Wiki on Palm OS (other than tomeraider)?

[yorrick]

I am wondering if there are any other formats (apart from Tomeraider format) of Wikipedia (condensed versions with or without images) that is available for Palm OS?

Tomeraider hasn't been updated for ages and has problems running even on a T3. :(

[DatesOnMyPalm]

I have the demo of TomeRaider and the large and small versions of Wikipedia (w/o images) on my TX. They seem to run OK, except for one thing. When an article has a hyperlink to some other article,you can click it and go there. But when you click the back arrow, you don't go back to the article you were on, but rather, the previous page to the one you're on in Wikipedia.

Very frustrating if you'd like to follow the hyperlinks and come back. You have to do your search all over again, each time.

Does anyone have a solution for this? I sent the TomeRaider people an e-mail a week ago, but no reply.

Any other reader work with Wikipedia?

Thanks

[alex_lorenzo]

Same here...
But I think the wikipedia parsed files are formatted for TomeRaider only. Perhaps they could be forced to a web browser. iSilo works better in that.

[headcronie]

iSilo can't handle a document that big. I was in the process of making a complete wiki for iSilo when someone pointed out the file size limitation. You would end up having to create hundreds of files, rather than one individual file. :(

[PinCushionQueen]

Hmmm... Has anybody tried to make a Plucker Doc out of this? I know that I've made some really big Plucker docs (120MB) out of online text books (with images) I'm not sure how large the Wiki file would be without images. It's worth a shot.

[DatesOnMyPalm]

Take a look at the following link:
http://code.plkr.org/ep/

It mentions a Wikipedia version for Plucker, but there is no download button?

I e-mailed the author and am waiting for a response.

With the price of 4 GB cards, we should be able to get the full version with all or a large subset of the images, as well.

I also offered to give him a nice contribution. Maybe the more people that e-mail him that they are interested, he may devote more time to it.

[DatesOnMyPalm]

Here is the response I received to my e-mail from David who is working on a Plucker version of Wikipedia (see http://code.plkr.org/ep/):

> The current Wikipedia images are roughly 300 gigabytes
> in size. Even if I could squeeze those down with 99%
> compression (which would never happen, since most are
> already jpegs), that's still way too much for a 4gig card,
> even an 8gig card + the data and pages and content.
>
> In any case, the whole .pdb is far too large to allow for
> downloads, which is why I'm coming up with a different
> approach to distribution and sale of the work.
>
> Stay tuned, there'll be an annoucement of where to
> purchase it all soon.
>
> -- David A. Desrosiers - desrod@gnu-designs.com

[medicalmarvel]

the discusson was helpful. but is there any other useful format than tomraider??

just hope that the different approach mentioned by David will be out soon.

[npbeers]

Personally, I use Quickipedia... it does not contain the full contents right away, but uses minimal data access to search and pull select articles. I now have more than 300 articles in cache I can access offline...

[yvaldez]

I am wondering if there are any other formats (apart from Tomeraider format) of Wikipedia (condensed versions with or without images) that is available for Palm OS?

Tomeraider hasn't been updated for ages and has problems running even on a T3. :(
***************
I hope this helps. I found this in: http://about.com/:

under, Palmtops / PDAs

Top 6 Ways to View Wikipedia on a PDA


Wapedia:
Wapedia allows wireless PDA users to access Wikipedia thats formatted for mobile use. Besides the regular search, Wapedia also has:

* current events
* recent deaths
* random
* previously searched
* about Wapedia
* devices
* languages

If your device only uses a WAP browser, use this web address to use Wapedia: wap.en.wapedia.org.

******

Wikipedia Encyclopedia for Tomeraider
If you own the TomeRaider Reader software, you can download Wikipedia files to read on your PDA. There are step by step instructions on preparing the Wikipedia files for your PDA. Not for the faint of heart, but a great option for a free way to keep Wikipedia files on your PDA.

[yorrick]

yvaldez - Wapedia won't work on a T3, it hasn't any GPRS or WAP on it.
Wikipedia on Tomeraider is readily available with lot's of instructions. I am looking for Wikipedia without using Tomeraider.

If this is any indication, it looks more and more like Palm is becoming a dead end in software development. This is one aspect of it...

[potter]

Wapedia won't work on a T3, it hasn't any GPRS or WAP on it.From http://www.wapedia.org/, try http://pda.wapedia.mobi/en/. For other languages see http://pda.wapedia.mobi/.

[liggs42]

I had the same problem, so I've written an offline reader myself for the PalmOS. It does not require web access just a large memory card.

1.9Gb datafile + small .prc. Hence I've got the latest database offline copy (from their last months backup) on my palm TX. Works pretty well for what I want it for. Fast too (but not as fast as TR, and not as nice looking - see below).

The conversion
Takes about 5 hours to build using Perl scripts in Cygwin (and only Cygwin!).
You give perl scripts the the .bz compressed file from the http://download.wikimedia.org site - pages-articles.xml.bz2 and it converts it and you then have to copy the converted file to the SD card. You need a lot of intermediate disk space (~30Gb) on the PC. 2Gb on the SD, but I suspect this file will grow to over 2Gb in the next year.

The Palm program
It's basic, but gets the job done.
No special formatting, no images, no html tables, ASCII only, no category pages.
The perl scripts handle most of the funny mediawiki/html formatting, but some tags make it thru and the article may look funny.

But does do links and searches.

Main Screen, as you type the text in, it homes in.

http://www.btinternet.com/~a.liggins/wikimenu.JPG

You press the Find button and it opens it.

Article here is a redirect, so click the red text to get the main article.

http://www.btinternet.com/~a.liggins/wiki_lost_follow.JPG

http://www.btinternet.com/~a.liggins/wiki_lost.JPG

Scroll down a bit (no scroll bars yet!)

http://www.btinternet.com/~a.liggins/wiki_lost_down.JPG

All links are in red.

As I said, very basic, but it does exactly what I want.

It's not feasible for me to upload the datafile (size!), but it does also support the little wikis from www.wikia.com. I've done the Lost one (my example above is from the full wikipedia before you ask!), which comes out as a tiny 900k.

Let me know if you are interested, but there are lots of rough edges....

[braj]

It won't be long now until nearly all the knowledge accumulated by mankind will fit in the head of a pin. Pretty crazy.

[enderenya]

@liggs42:
Why not make it hires+ (full screen) ? Not that I know how, but it sounds like it would be worth it for you to find out.

[Modnar]

Let me know if you are interested, but there are lots of rough edges....
Definitely!!!!

Are you able to post it up? (if you want to that is)

[o_paroikos]

liggs42,
I would love to use your program and perl scripts, too. Will you be making them available? It looks good enough for me!

Thanks,
Josh

[thomas_92]

If i understand, i will be able to run wikipedia in french in my lifedrive, isn't it?

Thank you very much
Thomas