Wikivoyage talk:Offline reader Expedition

SQL dump
I am working with the Evopedia a free open source software project and need access to a simple SQL dump so we can process and add it to our available processed dumps.http://dumpathome.evopedia.info/dumps/finished/en I will check back here for a few days hoping to get a reply.

Plucker
Did somebody contact the Plucker developers already? I don't have a PDA myself (yet..), so I won't delve into this. But I guess that there is room for some kind of cooperation between Wikivoyage (or even Wikimedia) people and Plucker developers. Oh, and if I do have a PDA it will definitely run Linux, so then I have to think of tweaking Plucker, which only runs on PalmOS for the moment (fortunately it's free software :). (WT-en) Guaka 16:36, 3 Nov 2003 (PST)


 * Yeah, I posted to the plucker users mailing list, and got some off-list responses along the lines of "that sounds cool". -- (WT-en) Evan 19:14, 3 Nov 2003 (PST)

I don't see what's the goal of this expedition. Why can't I simply take wget (http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/wget.html) and make my offline copy? -- (WT-en) Hansm 05:10, 2003 Nov 4 (PST)


 * Cause it'd be very crude and take way too much space of your valuable PDA memory. (WT-en) Guaka 09:28, 8 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * wikivoyage is already available in plucker format? - tripsteps.com/ebook/

Internet Tablets
This group should also consider the new class of devices dubbed internet tablets, like the Nokia N800.

Is the HTML generated by the Wikimedia software viewable on mobile devices? This probably isn't necessary for offline reading, but perhaps it's a place to start? --(WT-en) Dawnview 02:43, 2 Feb 2004 (EST)

The Aarddict project can easily be used to allow offline reading on many devices, including the N800, windows, linux, apple. A database dump would be all that is required. This has already been done for wikipedia. (WT-en) Prosthetic Head 11:55, 17 February 2010 (EST)

The following bit was moved here from the Traveler's pub:

A way to edit offline
I've been thinking that it would be really nice to have a way to work on wikivoyage articles offline. The advantages would include the possibilities of working on a laptop, while actually traveling and of giving the traveler a choice of the full range of text editors. I've noticed that there's been some discussion of this sort of thing on the Wikimedia meta site, but I think I would propose to do something a bit different (and hopefully simpler) than the stuff I've seen proposed there.

What I have in mind at least for now is something kind of like the cvs client command line software, but with a much simpler set of functions and behaviors. So if this command were called "wix" (a name pulled totally out of thin air) the user could type something like 'wix checkout pagename.wiki', or 'wix update pagename.wiki' or wix commit pagename.wiki'. While the pagename would pretty much obviously have to be the URL page name of the article. The commit function would either have to insist on an update first, or perhaps better, would be smart enough to do one automatically. The client would probably need some kind of conflict resolution behavior as well.

My idea is for the client to interface with the server just using the perfectly normal HTTP, just like all other user agents which communicate with Wikimedia so as to keep this as simple as possible and to avoid the range of possible bugs that can come from making drastic changes in server features. I suppose that if skins are fairly easy to make, then a stripped down skin for the client might be in order, thought I'm not sure that would be necessary so long as the form elements are named consistantly between the skins.

I've actually been doing something like this just using the "save as" feature of my browser, and editing the form action attribute of the page to give it a non-relative URL. Of course this requires diligence with updates, which have to be done manually. I would have to handle a conflict manually when doing this if one ever came up. So anyhow, I wouldn't mind automating this stuff just to keep from running diff once in a while.

Any thoughts? -- (WT-en) Mark 05:27, 30 Jan 2004 (EST)


 * This is definitely a desirable feature, since writing about travel tips is best done in the field, near the point of travel. When I was recently toting around SE Asia, I had an offline version of Wikipedia (Tomeraider format) so I could read up on countries, history, etc.  There was definitely a desire to update facts, add content, fix typos, and the like.  And since Wikivoyage is so young and sparse, the chances of an edit conflict right now is very small, so checking in to the CVS is most likely to just succeed.  So in short, yes, good idea.  Now what next? (WT-en) Fuzheado 20:26, 30 Jan 2004 (EST)


 * My two main thoughts are: 1) Most of this should probably go on Project:Offline Reader Expedition, and 2) I think the "wix" client is a pretty good idea. I'd estimate about 16 hours of Perl programming (with LWP for the hairy part) to do the basics. --(WT-en) Evan 15:25, 1 Feb 2004 (EST)


 * OK. I'm going to probably get started on the stub for this tonight on the train.  I'll post whatever I get done somewhere and make a note here for comments. I'll start with a monolithic script for now, and break it out into modules if it looks like that would be useful. -- (WT-en) Mark 14:29, 2 Feb 2004 (EST)


 * For those who are interested, there is now a stub for this thing at http://www.geekhive.net/~mark/wix.tgz. As you can see, I've got some way to go to a working prototype.  Lot's of stuff is bound to change before then, so be warned! -- (WT-en) Mark 15:59, 7 Feb 2004 (EST)


 * I am very interested but the link is now broken, error 404 :-( Is going through the whole CPAN stuff the only way to get it ? (WT-en) Nicolas1981 05:32, 1 November 2008 (EDT)

I've mentioned this elsewhere, but the cvs like client for Mediawiki now exists. I've uploaded it to CPAN where it is available as WWW::Mediawiki::Client. -- (WT-en) Mark 06:05, 27 Apr 2004 (EDT)

It looks great. I kan download with wix, use parsewiki to convert to latex for printouts, and html for PDA (Yopy with dillo) and edit the wiki files on my PDA. (WT-en) elgaard Aug 15, 2004
 * Would it be possible to add a -r (recursive) option to wix. I want to put a whole country on my pda. And I want images, that belong to wikis I download
 * The Quick bar is HTML, not wiki. When parsewiki sees HTML it converts <, and > to & lt;, & gt; to make it HTML and \ensuremath{<}, \ensuremath{>} to make latex
 * 8 bit charaters come out wrong in html because they are UTF-8 but not marked as such. Is that a wix or a parsewiki problem?

Hi Elgaard!

I'm glad you find the mediawiki client software useful. I guess it's time for me to do a bit more work on it. I'm going to need some clarification from you others before I can continue though.
 * Recursiveness Adding recursion sounds like a useful feature, especially for downloads.  I think it's probably better for Wikivoyage's bandwidth to avoid having recursive or bulk uploads.  I'd like to know what other wikivoyageers think about recursive downloads, especially Evan since he has to deal with bandwidth issues.
 * Quick Bar I guess the Quick bar is that thing on the country pages right?  I've never messed with one of those.  Are you saying that you would like WWW::Mediawiki::Client to somehow process that html into wiki?
 * UTF-8 Hmm, I don't actually know. Something in the back of my head says that there's a way to signal that a textfile should be considered as a UNICODE file by giving it a magic number or something, but I don't have specifics.  Help with the research on that would be great, though I could probably figure it out eventually.  As for parsewiki, I dunno, maybe there's a way to tell it that it's dealing with UNICODE.
 * update I've downloaded and tried parsewiki.  I think I can solve your problem with a patch that adds an encoding flag for use on the command line, and which then includes an http-equiv header for character set.  That should take care of it, assuming your browser pays attention to http-equiv stuff. -- (WT-en) Mark 05:09, 16 Aug 2004 (EDT)

Also, I'm considering changing the name of the script to mwc, as the name wix is already taken by a project on sourceforge. Are there any objections? Does anybody know if that name is taken? Does anybody have a better idea? Maybe something faster to type? -- (WT-en) Mark 05:00, 16 Aug 2004 (EDT)

Nicer UI? Hey folks, I doubt the average user will use a command line tool and plain text editor. Just an idea (i don't have time to drive it towards realisation): Have a "administrative part" that does the CVS part quietly. It also converts mediawiki syntax to a wiki syntax that can be used by a local wiki software, just like wikiPad. Usage is more convenient in this local wiki software as formatting buttons are available, links can be followed easily,... At next connection to the internet, the "administrative part" asks CVS to check for changed files and asks the user whether he wants to upload this, in case yes, the syntax translation starts again. Yes, it's some work to find local wiki softwares for all the mobile platforms, I know. Just my 2 cents. And, of course, may be used for all mediawiki projects. --85.216.10.138 06:17, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

Encoding Patch for parsewiki
Here's a patch which adds an encoding switch to parsewiki. You can apply this patch to the original parswiki script using:

patch -p0 -i parswiki.patch parsewiki

Once you have a patched version of parsewiki you should be able to do this:

parsewiki --encoding=UTF-8 Copenhagen.wiki > Copenhagen.html

The resulting html file works with my browser, hopefully it will work with yours too.

For what it's worth I tried to upload this but ran into the same problem with uploads that Elgaard was having.

--- /usr/bin/parsewiki	2003-07-03 01:20:29.000000000 +0200 +++ parsewiki	2004-08-16 11:23:52.000000000 +0200 @@ -40,6 +40,9 @@    -T, --title=TITLE    Title. -t, --template=FILE File with a template to use instead of thestandard. -c, --copyright     Display copyright and copying permission statement. +   -e, --encoding=ENC   Sets the character set or encoding of the +                        document output for html and xhtml. (default +                        ISO-8859-1) -h, --help          Show this usage summary. FILE is a simple text file with wiki formating syntax. The result will be @@ -63,7 +66,7 @@ $Titles $Authors $Orgs $Addresses $Dates $Versions $Abstracts $Figures @Title @Author @Org @Address @Date @Version @Abstract @Figure @Language @BabelLang @Tag %SaveUrl %OpenTag %CloseTag -	   %OpenItem %CloseItem %Meta %LangCode $Revision $LF); +	    %OpenItem %CloseItem %Meta %LangCode $Revision $LF $Encoding); %SaveUrl = ; @@ -74,6 +77,7 @@ %CloseItem = qw(ol  ul  dl ); $Format = 'html'; $Revision = q($Revision: 1.29 $); +$Encoding = 'ISO-8859-1'; my $file = &GetOpts; # Process command line options @@ -681,6 +685,7 @@ $title + $frontmatter @@ -714,13 +719,14 @@    unless ($Template) { 	$Template = <<'       EndXHTML'; - + &lt;!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"&gt;  $title + $frontmatter @@ -1007,6 +1013,8 @@ 	if (/^-t$/) { &ReadTemplate(shift(@ARGV)); next } if (/^-t(.*)$/) { &ReadTemplate($1); next } if (/^--template\=(.*)$/) { &ReadTemplate($1); next } +	if (/^-e(.*)$/) { $Encoding = $1; next } +	if (/^--encoding\=(.*)$/) { $Encoding = $1; next } if (/^(-c|--copyright)/) { &Copying; next } if (/^(-h|--help)/) { &Usage } }
 * 1) Configuration variables and Default options

Probably recursive uploads would be fine too, if only what users have actually edit are uploaded. Because it will typically be copied to and from PDA's with simpe filesystems you would need to use a checksum or file size comparison (rsync style). Maybe you would also need to handle CR/LF conversions.
 * Recursiveness: Yes downloads are fine. I do not think downloading a country would be too bad, considering it is a cvs-like sync. You could limit it to countries and below, ie. no downloading of all WikiTravel.


 * Quick Bar If you try to edit a quick box, you will see HTML-codes, mostly tables. According to WikiMedia these tags are allowed, so I guess it is a parsewiki problem. The parsewiki manual says: This is a preliminary beta release, and probably filled with bugs. Among the future development plans are the implementation of tables, bibliographies and figures captions. But this was in 2002.

