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The largest sum of human knowledge ever constructed, on your hard-drive :P

Wikipedia regularlly 'backs up' it's pages in a file called pages-articles.xml.bz2
The largest database backup (or dump, if you prefer) is the English Wiki. (Which can be found in this directory; http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/) The item only contains

There is one major offline Wikiepdia reader, called Wikitaxi. This is sadly, only Windows software (though it DOES work under WINE). However, the heavy processing of this software (particularly as it creates a huge index of the aforementioned file, rending the computer all but unusable whilst it does so)

Alternatively, and more in keeping with the semantic ideals of KDE 4, DBPedia, a machine-readable version of Wikipedia (RDF format, mostly), might prove more useful. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBpedia )

Why would keeping a local copy of Wikipedia or DBPedia locally be helpful?

If you have to ask that question, you've never been stuck with a laptop without internet access and you really, REALLY need to know the answer to a question. :P

KDE developer Daniel Molkentin had been working on such an application called "Knowledge". I think it has then been folded into a more generic project called "WP Offline Reader".

No idea about the state of either though.

Cheers,
_

Well, the only link from Google with the latter name leads directly to your post! (Damn, the Google bots like this forum, don't they?)

I would love to have such a device, I'll PM him if I can.

I didn't know they were so hard to find.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/KDE_and_ ... #Knowledge

https://projects.fslab.de/projects/wpofflineclient/

anda_skoa wrote:I didn't know they were so hard to find.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/KDE_and_ ... #Knowledge

https://projects.fslab.de/projects/wpofflineclient/

Oooh!...though last item in the roadmap was in 2007

Has anything been said of it on the dev channels? Naturally I'm not privy to them but I'd rather like to know if this will come with KDE in the near future!

I don't have any more recent information myself either.

My guess would be that Danimo is currently way to busy working on stuff for Qt Software.

Cheers,
_

Wouldn't a more generic "KDE Encyclopedia" be more useful than just a Wikipedia reader? Something similar to Grolier or Encarta?

Basically all offline encyclopedias like Encarta have been abandoned by their respective producers since they just can't keep up with content provided online.

Therefore it makes much more sense to use a program which acts as a viewer of such an online source and probably provides extra features such as caching viewed contents, updating cached content or following links up to a certain depth, downloading the data in advance.

Once an application works well with the remote data access API of Wikimedia and its respective Wiki formatting, it can most likely easily be extended to support other sources as well.

Cheers,
_

anda_skoa wrote:Basically all offline encyclopedias like Encarta have been abandoned by their respective producers since they just can't keep up with content provided online.

I didn't say anything about "offline", though this thread was about offline. I was thinking of a full Grolier/Encarta experience using online sources and QTs RIA abilities, with the ability to cache and mirror (create an offline copy)

Added more specific tag

This "more generic" tool could also have nepomuk integration, so if you search about something, lets say your university, it should find local documents related to it.

Or this could be done in reverse - Integrate this into nepomuk

Yesss...I see where your going.

Why do I think that idea was partly inspired by Kiim, eh? :P

So, in your idea, Lukas, lets walk through it.

I search for my home-town, information is gathered from Wikipedia and Wolfram/Alpha. A list of services, landmarks, etc, are provided by Google Maps, at the end of it I get;

Wolfram/Alpha's report on it's population, current time, current weather there, approximate elevation above sea-level, as well as a little marker showing it's position and the distance between it and two nearby major cities. Wikipedia provides me with cultural history and images, Google Maps provides me with a list of local services, including their phone numbers, URL's, and emails.

Hmmm...that could be a VERY useful tool, especially for an information junkie like me. :P

if this application becomes implemented someday can someone add a "Don\'t Panic" sign at Kde start?

Couldn\'t this reader browse through Wikipedia (online) and download a article if you want to? It wouldn\'t waste so much space on the hard disk and you would only have the articles you want to. You could manage them and browse them easily.

JanGerrit wrote:Couldn\'t this reader browse through Wikipedia (online) and download a article if you want to? It wouldn\'t waste so much space on the hard disk and you would only have the articles you want to. You could manage them and browse them easily.

Yes, but my orginal idea was for solving a particular problem I had a few months ago. I needed Wikipedia, and had no internet access (or rather, no access that wasnt insanely expensive)