LinuxTag 2010

June 9th - 12th

Participants

1. Tommi
2. Manuel
3. Annette

Talk

• Title: openZIM - Wikipedia Offline - Current State
• Language: English prefered, German possible
• Category: Applications
• License: Creative Commons License

Abstract

for program committee, approx. 1 page

Tommi and Manuel are German native speakers, but we assume that English is the prefered language of most participants, so we offer our talk in English. If the program committee disagrees please feel free to change the talk's language to German.

Since 2007 we are working on a free implementation of a toolchain for offline Wikipedia, providing a container format, reader and writer softare. The first attempt was based on the Zeno file format used by Directmedia, the publisher of the Wikipedia DVD. The Wikipedia DVD 2007/2008 contained a free implementation developed by the people who form today the openZIM project and was the start of the openZIM project.

Starting 2008 openZIM defines itself as "a free and open implementation of the ZIM file format", while openZIM provides both a free documentation of the file format as well as the tools to create ZIM files from web content and a reader to present them in a browser.

openZIM provides a free and open implementation of the ZIM file format - a file format meant to provide the most efficient way to store web content. The ZIM file format is mainly developed for and used to provide offline access to Wikipedia content it is able to host any kind of web content, including images, CSS and java script files.

While the open documentation of the ZIM file format enables everyone to write software using it, openZIM also provides tools to create ZIM files from HTML and a reader application that allows to browse the content in a standard internet browser along with some advanced tools. These are all based on zimlib, a library written in C++ that can be easily used in other applications to make them ZIM-aware.

The talk will give a short introduction in openZIM and the ZIM format and will then focus on technicall issues when dealing with huge chunks of data like Wikipedia and how they have been addressed by openZIM. After the talk you know the tools that are available, have got a overview on the file format and the ressources to find more details if you plan to implement it by yourself and you know how to start using zimlib in you own software.

Short Abstract

for visitors / schedule, max. 450 characters

openZIM provides a free and open ZIM file format and tools - developed for and used to provide offline access to Wikipedia content.

We will give a introduction in openZIM and the ZIM format and then focus on technical issues when dealing with amounts of data like Wikipedia and how we have addressed them. After the talk you know the tools that are available, have got a overview on the file format and the resources to find more details if you plan to implement it by yourself and you know how to start using zimlib in your own application.

Links

• URL: http://openzim.org/
• Description: website of the openZIM developer team with documentation, SVN, bugtracker and ZIM file archive