(WT-en) elgaard 08:40, 2004 Aug 16 (EDT)
 * Parsewiki patch Good. Did you submit it upstream to parsewiki?

DICT
I've written wik2dict, a Python thingy that converts the MediaWiki database dumps available from Wikimedia into the DICT format. It's text-only, read-only, and gzipped. Debian has some dict packages. And it's probably quite easy to use the dict stuff on a GNU/Linuxy PDA. But this hasn't been tested with Wikivoyage yet.

So... I'd like to see a Wikivoyage database dump available for download! (WT-en) Guaka 09:28, 8 Nov 2004 (EST)

Dump available ?
[Moved from Travellers' pub by (WT-en) Hypatia 17:49, 18 Dec 2004 (EST)]

Old stuff:
 * Hi,


 * Where are database dumps avaliable ? This is specially important as SQL queries are disabled. With a dump, SQL queries can done at home on my own computer. (WT-en) Yann 09:05, 26 Jun 2004 (EDT)


 * I've created wik2dict and like to have Wikivoyage in the dict format now :) It would be nice if the dump uses the same format as the Wikipedia SQL dump. Otherwise I need to hack some more. (WT-en) Guaka 13:56, 2 Aug 2004 (EDT)

Yes, old question, but no answer. So I'd like to pose the question again: Would it be possible to make SQL dumps available somewhere? That way I can hack wik2dict so that I have Wikivoyage as a dict on my laptop. (WT-en) Guaka 12:37, 19 Oct 2004 (EDT)


 * See also Project:Offline Reader Expedition (WT-en) Guaka 06:28, 11 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * It should be pretty easy to write a script to dump the whole thing once the next version of WWW::Mediawiki::Client is out. -- (WT-en) Mark 09:12, 2 May 2005 (EDT)


 * Huh? It should be pretty easy to have the dumps available. Wikimedia has them available since ages. Even the Star Trek wiki has downloadable database dumps. Why not Wikivoyage? (WT-en) Guaka 00:04, 4 May 2005 (EDT)


 * True, but I can't help you there. If you want to use the tool that is available it's there.  If you prefer to wait fore the db dumps you can do that too. -- (WT-en) Mark 01:09, 4 May 2005 (EDT)


 * Oh, sorry, I thought that Perl thingy was needed to create the dumps. I don't really speak Perl, but it might be an alternative if there's no response coming from people who do have access to the MySQL database. (WT-en) Guaka 15:37, 6 May 2005 (EDT)


 * Sorry it's taking so long to get the database dumps on-line (2 years?). There's not a big demand, and there's other higher priorities (like keeping the site running). The big problem I have is that I want to make sure we comply with the Wikivoyage copyleft-- notably, editor attribution. Wikimedia-style data dumps don't do that. I think a MediaWiki XML-file dump should be sufficient, but I think probably the best thing is a big pre-rendered HTML tarball with accompanying RDF files. --(WT-en) Evan 17:17, 6 May 2005 (EDT)


 * Is there a dump available somewhere? I would be interested in linking to pages from my site (http://www.unearthedoutdoors.net/ ). I don't have experience editing wikis, so I hope I'm doing it correctly here... -- Seth 7 April 2006


 * See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_dumps#Wikivoyage_Dump (WT-en) Jlam 12:15, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

Book format?
Is there any thought on doing a book format? Has anyone used/checked out http://www.lulu.com? Appearantly you can upload your book in electronic format, and they handle billing etc. for you. You don't pay them exactly, you decide on a cut for them of each sale, then they print the book on demand and ship it. Is this the right place to ask about this? Thanks, Michael Moore

Hi Mike, just wanted to let you know that you could also use Schiel & Denver Book Publishers which provide 50% royalties on sale, and excellent distribution to national bookstores in softcover, hardcover and electronic formats - including the new Apple Ipad.

You want to sell Wikivoyage ? - rofl

See User:(WT-en) Elgaard --Elgaard

iSilo
What about iSilo format? It's pretty popular among PalmOS users, at least in Russia. -- (WT-en) DenisYurkin 16:32, 25 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Offline version
Swept in from the Project:Travellers' pub:

Is there a friendly way to get an offline version of either all or a part of Wikivoyage?

Specificly: I'm in Europe for 3 months with intermitant internet access, and a Eurail pass. I'd absolutely _love_ to be able to browse the Europe pages for whatever country I happen to find myself in at the moment. If there were an easy way to do this for offline viewing I could do it without paying EU $7.00/hour (for an internet cafe) to do so.

More in general: I think that if it were possible to download a tarballed HTML version of Wikivoyage (or maybe a contenent or country at a time), travelers could put it on their Palm pilots or laptops and have an excelent guide book to take with them.


 * See the Project:Offline Reader Expedition. Right now, we don't have an HTML dump, but it's a priority. I usually just print out the guides I need for where I'm going. --(WT-en) Evan 15:31, 20 May 2005 (EDT)


 * Last time I did that was last month. When I arrived downtown Toronto, I realized Toronto had been split into districts and I only had only printed out the city page. In July I'll make my way from Rome to Naples, I might go to most destinations south of Rome. It is just to much to do by hand. It should not be to difficult to write a script that follows Regions, Cities, District, and Other Destinations links using mvs, but parsewiki is not quite right.
 * I would love a cron job that updates a PDF for each country.
 * If I brought a laptop, I would prefer a dump of Wikivoyage, so I could run it locally. --(WT-en) elgaard 18:27, 20 May 2005 (EDT)


 * I'd probably print where I was going if only I knew. :-) On our trip last week which was intended for Barcelona, we ended up in Millan, Genoa, and some small Italian towns. Untill we got to the Zurich train station and found that the Barcelona train was booked, we didn't know we were headed to Italy.
 * It's quite fun to have the flexibility to change destinations on the spur of the moment, but it makes being informed (tourist-wise) about where you end up fairly dificult.
 * -- Michael

Wikipedia for iPod
Did anyone happen to see this? It is Wikipedia for the iPod. This would be good for Wikivoyage. Will it work? -- (WT-en) Tom Holland (xltel) 13:43, 28 February 2006 (EST)

Putting wikivoyage on ipods - lonelyipod.com
Moved from Project:Travellers' pub

I spent a lot of time in India, where I saw everyone lugging around their heavy travel guides and an ipod, and wondered why nobody had combined the two. Well, I've produced a rough and (hopefully) ready web page that will do just that. I'm looking for feedback and suggestions, but if you just want to use it to make your travels easier, lighter, and cheaper, great! lonelyipod.com is the site. (WT-en) bcnstony 4:13, 25 April 2006 (EDT)


 * That's an excellent idea! Although I don't own an iPod, I think it would be great to have it working for the other language versions too (couldn't get a zip file for any of the pt: articles). (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 05:59, 25 April 2006 (EDT)


 * Multi-lingual doesn't work yet because I'm going through XML, and the Special:Export link changes depending on the language. Once I move to SQL this will be solved. (WT-en) bcnstony 13:13, 25 April 2006 (EDT)


 * Yeah, that's a very good idea. I think the name is probably going to get you in trouble, though. I'd really like to get that kind of thing working on wikivoyage.org (see Project:Offline Reader Expedition). --(WT-en) Evan 09:15, 25 April 2006 (EDT)


 * Which part of the name? The lonely or the ipod? I don't think apple will care, since if this works people will only want to buy more ipods, and 'Lonely' could be just as easily from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (in which case the other Apple company would sue me!). (WT-en) bcnstony 13:13, 25 April 2006 (EDT)


 * The "I think this is good for them" argument doesn't really hold up well in trademark disputes. The courts give the owner of the trademark the right to decide when/where/how it gets used, and actually tends to punish them if they're too lenient.  The closest thing to a neutral standard is the "confusion in the marketplace" test, which says that if people might mistake this for an Apple-sanctioned service (or a Lonely Planet service), you lose.  I'm not saying you would, but I'm not saying you wouldn't either.  - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 14:36, 25 April 2006 (EDT)

What I'm currently struggling with is how to get the data easily. I can get the info from XML in the /en/Special:Export/city, but that link changes by language (i.e. Spanish is /es/Especial:Export/city). Is it possible to get read access to the database? Or a dump of the database? I read this wasn't available yet, but wanted to see what people thought. (WT-en) bcnstony 13:28, 25 April 2006 (EDT)


 * Will users be able to read the generated file on other MP3 players such as Creative Zen too? Or is it an iPod-only thing? By the way, Todd seems right about the trademark and the "confusion in the marketplace" argument - maybe you could use lonelypod.com instead - it think still provides a pretty good "mental link" to both LP and iPods and would save yourself from any trouble. (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 15:01, 25 April 2006 (EDT)


 * I think you guys have a valid point, so I'll look into changing that, though I'll get to it after I put some more work into the code.


 * As for other players, since iPod's are the dominant device I'm focusing on them right now, but eventually I'd like to see this on anything and everything possible. Most of the hard stuff is going to be handling the dynamic linking within documents. Changing the tags so they are read on other players, such as Zen, or Palms, or phones, or whatever, will (I hope) be fairly straightforward. Eventually I'd like to see that right in the options - the user will choose 3 options
 * What Top level page (i.e. Barcelona, NYC, Kenya, etc.)
 * How deep to follow links (just that page, 1 deep, 2 deep, etc.)
 * What format (iPod, Zen, Palm, Windows CE, Motorolla Phone, etc.)
 * (WT-en) bcnstony 16:02, 25 April 2006 (EDT)


 * If you do give it a different name, I'd suggest dropping the "lonely" altogether, because that really does make it sound like it's using Lonely Planet content. That bothers me as a Wikivoyage partisan almost as much as it would the LP folks. :) Maybe Podtravel, TravelPlayer, GuidePlayer? - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 17:43, 25 April 2006 (EDT)

People have suggested I change the name, and for legal and other reasons (see above!) I am changing it. I like the suggestions so far, if anyone has other suggestions, feel free to add them here. My favorite, PodTravel, is sadly already taken.

Also, the site now handles long articles by breaking them up into smaller pieces. This is both easier to read and circumvents iPod's 4000 character limit per file.(WT-en) bcnstony 18:28, 25 April 2006 (EDT)

How about wikipod? Especially if you could generalise it so it handled Wikipedia or others? (WT-en) Pashley 21:02, 1 May 2006 (EDT)


 * I've been thinking about something like this, but instead a more general application to export wiki to other formats like TeX (and on to PDF), openoffice and msword. This would make it really easy to make a paper travelguide. So far I haven't been really looking into it, but including a export to iPod seems like and interresting feature. (WT-en) Ronald 09:48, 5 May 2006 (EDT)

I have converted some of the phrasebooks to an ipod (notes) readable format. It is rough since I have only had one day to make them. Leaving tomorrow on interrail so will polish them when I get back + add spanish. I have them hosted Hope everything is Ok with that license wise.--85.164.105.141 19:08, 26 July 2007 (EDT)

"although there are plenty of us who don't have the luxury of owning a portable computer or PDA"
What a load of technophobic nonsense. Travelling itself is a luxury. Second hand PDAs cost as little as $50. Who can afford to travel can afford a PDA.


