microsoft is the best I can get.

When I got my Mac more than one year ago I first tried Mono. Mono is an open source project which allows you to run Microsoft .NET Framework based applications on non Microsoft operating system (like Linux, Mac OS X). I was disappointed in these days, it was not working for me, even not for very simple applications.

Anyway, because I only needed a few hours I’ve written the “ImageGetter” for Wiki2Touch in C# (.NET Framework 2.0). Now I was able to download the images for Wiki2Touch. But I was not completely happy with the result. The application didn’t runs directly on my Mac. I had to use Parallels which allows to run Windows on OS X.

But that has changed: Today I’ve compiled the “ImageGetter” using the latest version of Mono. And it worked right from the start. On Apple OS X. I only had to exchange the hard coded path separator char (”\” on Windows, “/” on Unix, now I’m using the value provided by the framework). Here is the result:

The “ImageGetter” running on OS X using the Mono framework.

Speed is fine: It downloads the images not slower than the version running under Windows. And for what reasons ever it crawls to more than 440.000 images I already downloaded in only 2 minutes. I don’t know why that is so fast on OS X, compared to Windows.

I see no reason why that shouldn’t work on Linux, too. The guys from the Mono project did a great job. The ImageGetter uses MD5 hashed, has a GUI, and downloads http content using threads. I’m impressed.

But it even getting better: The open source “SharpZipLib” library works without recompiling, too. This library is needed to decompress the Wikipedia article archives. The job the former “Indexer” did.

Conclusion: Everything is set up to create a nice and feature rich GUI based front end for Wiki2Touch which runs on Windows, OS X and Linux which is easy to use for everyone. I’ve just started.

I will upload the slightly modified sources to the Google code page during the day.

Over at Google code they are doing some maintenance work so the Wiki isn’t available. Usually I track changes over there.

Beside some bugfixes I’ve added support for <imagetag> tags (sometimes used as {{#tag:imagetag|…}} as well). Tapping on these image maps isn’t support yet but they are at least displayed. You can see some of these types of images at the bottom of this screen shot:

A sort of an “On screen display”

More interesting is for sure the shinny black menu in the middle of the screen. It appears and disappears once you tap somewhere on the screen (you must not hit a link). Now you can easily go to the TOC, the top or bottom of the article or back to the search page. For those who like to extend this “menu”: It’s a simple <div> tag so you may add what you like.

Any more suggestions what I should add to this panel?

Once you’ve jumped back to the search page it will now show you the last search result. That’s even true if you reached the page due to an icon on your home screen or a bookmark entry. The last search phrase is stored by the server, together with the language you have used.

And if you have more than once language installed you know see a drop down box to choose a language as the one you like to use:

GUI support for multiple languages

Sure, if you have only one language installed the select box is hidden.

If everything turns out fine I will release the updated version on the next weekend.

You will find it under the “Misc” category. Maybe not the proper category, but the managers of the community sources are asked not to create categories on their own. So where else?

Skylar told me that he expects up to 150.000 downloads in the first month. That’s more than 10 times more as before.

I don’t expect that everybody will finally useit. The process of putting the necessary data file onto the device is still way to difficult and inconvenient for most of us. Guess what’s next on my list At least the build in help is a good start.

Yesterday night I’ve got a little bit crazy. Only to see how it looks I’ve uploaded the Chineses Wikipedia database. Here’s a screen shoot:

At least it looks nice to me.

So enough for now, back to work.

So whats new? As I’d said in the past, this version deals with rendering bugs. So it has no new features. Or decide for you’re own if you like to name one or the other change a new feature. Here is a brief summary:

• Template caching works without any change of rights now for firmware 1.1.3/1.1.4, too. If you’ve not modified anything in the past while using 0.60 together with firmware 1.1.3/1.1.4 you will see the articles now displayed much faster once the template is cached.
• Support for #expr/#ifexpr parser functions. Have a look at articles like “2008″ (the year 2008). Mainly all the links in the head area are computed by the use these new functions.
• Preliminary math support: At least the text from the math-tags is extracted and displayed with a gray background for better readability and the math symbol “Pi” is displayed as the Greek symbol. Nothing else.
• More than 30 changes for better rendering support. The changes covering smaller issues like to much spaces or line feeds, correct handling of headlines, reference lists and enumerations, up to the support of sometimes very complex templates (i.e. in the English edition articles like “Al Gore” or “George Washington”. And a bug which crashed the server was also removed.

You find a complete list over at Google Code (see the links on the right side).

Still one of my favorite screen shots from the tests

I’m glad to finally have this version out. I have lots of ideas for new features, starting from enhanced multiple language support, followed by making the server faster, adding a full text search index, support for certain Wikipedia namespaces (categories, portal, …) and so on.

But all this is useless without a stable basis. And, although I know that there are some minor issues still left, I think this version is it.

Installer support for the latest version was set up (thanks Sanford).

While on the subject “installing”: There are no major changes to the indexer or the articles database. You DON’T need to re-index anything or have to re-upload the “articles.bin” or the “images.bin”. No changes here! So as soon as the update shows up in the installer simply hit the button. A restart of the server after the installation is a good idea.

Have fun with the new version,

Tom

Calculation are use somewhere else, too. I.e. the English article about New York uses them to display changes of the population in percent. The current version is not displaying anything here but the next will.

That was one of the last great challenges. Except for “math” support the rest is even simpler. I’m really glad to finally have that also implemented. I’m continuing iron out a few open rendering issues.

There is currently no new version available. The current is ten day “old” and still fine and stable. But you may have a look at my “work in process” list over at Google code if you like.

When I compare these numbers to the count of comments and posts here and on the forum I’m getting very very happy. The majority of free software using users don’t say anything unless there is a problem. Like me, too. But how much posts are there dealing with issues? Around 10 or so. If not less. Mostly installation problems. A good start.

That doesn’t means that there are no bugs. So the next version will more or less dedicated to fix rendering issues. But for the wast majority of articles there are simply no problems.

Anyway, it’s the weekend of Eastern and I will have a couple of free days. I will spent them with my family so don’t expect to much news in the next few days.

Thanks for all your support so far and have some nice days, too.

Maybe you already know Sanford Poon, the guy behind the installer support for Wiki2Touch. And maybe you already noticed that there is a second entry int the category “Temporary” once you’ve added “http://168weedon/i” to your installer sources (to install Wiki2Touch). The entry has the name “BossPrefs Wiki2Touch Control”.

“BossPrefs” is a separated tool which you may install to enable/disable certain services on your device. SSH, EDGE, Wifi and a lot of other things. And by adding Sanford script Wiki2Touch, too:

Great, thanks a lot!

(BTW: The screen shot above was done without any additional program. Only using the firmware 1.1.3 or 1.1.4. Have a look at http://www.iphone-ticker.de to see how to enable this feature. Sorry, this site is in German language only)