DSwiki - Offline Wikipedia Reader version 0.1alpha3

DSwiki - Offline Wikipedia Reader version 0.1alpha3

September 1st, 2008, 20:37 Posted By: wraggster

News/release from ollipolli

Hello!

I have released version 0.1alpha3 of my first real project for the DS.
It is called DSwiki, and it is an offline viewer for the wikipedia or all other wikis which are based on the mediawiki framework.

A sample wiki (German Wikiquotes) is available here: http://dswiki.googlecode.com/files/D...ample-data.zip
The interface language is german, but there are only some status messages.

Pre-made wikipedia-dumps for DSwiki

German edition: http://dswiki.googlecode.com/files/D...080712.torrent
English edition: http://dswiki.googlecode.com/files/D...080724.torrent

More instructions on the installation und usage can be found in the README below. Two images are attached, the first showing a normal wiki article, the second showing the very good Unicode support.

Please test DSwiki and give me some feedback.

Have Fun!

OlliPolli

DSwiki (v0.1alpha3)
=====================

DSwiki is an offline viewer for Wiki markup, for example for the
Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wiktionaries, ...

DSwiki is NOT a web browser!

Why DSwiki?
=============

DSwiki is optimal for all people with a Nintendo DS that like to
have their information "portable", but cannot access the Internet
directly. So far, no Program was very good in displaying the
Wikipedia on the DS. NewDictS can display an uncompressed dump, but
this dump is outdated, and the Wikipedia has grown dramatically
since then, so compression was absolutely necessary. In addition,
most homebrew programs can't handle UTF-8.

DSwiki is based on
====================

-- NewDictS <http://tvgame360.com.tw/viewthread.php?tid=21913&extra=&page=1>
Thanks to sesa for graphics-/unicode- and font-routines

-- Wiki2Touch <http://code.google.com/p/wiki2touch/>
Thanks to Tom Haukap for the file format and index routines

-- libbzip2 <http://bzip.org/>

-- Terminus fonts <http://www.is-vn.bg/hamster/>

-- GNU Unifont <http://www.czyborra.com/unifont/> [DOWN]
<http://unifoundry.com/unifont.html>
Thanks to Roman Czyborra

Features
==========

-- Get the complete(!) Wikipedia on a Nintendo DS. The English language
edition fits on a 4GB storage device, the German edition is just 1.1GB.
-- Quite good handling of internal links. Alternative display text
and appended letters are supported to create the same look as
in the online version.
-- Very good Unicode/UTF8-Support (as much - or as little - as the
underlying font covers)
-- A cache to navigate quickly the history of visited pages

Planned Features
==================

-- Much better markup display
-- Bookmarks
-- Improved Search (advanced input)
-- Navigation by document structure (jump to headlines or
jump from link to link as in text browsers)
-- "Find as you type" inside an article
-- Memory saving font handling, switching between fonts on the fly
-- Customization

Use
=====

At the moment DSwiki can't do more than display mostly unformatted
wiki markup of articles (but word and line breaks and a proportional
font make it easy readable).

DSwiki works as follows:

A random article will be loaded at the start.

Up/Down: Scroll one line backward/forward

Left/Right: Scroll one page backward/forward

Stylus: Follow a link on the bottom screen

L/R: Go one page back/forward in history

A: Go to another random article

X: Index-assisted search on/off

Articles names (no unicode yet) can be entered
on the keyboard.

Touching the red button clears the input field.

The D-Pad navigates through the index.

The current highlighted article name can be loaded
either by
* touching the green button
* pressing A
* touching Enter on the virtual keyboard

Installation
==============

1. Copy DSwiki.nds somewhere on your flash card, DLDI-patch it if
necessary.

2. Create dumps of your favorite wiki or download already prepared ones.
Visit <http://code.google.com/p/dswiki/wiki/Dumps> for a list.

3. Copy dewiki.ao1, dewiki.ao2, dewiki.dbz, dewiki.idx and dewiki.ifo
into the root directory of your flash card.

IMPORTANT: These names are fixed at the moment, so use them
anyway, even if you want to use a different language/wiki.

Bugs/Issues
=============

-- The german article "ß" is not found correctly.

Have Fun!
ollipolli

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