 * The economic issue isn't important; I've simply changed it to state that some people can't or don't want to use PDAs and laptops for their travel guide for whatever reason. --(WT-en) Evan 11:17, 6 July 2006 (EDT)

Wikivoyage on PDA
Swept in from the Pub:

I'm new to this project, so forgive me if I'm posting in the wrong section. Anyway, I feel the real wikivoyage revolution would come from PDA compability. A simple program installed in your PDA both for reading wikivoyage and adding new information. I would use wikivoyage a million times more and contribute ten times more than now if I could read and contribute through a handheld computer and just "sync" (downloading all new information and uploading all contributions) when coming across a WiFi hotspot or a internet connected computer with a USB-port. Has this been discussed? Is there such an application already? Why isn't it top priority? -- (WT-en) Fridday 20:35, 29 June 2006 (EDT)


 * There's an independent project that's been started to format Wikivoyage articles for downloading to iPods. For most full-featured PDAs (e.g. PalmOS, WinCE) it's mostly a matter of downloading web pages and reading them offline, which isn't terribly difficult to do.  Offline updates are much trickier, because you don't know whether someone's edited the article online since you downloaded it.  As for priorities, developing the content itself – and letting that drive the development of offline readers (and updaters) – seems to be closer to the top of most people's lists. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) TVerBeek (talk • contribs)


 * There's also a project that's part of Wikivoyage called Project:Offline Reader Expedition. PDA and mobile phone versions of Wikivoyage are one of the project's targeted platforms (see Project:goals and non-goals), but we don't have any standardized output for PDAs. There are a couple of reasons. First, mobile phone and PDA providers have in the past had widely disparate content standards for text and hypertext, and those phones and PDAs that do support standards like WAP and XHTML-Basic do so inconsistently. Second, there aren't already good apps for editing hypertext on a PDA or mobile phone, nor for syncing with a remote server. Third, the platforms are very split -- Java, Symbian, Windows Mobile and PalmOS all have significant distribution -- so making an editor ourselves would only get part of the market, or be spread across 4-5 platforms with lots of bugs and errors.


 * Lastly, it seems like a really important thing to people who have mobile phones with big screens and PDAs. For the other 99.999% of the world, it's better to have a Web page that looks good printed out, or a printed book. --(WT-en) Evan 11:12, 30 June 2006 (EDT)


 * Great, thanks for your answers! I don't own a PDA myself, but would most probably buy one right away if there was an offline wikivoyage application. The expedition mentioned seems to be right on target. But do you really think it is that diffcult to work out a system for offline updates? It would be easy to start with an integrated notepad in the reader, with the notes linked to a specific article. The traveller could just copy and paste after reading the latest versions. And doesn't the system already check if there has ben a simultanious update while you were writing your contribution online? Couldn't that be used for offline updates? -- (WT-en) Fridday 15:31, 30 June 2006 (EDT)


 * The software on the web site tries to keep track of whether more than on person has a page open for editing at the same time, which works pretty well over the course of a few minutes, but there could be a delay of days between when you download a page to your PDA and when you upload the edited version, and there could be dozens of edits in the meantime if it's a popular destination. That's a bit much for a simple wiki database to keep track of.  Your thought of manually copying and pasting new/updated info is more practical. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 16:06, 30 June 2006 (EDT)


 * I'm sorry, but I believe you are plain wrong. This is the error you get if someone has changed the page while you were editing:


 * Someone else has changed this page since you started editing it. The upper text area contains the page text as it currently exists. Your changes are shown in the lower text area. You will have to merge your changes into the existing text. Only the text in the upper text area will be saved when you press "Save page".


 * I don't think the wikiscript "keep track" of people having the page open for editing. It just checks if the version you try to edit is the last one.


 * It seems to me an offline editor could work something like this: You have made four offline updates. When online you manually click "sync". The program tries to add the first edit to the database. If the page has not been changed while offline, itwill just move on with the next update, if it has been changed you will be presented with above message and you copy and paste and then push a button for the program to move on with the other updates. I really don't see why everybody seems to think that an offline editor is such a problem. -- (WT-en) Fridday 18:50, 1 July 2006 (EDT)


 * Yes this would work. I did a proof of concept last year when travelling in Italy. I wrote wiki-code for many destinations on my Yopy PDA. Every few days I wrote to text to a CFlah card which i moved to a USB-adaptor, that I could plug in computers at hotels and internet-cafes so I could put it on Wikivoyage. Conflicts were not a significant problem. A Sleep or Eat section for a small italian city is not edited that often. Many conflicts could even be resolved automatically. --(WT-en) elgaard 21:10, 13 July 2006 (EDT)


 * That sounds great! Proof! An easy to use application doing this is what I'm hoping for. Is there anybodu out there with the skills and motivation to make such a program? -- (WT-en) Fridday 17:32, 15 July 2006 (EDT)


 * I have done this sort of thing before I would like to do it for a free project the question really is I dont want to scrape the data can i get at it like wikipedia data download after all its copyleft and publishers would like to put data in if they knew they could get it out again

With a simple database dump it would be really easy to use this on Nokia N series tablets as well as windows/linux/mac systems using the aarddict software (free and open-source). I don't understand why this isn't already available since the investment of effort required should be fairly minor. This has already been done for other media wiki based projects including wikipedia(WT-en) Prosthetic Head 12:02, 17 February 2010 (EST)

Let's move this one to Shared
I think this expedition concerns all language versions and should be moved to Wikivoyage Shared. By doing so, we could benefit from contributions from users from all other Wikivoyage language versions. The fact that the expedition has been handled in English so far is not an issue as English is Shared's official "working language". (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 21:15, 5 November 2006 (EST)

Online access via PDAs
This expedition kind of assumes that if you are using a PDA, you will be using Wikivoyage offline. But I think that there is a need to have a mobile edition of Wikivoyage. It shouldn't be that difficult - google automatically formats sites so that they are suitable for reading on PDAs when I visit them through a gmail link. &mdash; (WT-en) Ravikiran 02:30, 25 June 2007 (EDT)


 * Good point, the iphone comes out this week! – (WT-en) cacahuate  talk 03:17, 25 June 2007 (EDT)


 * We have wikivoyage.mobi registered. It may make sense to have that be a read-only version with the "Chick" skin for PDAs. --(WT-en) Evan 11:38, 25 June 2007 (EDT)
 * What's the Chick skin? Read-only version should be okay. It would be good to have different sections on different pages, and each See/Eat/Do listing on a different page. This should be easy to achieve once listings are implemented... &mdash; (WT-en) Ravikiran 01:34, 26 June 2007 (EDT)

Trying to determine the state of this project
Even though it seems that the discussion is held quite enthusiatically since 2003, i'm unable to find anything concrete. I kind of understand that there might be database dumps available, and that printing all the pages is another offline alternative. I also find something which I dont really understand, but it seems to involve a lot of php scripting... But do we have any practical way to get the data offline? Say in simple, plain html, preferable by section (everything below Mumbai, or India, or Asia...) As we left 2003, PDA's have a lot of memory inbetween, and putting an offline version on a card with 2 or 4 or 6 Gigs shouldn't be much of a problem. Would be really great if someone involved could throw some light on it... Jan, 9:00, 15 November 2007 (GMT) —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 62.154.183.104 (talk • contribs)

Wikivoyage for iPhone / iPod Touch
I noticed that on the new iTunes Appstore there is a Travel Guide application that uses guides from Wikivoyage (Requires iTunes to open)  Currently it only contains the main country articles however it looks very promising. - (WT-en) Elronaldo 06:34, 22 October 2008 (EDT)


 * It's a nice start, indeed promising. At the moment it doesn't register internal or external links, which will be essential to make it really useful down the road, but nice start. You also can't zoom, or click on images, which makes the Wikivoyage maps useless. Curious how often it's updated too, it's not live, I altered a page, and checked on the phone a few minutes later, didn't register the update. They have the licensing a bit wrong though, not all content on our site is available ccbysa 1.0, images are on a case by case basis. – (WT-en) cacahuate  talk 18:02, 22 October 2008 (EDT)


 * I will contact the developer and see if we can get some of these issues resolved. I agree it does look promising - it would be nice to have the images clickable and links etc. - (WT-en) Elronaldo 20:42, 22 October 2008 (EDT)


 * Here's a new one for the iphone, charging $0.99 for each city guide – (WT-en) cacahuate  talk 14:31, 11 March 2009 (EDT)


 * Here is a brand new one. Looks very cool and it free www.localyte.com http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=317264070 . The wikivoyage is part of their app.

Offline plain-HTML Wikivoyage
As handheld devices are becoming as good as laptops (for instance the Eee PC), storage space is not any longer a problem, and we don't need a proprietary format as everything comes with an HTML browser. In light of this, what most people need is just a plain HTML mirror of Wikivoyage. The content of Wikivoyage is CC-BY-SA, so let's create an archive per country, that people would download, unzip, and browse. To produce those archives, there is no database dump available, so we have no choice but to crawl the website (once in a while, and users will download produced archives). What we need is: It is not difficult to do, and many people are asking for it. So let's do it.
 * a crawling tool, probably some wget wizardry, a page stripping script, and a region splitting script. I can do this.
 * a web host, does anybody have a few hundred megabytes on a server ? Let's make it text-only first, which is presumably small.

The most people involved the better it will be. All ideas/contributions/comments are welcome ! :-) (WT-en) Nicolas1981 06:28, 1 November 2008 (EDT)

I so agree, please someone good with scripts make us all happy! —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 82.183.192.190 (talk • contribs)

Smartphone apps
Hi. My name's Jon Evans. I'm planning to write a Google Android and (subsequently) an iPhone app that would allow people to easily add to WikiTravel directly from their smartphones - but obviously I don't want to reinvent the proverbial wheel. Do such apps already exist?

The advantages are hopefully obvious: people will be able to write about where they are, rather than relying on memory, and will very easily be able include both on-the-spot pictures and GPS coordinates. (Though it's easier to type on a computer than a smartphone, obviously, so I'm also planning to have a "remind me to write about this place later" feature. Feel free to suggest any other features that you think might be useful.)

I'm a software engineer turned adventure traveller turned novelist (see my web site rezendi.com for far more than you ever wanted to know about me) doing this partly for fun, partly to shake the rust off my software skills.

Thanks for any advice/help. (WT-en) Rezendi 14:46, 13 May 2009 (EDT)

OxygenGuide
You can now download Wikivoyage's content for offline navigation: OxygenGuide. It is an open source project, and the guide is obviously as free as Wikivoyage. I did not want to call it "OfflineWikivoyage" because of possible trademark issues. The HTML is simplified for navigation on small devices, and there are no images, to make it as light as oxygen. Please let me know what you think! Cheers (WT-en) Nicolas1981 19:42, 28 June 2009 (EDT)

Wikivoyage now available as Plucker .pdb for handhelds running Windows Mobile
Tripsteps.com is now hosting a continent-by-continent extract of wikivoyage at: tripsteps.com/ebook

Very handy! I wonder if there is a plucker-compatible .pdb reader for iPhone?

Wikivoyage on the iPhone
Swept in from pub:

I have not been around here in quite a while, but just ran into a nice iPhone app that I thought you all might want to know about. Gohophop ] has released offline versions of some wikivoyage content as iPhone apps. For once the content is correctly redistributed under CC licence and attribution is given on each page in the application.

It was quite a surprise to see my photos on the app preview in the iStore.

--(WT-en) Nick 19:21, 2 April 2009 (EDT)
 * That's cool. Hope to see you around more often!  (WT-en) LtPowers 09:40, 3 April 2009 (EDT)

Program that Scrapes content from Wikivoyage and formats it for iPods
Swept in from pub:

Hello Everyone. I started working on a project a while back that takes content from wikivoyage and formats it for the iPod - it uses the iPod notes format, and works on any non-touchscreen iPod.

I got a rough, working program going using Ruby, but as I'm not a real programmer I don't think I can develop it any further. So I'm GPL'ing the source code, and putting it on Sourceforge.

I'm looking for a person to help me do one of two things:
 * Be the lead code developer (not too difficult, very small code base)
 * Or, help me get the project on sourceforge in a format that real programmers will be able to take from there.

You can read about it on the Trac Wiki I've setup at sourceforge, http://apps.sourceforge.net/trac/lonelyipod/

If anyone has any suggestions about other places I should post this info, kindly add them below this. (WT-en) bcnstony 14:51, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

OxygenGuide
Swept in from pub:

You can now download Wikivoyage's content for offline navigation: OxygenGuide. It is an open source project, and the guide is obviously as free as Wikivoyage. I did not want to call it "OfflineWikivoyage" because of possible trademark issues. The HTML is simplified for navigation on small devices, and there are no images to make it as light as oxygen. Please let me know what you think! Cheers (WT-en) Nicolas1981 19:43, 28 June 2009 (EDT)


 * Download link is currently broken on OxygenGuide home page. Does anyone have a mirror? Or contact details for Nicolas? (WT-en) Ro 2 Feb 2010


 * Great! This needs an entry at Project:List_of_related_projects. We might even need some sort of new page, perhaps Wikivoyage derivatives covering this, WT Press, maybe others. (WT-en) Pashley 20:43, 28 June 2009 (EDT)
 * Entry added (WT-en) Nicolas1981 11:38, 29 June 2009 (EDT)


 * The OxygenGuide page says "Content license: Creative Commons 3.0 BY-SA". I agree that's what it should be, but I think WT is actually still stuck at 1.0, so unfortunately OG must use that. You cannot change the license, See discussion and links from there. (WT-en) Pashley 21:31, 28 June 2009 (EDT)
 * Thanks for pointing this out! Fixed. (WT-en) Nicolas1981 11:38, 29 June 2009 (EDT)

Get this working on the iPhone/iPod touch and you'll be my hero! ;) --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) Talk 05:34, 29 June 2009 (EDT)
 * Anyone in Tokyo willing to lend me an iPhone during a weekend? ;-) I guess the iPhone has a Web browser, right? Can it browse locally stored pages, and navigate through links to other pages? Just try to download the index.html and the Africa.html article on your iPhone's disk or memory card, and let me know if you can navigate from the index to Africa by clicking on the link. (such a basic thing does not work on Android, for security reasons they say...) (WT-en) Nicolas1981 11:38, 29 June 2009 (EDT)


 * It does have a browser, but I don't believe can browse offline content. I just tried to download the file from my iphone and got an error "safari cannot download file". What really needs to happen is for a specific application to be built for the iphone that stores the site locally, and updates daily (or possibly have adjustable settings for this). There are a couple already that make use of our info, but none that are particularly great yet – (WT-en) cacahuate  talk 14:50, 29 June 2009 (EDT)

Wikivoyage on Kindle
An outfit called "Dolphin Books" is now offering Wikivoyage books in Kindle format for $2 a pop:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?_encoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Dolphin%20Books

No idea what it looks like or if attribution has been done correctly -- anybody with an iPhone or Kindle out there who wants to try it out? (WT-en) Jpatokal 05:45, 11 July 2009 (EDT)


 * They used several Wikivoyage guides that are in rough condition, such as London, and the reviews seem to reflect that, although they're generally favorable.


 * I downloaded a Kindle for iPhone sample of their Chicago guide, which appears to be the Chicago article by itself, without any of the districts or itineraries. It's also only text, no maps or images. The text doesn't have any WT (or WTP) markup, save for section headers, and the table of contents is the WT TOC. The book begins with a note that the material comes from WT and was published under CC 1.0, and ends with a disclaimer that Dolphin Books is not affiliated with WT. The individual authors are not named, but they may be at the end of the ebook. It's kind of clunky to navigate. Not bad, but I'd recommend one of their competitors. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 00:35, 13 July 2009 (EDT)


 * When will said competitor be creating a highly intuitive and user friendly iphone app? – (WT-en) cacahuate  talk 16:46, 13 July 2009 (EDT)

Wikivoyage on Android, with OxygenGuide
If you are lucky enough to have an Android cellphone or netbook, you can have Wikivoyage in your pocket (without images and with minimalistic style). Get it here.

(WT-en) Nicolas1981 09:17, 16 July 2009 (EDT)

Smartphone apps redux, redux
Swept in from pub:

Me again. I am pleased to announce that the "iTravelWrite" iPhone app, used to easily update Wikivoyage listings from the comfort and safety of your own iPhone or iPod Touch, has been approved by Apple and is now available - for free, yes, free! - from the iPhone App Store. Just go to the App Store and search for "itravelwrite".

The big advantage of editing from a mobile device that you can use its location awareness to easily geotag listings, so that down the road they can be shown on maps. You can either edit listings directly or jot down quick notes to be integrated into Wikivoyage later on.

As noted above, I've also open-sourced the app's source code at http://code.google.com/p/itravelwrite/.

So, please go right ahead and download it, use it, experiment with it - and send bug reports or suggestions to "wtw@rezendi.com". I like to think it's pretty intuitive, but there are a few help screens baked into it as well, just in case. And bear in mind that this is the app's initial release, and so far I'm the only person to have tested it - so I expect there might still be a few glitches and some awkwardness to iron out.

Hope people find it useful!

(WT-en) Rezendi 21:57, 16 August 2009 (EDT)
 * Downloaded. Thanks for your work on this! I've already started playing with it a little. Will let you know what I find...(WT-en) Texugo 22:38, 16 August 2009 (EDT)


 * Yeah, there are problems with it &mdash; see this edit, for example, or further feedback at User talk:64.233.172.17. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 23:12, 16 August 2009 (EDT)


 * I haven't done any test edits so I can't comment on that functionality yet, but I have noticed the following things:
 * The listing screen looks really nice and easy to use, and the I'm There button is gonna be great, though i haven't yet tried it. The only problem here is that the description box is often not big enough to display all the text.
 * - Special characters (accented letters, etc.) do not display properly.
 * - Articles look nice, although I really want to be able to edit the text portions of articles too, not just the listings.
 * - I especially like the way the district articles/region link from the main article, etc., though it would be nice to be able to see their descriptions too.
 * - I have only tried Spanish and Portuguese, but I don't think any of the other language versions are working yet. Searching on them yields no results for articles that I know are there.
 * (WT-en) Texugo 00:05, 17 August 2009 (EDT)


 * Thanks for the feedback. I'll try and get an updated version out next month. It's always an iterative process, I fear...
 * (WT-en) Rezendi 12:01, 18 August 2009 (EDT)

Thanks a million for working on this, downloaded the app, but I have no wireless so I can't really test it - does it support page catching akin to wikiamo? would be wicked for us iPod Touch users with no phone connection - as far as I know it's OpenSource so you might be able to steal the code from them, if it's not implemented yet. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) Talk 13:50, 18 August 2009 (EDT)

Globemaster: Wikivoyage for iPhone
Here's another commercial iPhone app: Globemaster (US$3) gets you a 160MB dump of Wikivoyage data with a reasonably pretty interface. Licensing seems a bit iffy though, I've sent them a friendly note. (WT-en) Jpatokal 12:39, 21 September 2009 (EDT)

Announcement: Wikivoyage Mobile version
Swept in from pub:

We are now running a beta mobile version of WikiTravel.org. You can check it out at http://m.wikivoyage.org/ This is a read only version and is based on Wikipedia’s mobile site. It’s only viewable from non-wap mobile devices, IPhones and Blackberries that contain Opera browsers. Users can sill opt to use the standard web version if they prefer to do so.

We’d love to hear your feedback and you can do so by posting here.

--(WT-en) Ibsteph 9:54, 20 November 2009 (PST)


 * I don't use mobile apps, but I think it'd be great if you registered for an account instead of posting from an IP address. =)  (WT-en) LtPowers 13:01, 20 November 2009 (EST)


 * From OperaMini can only view the homepage, articles linked from the homepage or by manually entering a url. I.e, search does not work - returns as link broken. Had a quick look at the Hilversum article (one of the best on Wikivoyage) and it shows well in this format. And yeah, it would be good if you did not appear here in red Steph :) --(WT-en) Burmesedays 13:10, 20 November 2009 (EST)


 * Erm, I think she does have an account guys. I don't see an IP address, and the red just means she's not created a homepage. (WT-en) Andyfarrell 03:39, 21 November 2009 (EST)


 * Ah, I see. Her entry was written un-logged-in, but she included a signature manually. See what you mean; at a glance it's like any other contribution, but when you look at the edits it strikes a bum note. (WT-en) Andyfarrell 03:45, 21 November 2009 (EST)

iTravelFree - a free Wikivoyage-gateway Android/iPhone app
I'm happy to report that my pet-project Wikivoyage-gateway iPhone app, iTravelFree, is now available for download worldwide on both Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market. It lets you easily browse all Wikivoyage content from your phone (or iPod Touch), and displays listings on a map, too. You can even use it to add and edit listings.

It serves as a mostly offline reader: you need to be online to download the information in the first place, but then the downloaded pages live on your iPhone/iTouch/Android and you can access them anywhere. The map works the same way: you can look at previously viewed map tiles while you're offline, but it's obviously much easier to explore the map, and zoom in/out, if you're connected and can download new map tiles. (A forthcoming version will use locally stored OpenStreetMap tiles, which will turn it into a complete offline reader.)

For app links, a screenshot-laden tutorial, and help and FAQ files, see here: www.wetravelright.com. As per the name, the app is absolutely free. (There is a paid version, but it is functionally identical; I'm hoping that the guiltware model will offset some of my server and development costs.)

Let me know if you have any problems with it, and I welcome any advice/comments - here or by email at itravel@rezendi.com.

Enjoy! (WT-en) Rezendi 14:31, 21 April 2010 (EST)


 * So what's next, iPad? ;-) --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 03:21, 3 May 2010 (EDT)

time to list existing products here?
I wonder if it's time already to list what tools volunteers have developed recently. What others think? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 03:20, 3 May 2010 (EDT)


 * I agree. I suppose Project:Offline Reader Expedition would probably be the best place for that. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 10:16, 3 May 2010 (EDT)

Beta version of iTravelFree for Android now available
swept in from pub:

I'm happy to report that the initial version of iTravelFree, my Wikivoyage-gateway app, is now available for Android phones running Android OS version 1.5 or higher. Just search for iTravelFree on the Android Market.

You can use it to download Wikivoyage pages; navigate their information with an iTunes-like interface; plot listings with addresses or lat/long coordinates on a map; and connect to Yelp, Google, and Flickr from within the app. All the data you download remains available when offline, too.

Be warned: this is very much an initial beta release. I expect there are a few problems still to be ironed out. Any and all feedback is welcome: please send comments, questions, praise, complaints, and suggestions to [mailto:itravel@rezendi.com itravel@rezendi.com].

There's no paid version for Android yet, and I doubt there will be one anytime soon, so ignore the occasional entreaties to spend money on it. Or better yet, just save up your guilt for future expiation. :)

Hope it's helpful -

(WT-en) Rezendi 23:58, 4 February 2010 (EST)


 * Thanks for helping Wikivoyage become accessible across platforms and while on the go. BTW, are considering to add more mobile platforms, like WinMobile or Symbian or Blackberry? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 08:40, 16 February 2010 (EST)


 * Not currently. My theory is that over the next couple of years smartphones will become a two-horse race between iPhone and Android, and the rest will wither away, so I don't see much point in adding support for them. I'm willing to be proved wrong, however... (WT-en) Rezendi 12:37, 24 February 2010 (EST)

I thought I'd just give my feedback on my first 15 minutes with the app - please take any criticism in the manner intended, that is I hope you app is successful. I think the first 15 minutes with an app usually determine if someone is going to use it...

I searched for the app name on the market. Found it, and downloaded it easily. Started it, no problem. The first screen was 6 big buttons, but one of them was settings, which I would have expected to find under a menu, rather than here at the top level. I clicked on the map button, and it showed me the standard OSM UK zoomed out map. Maybe I had no current GPS signal, but a map of the UK wasn't terribly useful to me. Perhaps if it has no signal, it could say so, and try and locate me? I searched for a "my location" selection under the menu options, but I couldn't find one.

I then went into search, and I tried to search for Darling Harbour. I was surprised when the result presented the redirect article first, but perhaps it is just using the WT search. I didn't select the redirect, but selected the second article. I picked Darling Harbour because I knew there was some geo information in there, and I was hoping I could check all that on the map. It got the article, it loaded without images, and I thought the view of the article compared unfavorably with the view at m.wikivoyage.org. In particular the links looked very prominent relative to the text. I tried to find a way on the menu to view the listings on the map, but I couldn't find an option to do so. I then searched for Brisbane, and then I went into listings screen.

The listings screen then seemed to have all the listings for Brisbane and Darling Harbour, which I wouldn't have expected. From the short name of the listings, it wasn't obvious what some of them were, without the categories. Perhaps even a color code, or a tag for the listings may help? Why would I see listings from multiple cities? Perhaps this isn't typical use?

I then tried to edit an article, which is what I had been hoping to do. I couldn't find the option. I followed the Wikivoyage link, but the main wikivoyage screen is almost unusable on my screen. If this wasn't for editing purposes, then perhaps linking to m.wikivoyage.org would be a better alternative.

I then went back into map, and I could see what I thought were listings now mapped - my location seemed to now be okay. I tried to click (tap) on the listings, but that didn't seem to work.

I'll have more of a play later, but I thought I'd give you my initial feedback while it was fresh. --(WT-en) inas 17:12, 24 February 2010 (EST)


 * Thanks! I fear the Android version is a little less mature than the iPhone version; in particular, you can't yet edit listings with it. The rest is, um, actually mostly expected/designed behaviour (except the report that tapping on the map listings didn't work - that's very odd, I haven't heard any reports of that before.) I'll implement those other map suggestions in the next version, and link to m.wikivoyage.org - good ideas.


 * (The intent of the main-menu listings screen is to show all the listings from all the pages you've downloaded onto your phone, to give you easy access to any particular one by scrolling or using the menu options. The idea is that if you just want all the menu options for Brisbane, you'd go to the Brisbane page and then select "Listings" from the menu there. I freely concede that this may be less than intuitive!)


 * (WT-en) Rezendi 19:22, 25 February 2010 (EST)

Is this app usable on Ipod touch? Or if not is there any other app that would make it possible to save different pages of wikivoyage from the internet in an offline version to use when there isn't access to wi-fi?

(WT-en) Kayla 18:29, 26 February 2010 (EST)
 * Just noticed that you have a iphone/ipod touch version mentioned further up. My bad:)

New version of iTravelFree app for Android/iPhone now available
swept in from pub:

Just wanted to let people know that the new version of my app iTravelFree - a Wikivoyage gateway for iPhones, iPod Touches, and Android phones - is now available on both the App Store and the Android Market.

You can use it to download Wikivoyage pages, navigate their information with an iTunes-like interface, plot the sights/restaurant/hotels/etc on a map, and add/edit listings yourself. All the data you download remains available when offline, too. And as the name implies, the app is absolutely free. (There is a paid iPhone version, but the only extra you get for that money is the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing you've contributed to a good cause.)

Links: App home page | Paid iPhone version  | Free iPhone version  | Android version

What's new in this latest version:
 * The ability to automatically look for and download Wikivoyage destinations near your current location
 * The ability to see a list of all the pages you've downloaded to the app
 * Can now add and edit listings on both Android and iPhone
 * A message board for app discussion
 * A host of other little bug fixes and tweaks

I should warn you, it's still very much a beta-version work in progress, and as always, the newest features are most likely to be clunky - but there are more'n five thousand people using it now, and by and large they seem pretty happy with it.

Up next on my to-do list:
 * A much prettier user interface (for both app and site)
 * Support for OpenStreetMaps as well as Google Maps (which means you'll be able to download and save map tiles on your phone, something Google Maps doesn't allow)
 * Better support for multiple languages (right now you can search/view Wikivoyage in all languages, but the app interface is entirely in English.)
 * The ability to bulk-download most or all of Wikivoyage to your device in one shot

Hope it's helpful!

Questions, comments, bug reports, feature requests, snide remarks or observations? Comment here or on the app's message board, or email me at itravel@rezendi.com.

(WT-en) Rezendi 13:48, 21 April 2010 (EDT)

Offline usage
Swept in here from the Pub

Is there any plan to make available official archive of wikivoyage for offline usage ? (for Linux, Mac or Win) It seems http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Offline_Reader_Expedition is not quiet updated. It would be great to have some mediawiki and openzim archives https://openzim.org/Build_your_ZIM_file

Thanks -- Jul81.57.235.161 05:32, 11 January 2011 (EST)


 * It would be nice.  It is not easy to generate offline copies - as scraping/spidering is the only way.  It would be nice to have some sort of data dump available for download though, it is just a matter of someone building one and making it available, as I suspect the server owners are not going to.  --(WT-en) inas 17:31, 18 January 2011 (EST)


 * "it is just a matter of someone building one and making it available" → Here you go: http://code.google.com/p/oxygenpump/ http://code.google.com/p/oxygenguide/ (WT-en) Nicolas1981 03:25, 2 November 2011 (EDT)

Software tools for easy edit / offline
Trying to contribue on wikivoyage, I find online editing not the best way to do it. Is there any software to do this easier, on Linux/Mac/Win or smartphones ? to say: retrieve a list page, edit/review multiple time, check render, upload.

Wikipedia list some https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools/Editing_tools#Wikisyntax_conversion_utilities http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/wikipublisher?intcmp=1547 and offline editing is still pretty rare

183.182.122.40 09:04, 24 August 2011 (EDT)

Two great tastes that taste great together
Hey, y'all. I'm back from my own travels (Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, England, France, India - 'twas quite a trip) and back developing iTravelFree. The new Android and iPhone versions (available now, and pending App Store approval, respectively) include various UI improvements and bug fixes; and I've also added some code to try to find a Wikipedia page that corresponds to a Wikivoyage page, and include that information, if any, as a new "Wikipedia" section after "Get out" or "Contact" (or whatever the last WT section on the page is.)

If you want to try this out, you'll probably need to use the Refresh button, because both the apps and the iTravelFree server cache old data for a few weeks; also, not every page has a corresponding Wikipedia page. Try Gravenhurst as an example; on the app it now includes Wikipedia's Gravenhurst,Ontario. I've found there's generally very little overlap between the two.

So: iTravelFree now grabs and combines data from Wikivoyage, Wikipedia, and (if you use it download offline maps) OpenStreetMap. It doesn't yet include OSM POI (Places of Interest) but I guess that's the obvious next step. I'd like to add other data sources while I'm at it, but I'm limited to sources that allow data caching in their Terms of Service, or are Creative-Commons licensed, or public domain. Anyone have any recommendations? (WT-en) Rezendi 12:14, 8 August 2011 (EDT)


 * Don't forget that we often link directly to the Wikipedia page in our sidebar, using placename syntax. I don't know if that's what you meant by "try to find" or not, but it could simplify your algorithm.  (WT-en) LtPowers 10:55, 9 August 2011 (EDT)


 * Oh, hey, I had in fact completely forgotten about that. Right now it actually does a semi-complex Wikipedia search based on the page and its breadcrumb parent, if any; this'll make that much easier, at least when those links exist. Thanks! (WT-en) Rezendi 17:58, 9 August 2011 (EDT)

Extension:Collection
Swept from the pub:

I'm going to propose installation of Extension:Collection, which will allow readers to download the copy of article as PDF file. I guess this extension was once installed on WT but not sure.--Saqib (talk) 15:55, 13 October 2012 (CEST)


 * Support! This could be very helpful. Atsirlin (talk) 20:23, 13 October 2012 (CEST)


 * Sounds really useful! Support! Ypsilon (talk) 12:58, 14 October 2012 (CEST)


 * This is most definitely something we need. It is the same extension that powers w:Wikipedia:Books, which we had discussed as an option previously somewhere. Of course, it's not just a matter of flicking a switch and it's ready. There are many things we would have to plan and decide upon. Will we already organise specific categories of articles/countries/regions into ready-made books? What colours and design will feature on the books? We'd want something derived from our new logo. We should start discussing such minor things before implementation. JamesA  >talk 13:24, 14 October 2012 (CEST)
 * James, right now I would say that our main reason to install this extension should be enabling our readers to get PDF versions of the articles. Creating the books is a long way to go. --Saqib (talk) 13:40, 14 October 2012 (CEST)
 * Yes, books are a task for the future. Presently, we only need a simple mechanism for downloading multiple articles and printing them out. For example, this extension will of great use for those who need a complete travel guide to Bangkok, Chicago or any other big city. Atsirlin (talk) 16:40, 14 October 2012 (CEST)
 * Update Extension is installed and its working. --Saqib (talk) 18:29, 15 October 2012 (CEST)
 * Well, mostly working. It's pretty cool how much does work straight out of the box, but there are a number of things we need to define before usage takes off.  For starters, is PediaPress (the default Books provider) okay with us doing this, and are we okay with using PediaPress as our provider?  We also need to go through and add Category:Exclude in print to templates that should not be printed.  Help:Books needs to be written, and we need to decide if we're going to allow users (and if so, who) to save books as Wiki pages for other users to use.  LtPowers (talk) 19:28, 15 October 2012 (CEST)
 * I would say that PediaPress is the right choice. They're partner of WMF and receiving 10% of the book sales from PediaPress so at-least they deserve to be here as our provider. And yes I would support the idea of creating PDF versions of the articles (perhaps star level). --Saqib (talk) 20:54, 15 October 2012 (CEST)

OxygenGuide updated: first database since transition to Wikimedia!
Offline reader OxygenGuide is now using fresh data from the beta Wikivoyage on Wikimedia servers (20121118) https://code.google.com/p/oxygenguide/downloads/ Nicolas1981 (talk) 03:58, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Obsolete?
I've taken the rather radical step of assuming that this page is thoroughly obsolete now that Wikivoyage has Special:Book built in out of the box. If I've thrown any babies out with the bathwater, please rescue them! Jpatokal (talk) 12:08, 12 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Hey Jani! I'm glad I've started lurking on RC, because I totally missed this feature. -- MarkJaroski (talk) 12:27, 12 January 2013 (UTC)


 * That's primarily because we didn't publicize it. We enabled it to see how it would work, but we haven't really set up any guidelines for its use (like the creation of saved booksets).  We don't want people flooding the Book: namespace with books until we've set up some guidelines for what we could keep and what we should delete.  PediaPress' books also have some drawbacks; their engine is optimized to generate books from Wikipedia, so our travel guides don't come out looking quite as good.  (For example, I believe their indices are generated by indexing linked phrases, rather than bolded phrases, which would work better for Wikivoyage.)  LtPowers (talk) 14:53, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Offline reader expedition obsolete
Just a pointer to a rather radical edit of mine over at Offline reader Expedition &mdash; with WV now running the Collections extension, we've got PDF, EPUB & printed books out of the box, and I think the expedition can be closed as mission accomplished. Jpatokal (talk) 11:13, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Seems a bit optimistic. Suppose I want to load a copy of the entire Wikivoyage guide onto Nook/Kobo (both of which are ePub readers of somewhat limited capability, not tablet PC's). I'd need to split the content into chunks of a size the device could handle as 'books' - so each volume would be an epub of at most several megabytes. The entire wiki isn't going to fit into one of these 'book volumes'. I need to split things into smaller sections; the world might not fit as one volume, but what about Western Europe? or one individual country? Odds are, if I could create an epub for each country, reducing images to thumbnail size, the world would likely fit on a memory card for one of these devices.
 * Does mw:extension:collections let me do this? It lets me add everything in one category to a 'book', but there's nowhere to add a category and all of its subcategories in one step. I suppose I could create lists like Books/Diving the Cape Peninsula and False Bay but those lists have to come from somewhere... and this one example seems to be the only one we have in project space at the moment. There's also the problem of how to reduce images to small thumbnails - not doing this means the created file would be huge.
 * It looks like collections are suitable for hand-picking a short list of articles - maybe a few cities or one small region - and downloading that as a customised bundle. They're not suited for splitting the entire wiki into a series of 'book volumes' for individual countries and downloading the whole thing to a memory card. There needs to be a way for an automated process to build a list of articles for each country, region by region. There needs to be a way to keep images to some reasonable size. There needs to be a downloadable version prepared in advance, once. instead of trying to build a 'book' on the fly from a list of pages. Those books may need to be hosted elsewhere, as there is no means to upload a finished ePub to the wiki with special:upload (pdf is permitted, epub is not). There also needs to be a .mobi version (which can be created by converting the .epub with free software such as Calibre) as Kindle doesn't speak ePub.
 * This may mean creating a local copy of the wiki from the database dumps and using it to run 'bot scripts (to build lists of every article in each country), generate the collection .epub's (as something as huge as "the world as multiple ePub volumes" would be an annoying load on the main servers) and then unZIP the generated files so that a script could run ImageMagick 'convert' as a batch job to thumbnail all of those images. The finished volumes would then need to be put up for download somewhere.
 * Collections are intended for bundling a handful of pages. They won't easily create the world on an SD card. K7L (talk) 17:46, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I tried out the book feature on Diving the Cape Peninsula and False Bay with all sub-articles. The resulting pdf is fairly large at 243MB, and runs to 640 odd pages. &bull; &bull; &bull; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 19:48, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Well you have no one to blame for that but yourself... ;)   LtPowers (talk) 20:38, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Odds are, most of that is illustration - a compressed archive with current revision of every page on the wiki is a 55-75Mb database dump. K7L (talk) 04:06, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I would guess over 95% of the size is illustrations. I assume the illustrations in the pdf are not the max resolution images, or it would be even bigger. &bull; &bull; &bull; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 06:37, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

OxygenGuide: Bring Wikivoyage offline on your smartphone

 * Swept here from the pub

I just released a new version of OxygenGuide.

OxygenGuide is a copy of Wikivoyage as simple HTML pages, for use on smartphones. Useful when traveling without Internet. Readable on Android/PC/etc, it takes 300MB on disk.

The HTML is already usable on any smartphone/laptop, but to make it easier I am about to create a small Android app that download/displays/update data. Any volunteer? Nicolas1981 (talk) 11:03, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Android app released! Wikivoyage offline
I just released the Wikivoyage Offline app on Android Play Store. Text only, no images, no maps yet. Try it now :-)

Free, Open-Source, volunteers welcome! Usage: Install, open, click "Download", wait an hour, then click "Browse" whenever you want.

Be sure to connect to WiFi before downloading. After the download, really wait for about an hour. The button stays "clicked" while downloading, then changes slightly when it begins unzipping. Unzipping takes a LOT of time. The next tasks: make a progress bar, make the app more user-friendly, let the user choose a browser, optimize, integrate with map apps, improve the wiki-to-HTML script. I realize the name is very bold, I can change it to something less official-sounding when Wikimedia releases its own app. Nicolas1981 (talk) 16:48, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Great news! I can't try it right now, but I already have several questions:
 * Will it be possible to split this content into regions? When the full download takes one hour, frequent updates become difficult.
 * Several Android apps allow the download of OSM maps for one particular city/region. Do you know how it works, and did you think about integrating this feature? It could be a great way of getting travel guide plus zoomable map in one package.
 * --Alexander (talk) 07:26, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Alexander! Great suggestions, I added them to the issue tracker. Please feel free to add more suggestions/bug reports, thanks a lot! Nicolas1981 (talk) 08:19, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Hey, I'm thinking of getting started on the iPhone version of the open source app. However, I wanted to talk a bit about branding and such. If these are going to be the official Wikivoyage apps, shouldn't they be using the Wikivoyage logo as opposed to something that looks vaguely like the Wikivoyage logo? And shouldn't they be called "Wikivoyage" as opposed to a brand name like "WikiSherpa" or "OxygenGuide"?

I'm new to working on WMF-based wikis, so I don't really know how they manage things like official app projects. I don't mean to knock any of the work you guys have done, I just know that when I look up a native app version of a website, I'm usually turned off by "off brand" versions of the app. KhwamRock (talk) 10:37, 23 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi KhwamRock! Nice to hear about your iPhone idea, I hope it will be Open Source :-) If it is, you can copy-paste what you want (Java though...). Also, feel free to download the OxygenGuide archives (zipped HTML) from your app. I would be very flattered if Wikimedia wants OxygenGuide-Android to be their official offline app, but for now they haven't contacted me, so greyzone: logo inspired from Wikivoyage's color and mixed app name "Wikivoyage Offline - OxygenGuide". If they are OK I would be very glad to switch to the official logo/official name. Nicolas1981 (talk) 08:31, 24 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, I don't think that WMF keeps track of these things. Would you like to contact them directly? You can post the information about your app and suggest the collaboration on the Wikivoyage mailing list. Erik and other WMF guys are reading it, so they are likely to see your message and respond, or at least suggest an appropriate contact person at the WMF. --Alexander (talk) 10:27, 24 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the tip, message sent to the list :-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 16:13, 25 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I did some light digging and here's what I found. To start, here's WMF's repo for the Wikipedia app, which contains both the Android and iOS versions. They're using a library called Cordova or PhoneGap, which I think means that the app is HTML5 based. If we follow their lead on this app, we can make one Wikivoyage app which can be instantly ported to iOS, Android, Windows Phone, etc, which would make it very easy to release updates.


 * I also looked through the pull requests and found this guide on how to adapt the Wikipedia app for a new Wiki. It's not a finished guide, but it might prove a good starting point should we want to make a Wikipedia style HTML5 app.


 * Personally, I'm not a fan of HTML5 apps. They give you platform-independence at the cost of some ugly performance tradeoffs. I'm going to try and message WMF on github with a link to your repo and see what they think. KhwamRock (talk) 00:21, 25 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Mediawiki's current app is just a frontend that loads pages over the Internet, if I read the code correctly. Travellers often go to countries where roaming is expensive, thus an offline app is needed. Nicolas1981 (talk) 07:12, 25 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Fair enough, we should make sure we're working from the same set of requirements. I agree, offline reading is a must-have feature. However, the current Wikipedia app allows you to save pages to read offline. Now, if you want something that automatically downloads all of Wikivoyage onto the user's phone (definitely possible given WV's relatively small size), that's a different story, and we can add that to the requirements. I get the vibe that your app already does this, correct? (I can't test it myself, as I only have an iPhone)


 * I signed up on WikiMedia mobile's mailing list, here's a link in case you'd like to do the same. Ideally, I'd like to see us use your ready made app if possible. I just don't want to put tons of work into an open source app, only to find out that it can't be called the "official" app for XYZ reasons. KhwamRock (talk)


 * Thanks for the tip, message sent to the list :-) Personnally I think it would be great if they decide they want an official offline app, but if not it would not be the end of the world either, I would just continue like now. Mediawiki is very busy and an offline app is only useful for Wikivoyage, not many users in comparizon with Wikipedia. Nicolas1981 (talk) 16:13, 25 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Just checked the mailing list, looks like they really like your app! Awesome! I'm going to take a look at your code and see what I can adapt for an iOS version. KhwamRock (talk) 02:32, 28 January 2013 (UTC)


 * You'll see, the code is so simple, just two buttons, download, unzip. The real thing is to find out how to show HTML pages stored locally on the phone. This seems to be the solution. Nicolas1981 (talk) 03:01, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

WikiVoyage on mobile devices

 * Swept from Pub

Is there a page on how to use this site on mobile devices (Android, Blackberry, etc. )? Struggling to use the listing entries to call numbers directly.--Traveler100 (talk) 07:15, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * See also: http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Offline_reader_Expedition Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:22, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi, if you're talking about editing the pages through official Wikivoyage website, I don't think so there is a way yet. --Saqib (talk) 10:28, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * In terms of making it mobile friendly so that you can tap on phone numbers and it calls the phone number, that functionality is not yet available. More features are on the way, along with apps I believe, but good things take time. :) It may be worth starting a brainstorm on features we would like to see. JamesA  >talk 10:39, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes my question was related to making calls from listing, for example restaurants. The only way I have found so far is a rather long winded copy/paste process between browser and phone apps. Is there a page in existing to discuss or propose enhancements such as one click phone calls?--Traveler100 (talk) 11:08, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Not yet—I think it's time to create one.


 * There is an app called WikiSherpa which allows you to download content from WT (the author intends to switch over to WV content, hopefully soon) that does allow one clock phone calls. --Peter Talk 17:06, 5 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Having a more functional mobile site would be great and a few ideas have been brought up over the last 6 months or so during the transition. I mentioned a few things at Wikivoyage talk:Listings. That page is long (but mostly thought-out discussion), but if you scroll down in that section to a big block of text (that isn't indented) starting with "Footnotes might be a good idea...", I discussed adjusting the listing template to create images (phone, map, website, etc) that, when clicked on a mobile device, would work with your phone's OS to bring up phone, email, a map (default map on phone or OSM), and open links to websites in a new window. I don't feel like editing/re-writing this, so FYI, the context of this comment was allowing in-line links to Wikipedia (as opposed to links in the sidebar) and whether/how such links should be differentiated from a Wikivoyage link.


 * But my preferred method is part of changes to some of the templates we use, where listing templates would add the option to link to a Wikipedia page. This would mainly apply to the see/do sections. I think the templates for see/do/eat/sleep could get a makeover to make them look sleeker (if all the info is present, this could be a couple lines of text on a computer, much worse on a smartphone) by using images and hiding some of the information from being displayed. Let me give an example before explaining. For Westminster Abbey, the listing on WT Westminster begins ([6]=website):


 * Westminster Abbey, (tube: Westminster), ☎ +44 20 7654 4900 (info@westminster-abbey.org [email envelope], fax: +44 20 7654 4894), [6]


 * My idea would be for a listing that would look like this:


 * Westminster Abby ([tube] Westminster, [Bus] ?, [Wikipedia], [Website], [phone], [email envelope], address [Open Street Maps])


 * ''In this format, the brackets would all be small images: Tube logo, a bus symbol, Wikipedia's "W" logo, some sort of symbol that would be used for official websites(replacing the [1] arrow only in templated listings, not elsewhere in article), the (existing) phone symbol, the e-mail envelope, & OpenStreetMap logo. The only text that would show is the mass transit stop & address. When you click the phone or email images the phone #/email address would be displayed to the right of the image. The info would also be displayed by hovering the mouse over the image (on computers). It would be really great for our site's functionality if clicking on those images when using a device like a smartphone (either through the "mobile" site or an official app) would bring up a small overlaying window with the phone number (or email) and ask "Call [ph. #]?" or "Email [email address]". The Wikipedia logo would serve as a link to the corresponding WP page...opening in a new tab on a computer. On a smartphone/tablet, this would bring up a prompt (Visit [name] on Wikipedia? "Go" "Cancel") just in case it is pressed accidentally (due to charges/limits for data service on mobile networks...especially when roaming [internationally]!) and then bring it up in a new window. There would be different mass transit icons for bus, (light) rail, & metro/subway. In some locations, the icons would be changed to reflect those of the official mass transit lines...like for Westminster Abbey, in London, the Tube...but ONLY if those images are not protected by copyright or otherwise permitted to be used freely (I think this was done with some of the routebox navigation). The bracketed number followed by an arrow is rather dull and, for those who might not be used to wikis, not intuitive that this means a website. So, a new website icon could be created for use in listing templates (it wouldn't be used elsewhere on the page). Clicking this would open the website in a new window (smartphone/tablet users might be prompted "Visit [website url]?" "Go" "Cancel"...again, to prevent accidental clicks). Finally the address could be displayed a combination of description ("Corner of 1st Avenue and Main Street"), physical address (which could be hidden by an image [1234] or by "Address" and displayed by clicking or hovering over it), and coordinates (hidden under a logo...maybe use same as WP...and displayed when clicking/hovering on it, see WP WikiProject Geographical Coordinates for ideas on incorporating into WV). The address/coordinates can be used to link to a mapping service/website via an image/logo (OpenStreetMaps may be best, because of licensing, when compared to commercial services) on smartphones/tablets, clicking on the image would prompt the choice of service ("OpenStreetMaps" + what the device uses...handled on the phone OS side, like if you have two programs doing the same thing on an Android device, you click an address and a window pops up for you to choose which to use...this wouldn't be for WV to know/link to other services). If a part of information is not provided in the listing, then the icon is not displayed (eg. no phone #, no phone icon shown).''


 * To put this in perspective, the current WT attractions listing template is:
 * 


 * A new template might look like this:
 * * 


 * For offline electronic use (which is a topic that needs to be brought up elsewhere), the information would be fully displayed except websites which can get messy when longer than http://website.com (could be "Link" underlined). Wikibooks & Wikisource allows pages to be downloaded as a PDF (to view on computer/tablet/phone or loaded on e-reader), which is something WV should get when we move to WMF, in which case websites would need to be displayed in case printed or needed to enter in an internet cafe. We could also see if WV could get an official phone/tablet app some developer could volunteer to create that could keep the same formatting as the online website, but allow downloads for offline use.


 * Outside of templated listings, there's only a couple other common places where inter-wiki links would be used/appropriate. Since regional/country-level pages don't use listing, but rather paragraphs of text, WP pages could be linked by adding a template after the name of an attraction/etc. So in the middle of a paragraph you would see "Westminster Abbey [W]" (where W is the Wikipedia "W" logo) which would be done by typing "Westminster Abbey " a template that could be added to the toolbox you see when editing. Links to other WMF wikis could be done similarly. AHeneen 00:35, 10 September 2012 (UTC)


 * In addition to that suggestion, I would also like to see a template for just phone numbers to add in the middle of prose. For example, in the "Get around#By bus" section of Lake Wales: "Lake Wales is served by Winter Haven Area Transit (WHAT, [4], +1 863-534-5500). Adult/youth fare is $1.50/ride with no free transfers. Seniors (65+) and the disabled ride for $0.75, with proof and no free transfers."  The phone number would look better with the phone image beside it and the template could work (on the mobile site) to bring up the phone app (is that what it's called?) to place calls. If you're using an Android phone, tapping a number will bring it up in the phone app. But it doesn't recognize the number in the format we use on WV. Tapping the number in that example text, it brings up "+1863534". To be honest, though, that functionality frequently brings up odd numbers in the phone app...for example, I'll unintentionally touch a number when scrolling and it will bring up "20-13" or "27395" (like a population). Not sure if that's been fixed in later versions like 4.x, but with the wide variety of phone operating systems and considering much of the developing world will have older OS versions, relying on the phone to recognize the number is not the way to go. AHeneen (talk) 06:13, 7 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Could we perhaps start work on an open source app, possibly very similar to the Wikipedia app? Having a good mobile site is important, but I feel like allowing people to browse the site (or a section of the site) while offline would make Wikivoyage much more appealing to mobile users. WikiSherpa is doing a good job right now, but it's proprietary software (it's freemium, and not open source), which feels at odds with the WMF philosophy if we want to call it our official app.


 * I've got some iOS development experience. I'd love to Plunge Forward and fork the Wikipedia iOS project on github and start working on an equivalent for WikiVoyage (which would be open source). However, I want to make sure I don't end up putting in effort for nothing. How does WMF go about embracing "official" apps for their websites? KhwamRock (talk) 02:57, 23 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Check this thread. It might be a good starting point. --Alexander (talk) 07:36, 23 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi there. Jon Evans here, author of WikiSherpa, which I've recently switched from Wikitravel to Wikivoyage (as of the currently available Android version and the waiting-for-review iOS version.) I'd actually be happy to open-source it. There are, however, two points. One is that, well, WS was my first Android project and my first iOS project, and it shows in the code to an embarrassing degree. It's a lot kludgier and clunkier than I'd like. The other is that it doesn't just connect to Wikivoyage; it actually has its own App Engine server, which parses out Wikivoyage's data, geocodes addresses, gets associated Wikipedia pages, some Foursquare locations, etc, parses all that into a a somewhat byzantine XML format, and sends that to the apps. The App Engine server costs me a couple of hundred dollars a year to maintain, and I don't know if any open-source community is going to be willing to take that over... Anyway, I can be reached at wikisherpa@rezendi.com for further discussion.
 * Hallo, Jon! Thanks for taking the time to keep us up to date on your interesting developments. Please take the time to register an account so we know it's you posting in future. That way, if you configure your preferences appropriately, you'll also get an e-mail notification when pages you are "watching" are changed...-- A l <font color="#0099FF">i <font color="#00CCFF">c <font color="#00EEFF">e <font color="#FF3333">✉ 04:23, 13 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I've updated my listing parser with a bunch of heuristics, so that it now also eats unformatted listing entries and converts them into proper tags, which only have to be inserted back into the edit window. If you're editing and cleaning up a lot of listings, you might find that quite useful. Please let me know, what you think about it! ML31415 Mail Talk 06:31, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Nice work, Michael!
 * One thing you might like to consider, Michael, is a switch for the English language Wikivoyage which forces the insertion of null tags like tollfree="" (in line with the recommendation here: "...If you don't know some information, just leave that field empty, somebody else can add those details later. Please do not delete any unused listing fields..." ). Thanks for listening. -- <font color="#0000DD">A <font color="#0066FF">l <font color="#0099FF">i <font color="#00CCFF">c <font color="#00EEFF">e <font color="#FF3333">✉ 07:11, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
 * It's generally inserting all tags now. ML31415 Mail Talk 01:20, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Great script Ml31415, thanks! I should use it to generate OxygenGuide. Nicolas1981 (talk) 04:35, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Mediawikixml2meteor2phonegap
I've been working on Mediawikixml2meteor2phonegap. The English language Wikivoyage is still a bit to big to handle but I'll hope to get there soon. For now see an example of the Dutch Wikivoyage. Guaka (talk) 18:56, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Button to open POI in map+GPS app
Imagine you backpack around Bangladesh with only a smartphone and no Internet. You have an offline Wikivoyage (HTML files or OxygenGuide or Kiwix) and an offline maps+GPS app. It is already 5pm so you find a reasonable hotel in the Sleep section and want to walk to it, helped by GPS.

PROBLEM: Even though the listing includes GPS coordinates, it is very difficult to send these coordinates to any map app. The "easiest" is to edit the HTML, copy paste the latitude/longitude, and paste them into your map app after removing the template characters... very cumbersome.

IDEA: Our HTML should embed some kind of button to open the system's Map app. See how to do for Android and iOS. Any idea on how to integrate those, or any better solution, are very welcome!

DEBATE: What do you think? Should we implement this now? Only for mobile? How? Cheers! Nicolas1981 (talk) 05:49, 17 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I'd think that we do not explicitly control how wiki code is converted into HTML in apps like OxygenGuide or WikiSherpa. The app does that. We only control what happens if the user is actually viewing Wikivoyage. A third-party app running from WV:database dumps is going to take the raw listing fields ("lat=", "long=", "wikipedia=" if used) and handle them its own way (WikiSherpa integrates WV, WP and a map IIRC). Let it do so and concentrate just on what happens to a wikivoyager using HTML here. K7L (talk) 14:25, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree with K7L. There is nothing stopping an app consuming Wikivoyage HTML content in the manner you describe in order to achieve this functionality. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 02:01, 21 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I just came back from travelling WITH an Internet connection, and realized that Wikivoyage's embedded map is not enough. Travellers reading wikivoyage.org online will want to open the map in their favorite GPS/directions app. So I think we should have a small "Open with Geo app" button next to each POI. Nicolas1981 (talk) 04:51, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
 * If it was easy to implement with a standardised link format like maps:// or geo:// similar to the recent tel:// links that were added, then easy decision. But there are differing systems which would require user agent testing, and then choose one of Windows/Apple/Android/Blackberry. Apps should handle their own formatting and functions. One possibility is leaving the geohack link in, though that will probably take three clicks, one to geohack, one to linked Google/Bing map and one to Google/Apple map app. -- torty3 (talk) 14:22, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Geo URI looks to be a standard, but the great thing about standards is that there so many from which to choose. Here, geo: and tel: mean nothing on the desktop if I have no app installed for either, but some mobile devices might do something sensible with them? K7L (talk) 15:09, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, it's a standard but not the global standard. Seems like geo:// works for Android, while Apple has another standard, and I haven't checked for Windows and BB. -- torty3 (talk) 12:23, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikivoyage POI database for OsmAnd?
The open source Android map+GPS app OsmAnd allows users to add custom POI databases.

It would be great to have a Wikivoyage POI layer. If the whole world is too heavy, we could split in different countries or regions.

Anyone interested? By the way, this database could also be a first step before Wikidata-based interwiki POI collaboration. Nicolas1981 (talk) 10:53, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, I don't know how to do it, but I believe it is task #1 for the whole project. Offline usage of Wikivoyage is... well, underdeveloped. And OsmAnd is a great tool that gets more and more users, so the export of our POIs to OsmAnd maps will be not only handy for the existing Wikivoyage users, but also a great promotion of Wikivoyage among all people who use OsmAnd. --Alexander (talk) 18:12, 22 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I just implemented a basic Wikivoyage→OsmAnd transformer. Open source, improvements welcome on Github. Here is a test output, containing all POIs of Rattanakosin, try it with OsmAnd! No metadata yet, everything is a restaurant ;-) Anyone motivated for taking this script to the next level? (command-line OsmAndMapCreator, automatic generation from the Wikivoyage dump, regional packs) Nicolas1981 (talk) 09:35, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Click on a POI to open in your favorite Android navigation/GPS app
OxygenGuide (offline version of Wikivoyage, usable on smartphones) now embeds coordinates: Click on the "(map)" symbol of a POI, and your favorite navigation app (such as OsmAnd) will guide you to that point!

If users like it and a solution is found for iOS, it might make sense to implement the same feature on the live Wikivoyage?

Coordinates are getting more useful everyday! If you have 10 minutes, pick a random article and fill all latitudes/longitudes :-)

Cheers! Nicolas1981 (talk) 07:30, 30 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Exciting stuff! Can it really be "27000 destinations, only 86 Megabytes" !?? --118.93.47.31 09:14, 30 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Actually 25706 destinations in 92MB (473MB unzipped), updated :-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 09:37, 31 October 2013 (UTC)


 * If the idea is to update every listing, could some of this be done by a 'bot? K7L (talk) 17:46, 30 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Finding latitude/longitude usually requires looking at the map on the hotel's website, checking on Google Street View, Wikimapia or OpenStreetMap... everyone has their own methods, but I would say it is difficult to execute by bot. In particular, I think that using an address geolocalization service is not reliable enough. (maybe reliable enough for some countries, but not for the whole world). Nicolas1981 (talk) 09:37, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Collaboration with Kiwix
Kiwix is getting interested in Wikivoyage: http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Wikivoyage

Kiwix is a powerful app for offline wikis. The whole Wikivoyage WITH images takes 1GB, the app reads directly from the compressed ZIM file. It supports search (which is not supported by OxygenGuide-Android).

Kiwix runs on Android/Windows/Mac/Linux. Open source. Any volunteers? Nicolas1981 (talk) 07:36, 1 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Looks interesting, although seems mostly targeted at Android phones? Additionally the todo tasks are for Android developers? (which is cool and everything, but not something every developer can easily contribute to) Such an app would be awesome on an iPod Touch actually :) Andrewssi2 (talk) 11:41, 1 November 2013 (UTC) Andrewssi2 (talk) 11:41, 1 November 2013 (UTC)


 * IMHO, it would be awesome if this app was Android only, to have people finally ditch those c**ppy iPods for Android devices :D PrinceGloria (talk) 06:05, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Would be great. Search is super nice. Travel Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 08:51, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

New data for your smartphone or mashup
Fresh Wikivoyage data has just been distilled and refined into various delicacies:


 * Kiwix: Wikivoyage articles in the ZIM standard format
 * OxygenGuide: Wikivoyage articles as simplified HTML files.
 * POIs: All listings as CSV, OSM, OBF.

Enjoy your trip! Nicolas1981 (talk) 02:28, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Is there an offline version that contains thumbnail pictures? Travel Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 02:09, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes! The files at http://download.kiwix.org/zim/wikivoyage/ that don't have a "nopic" suffix are supposed to have thumbnail pictures :-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:23, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Content erroneously posted in Tourist Office
Hi folks. User:فلورانس posted the item below in the Tourist Office. I didn't know exactly where to move it, so I figured the Pub was the best bet. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:44, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Offline Wikivoyage (02-Dec-2014) Wikivoyage-Archive From Kiwix Updates is now online --Florence (talk) 22:46, 3 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Sorry but someone had posted this above. --Doostdar (talk) 19:23, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * ok thanks AndreCarrotflower, --Florence (talk) 18:57, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Offline Wikivoyage: Available for every language as ZIM
Need Wikivoyage without Internet: Download a ZIM before leaving: http://download.kiwix.org/zim/wikivoyage/

Freshly made, available for all languages. You will also need the Kiwix app. Enjoy! Nicolas1981 (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Awesome! Just wondering, why is the latest English version (wikivoyage_en_all_2014-11.zim) 829 megabytes and the version from one year ago (wikivoyage_en_all_12_2013.zim) 1.3 gigabytes? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 12:32, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

I have tried it on an Android tablet, and it looks good. A few observations: However these are minor points and it is great to have the site content when on the road without having to be in wifi range. AlasdairW (talk) 21:38, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It is a large download (with pictures). It would be good to have downloads for some individual countries, as a way of people trying it out before downloading about 1G.
 * Banners and dynamic maps don't appear. If Kiwix becomes popular this need to be borne in mind when creating articles. Also I could not zoom in on a static map.
 * I think we should have page with simple instructions for downloading and setting this up. It also would also be good to get the Zim + Kiwix as a package in the Play Store.


 * Yes, really awesome. As for dynamic maps, I think it would be much more useful to have WV on Kiwix work with mapping apps such as Osmand. It would be really fantastic to be able to click on the symbol before an listing and have it open in Osmand. Or instead of the dynamic maps, get an GPX file that opened in Osmand Elgaard (talk) 02:09, 5 December 2014 (UTC)


 * AlasdairW, I totally agree with all of your points and sub-points! This project is looking for volunteers, by the way :-) Here is where to report bugs or ask for new features for non-Wikivoyage-specific things and for Wikivoyage-specific things. Cheers! Nicolas1981 (talk) 08:37, 20 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Nicolas1981, Thanks. I did not know about those pages. I think that the page banners not appearing may be related to them not printing, which was raised a while back but nothing happened.
 * I would like to try to create a country ZIM file, but I am about to go travelling so this will need to wait until next year. I see that there are topic based WP ZIM files, but I don't know if our breadcrumbs would work in the same way. AlasdairW (talk) 23:22, 25 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Nicolas1981 (and all),
 * just a note that once you feel it's ready for a wider audience (I agree with AlasdairW's third point in particular), you would be very welcome to publish post on the Wikimedia blog about this. We know from experience that there can be quite a lot of reader interest in such offline editions, and it might be a nice way to draw attention to Wikivoyage. You can start a draft at Wikimedia_Blog/Drafts.
 * Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 03:25, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

A feature I miss in the kiwix offline version is breadcrumb navigation and the absence of top level articles (continents etc.) on the front page. --Mads.bahrt (talk) 13:30, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Wikivoyage software
I wonder if there is here some section for travel or Wikivoyage - related software.

One of candidates for such a listing is Kiwix -- an offline reader for Mediawiki-based wikis. Among the others they regularly make offline archives of Wikivoyage, which can be taken away to a trip instead of a bunch of printed pages. --Vadp (talk) 14:01, 5 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Offline reader Expedition. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:39, 5 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Good stuff! Is it possible make it easier to find, Perhaps put a link to there from a normal page? BTW are you happy about how listings look now, as I'm actually trying to make them work with Kiwix? -- Vadp (talk) 14:44, 5 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Great to know that you are working on Kiwix! What we really need in Kiwix is GPS links: Add a small icon that when clicked opens your GPS app showing where the listing is. This feature is not in Kiwix but is in OxygenGuide. Also, dynamic maps in Kiwix would be wonderful. They could be static by default, but use tiles from OsmAnd/equivalent if installed. Nicolas1981 (talk) 04:39, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Maps more consistency in article
Hey All. When I travel I often use the offline version of WV. The offline version Kiwix however does not yet support dynamic maps. I am hoping to figure out some way it can convert the dynamic maps to thumbnails so that these can be included. Have also been adding maps to a number of articles. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:59, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Absolutely!
 * To paraphrase Emmanuel Engelhart: Wikivoyage is like water; a common good everybody should have access to irrespective of whether they have access to the Internet or not... —The preceding comment was added by 175.138.97.134 (talk • contribs)


 * It looks like nobody is reading multi-lingual Wikivoyage Lounge on Meta any longer. Some weeks ago Joachim, our main map-maker, together with Italian colleagues announced a script that generates gpx files containing all listings on a page. You can test it in Italian or Russian Wikivoyage by clicking on the GPX icon in the top right corner. GPX files are easily imported into OsmAnd to create an offline map, which is truly dynamic unlike any static thumbnail proposed above. Ideas about generating gpx files for the whole region or for a given area have been discussed too, and implementation is underway. --Alexander (talk) 15:59, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
 * So we need some automated way for Kiwix to do this than? I like the dynamic map in this article Cranbrook but when it is offline I assume that it will need to be static in Kiwix. I can easy create static maps but than both Kiwix and WV will have the static ones. Travel Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 21:18, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Kiwix is not a software for offline maps, so it won't have a solution for this problem. --Alexander (talk) 04:27, 9 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Frozen dynamic map in Kiwix.png The dynamic map of Tokyo/Roppongi shows correctly in Kiwix, right? Obviously on Kiwix (and when printed on paper) it is not scrollable: it is just a screenshot of the dynamic map at default zoom. A few months ago I tried to write a script that generates such screenshots every once in a while if the article has changed, using the open source pageres command-line tool. Unfortunately there is a bug preventing its use on my particular Linux system, but anyone with time and scripting skills please give it a try :-) GPX sounds great too, both are needed: map for quick reference when reading the article and GPX when actually going there. Not sure how the GPX is linked from within Kiwix though. Syced (talk) 11:19, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * That map does not appear at all in Kiwix. Travel Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 23:33, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I added a screenshot showing Kiwix displaying the "frozen" dynamic map. It is in the "See" section. It is a rather old Kiwix file though. Cheers! Syced (talk) 04:05, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Will look at it further. Thanks Travel Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 13:21, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

I am going to implement the GPX feature tomorrow. If you have any objections, raise them now. This feature is as important as dynamic maps (and so far they are the only real thing that distinguishes Wikivoyage from its, well, competitors), so the lack of response from this community is quite shocking. Nobody interested?

By the way, the tool for downloading GPX files from multiple destination is now available as well. --Alexander (talk) 12:03, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * My technical abilities are poor but I would love to see if added. Travel Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 23:33, 12 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Feedback for gpxmap.php:
 * The MIME type returned by the server for the GPX file is "MPEG-4 video".
 * If any POI name contains an & character then the XML is corrupt. You just need to escape such characters.
 * Extremely promising tool otherwise! :-) I created a GPX for the whole region I am in right now, and after fixing the "&" XML syntax a bit it loads perfectly in OsmAnd, and is already extremely useful! I hope the tool will soon be able to handle more than 25 articles. Keep up the great work! Syced (talk) 04:12, 13 May 2015 (UTC)


 * thanks for your advice. I masked all 5 special characters now. The Content-Type I changed to "application/GPX+xml". I hope that's right. - The script can download as many files. The limit is arbitrary to prevent mass downloading. This could lead to blocking by WMF, I fear. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 15:52, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Kiwix hackathon
Kiwix is an offline wiki reader. I am currently participating in a Kiwix hackathon whose goal is to make wiki-specific Kiwix-based apps, for instance a Wikivoyage app (with Wikivoyage Play Store branding etc). Currently there is a single Kiwix app in which users have to download ZIM files, which is a bit user-unfriendly and difficult to market. The hackathon is mostly Android programming. Anyone interested in joining? :-) http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Hackathon_Mobile_2015 Ideas welcome too! Syced (talk) 02:23, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Great would be nice :-) Travel Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 06:11, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Offline Android app updated
With up-to-date Wikivoyage data: Google Play

Enjoy! Syced (talk) 09:23, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Nice. How often do updates usually occur? Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:59, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Every two months if all goes well. I wonder if it is too spammy to post such a note each time? Syced (talk) 03:24, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I am happy to get reminded, so not too spamy I'd say. Danapit (talk) 12:24, 14 October 2015 (UTC)