Blog/2016-12

Release: NONE (2016-12-25 22:45 Sun)

Just a quick note. Due to the holiday season and personal obligations, there is no release this week. There will be a release next week with a new configuration system.

Release (Android): v3.12.2.1 (2016-12-11 20:00 Sun)

There is no PC release this week. I've been working on the new Configuration system as well as Section editing.

The Android version has a minor release.

(Android) Remove horizontal scrollbars by hiding Navigation boxes by default

This was a change due to the feedback from a Google Play review (which has since been deleted). There's a little more documentation at https://github.com/gnosygnu/xowa/issues/112

XOWA Android would show pages which have horizontal scrollbars. They appear mostly because of what's called Navigation boxes ("navboxes") at the bottom of the page. For example, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth#External_links and see the section called "Articles related to Earth"

The Wikipedia Mobile App and the Wikipedia Mobile Site both hide these by default. XOWA Android used to show them by default. This was a deliberate decision on my side, because (a) I generally like to show as much content as possible and (b) I do find them useful.

However, after the strongly worded review, I realized that there probably was considerable UI wisdom in hiding them by default. So I changed the behavior of XOWA to follow the same behavior as Wikipedia's Mobile App / site.

However, I also left a configuration option to show them by default. To do so, the following would need to be done:

• Open the left side menu and do "XOWA" -> "Settings" -> "XOWA options"
• Check "Show navboxes"
• Visit a page like Earth

Next release: v3.12.4

I'm skipping next week due to personal reasons. This means that the next possible release would be Christmas weekend. I'll try to push something out then, but since may rely on a quick "beta" release.

• Wikis: I'm running a little behind on 2016-12 English Wikipedia. I'm hoping to have a version later this week, but there may be a few things to investigate.
• Options: I'm done with most of the core parts the Options system. I now need to work on migration, which will probably take some time.

Release: v3.12.1.1 (2016-12-04 22:00 Sun)

The PC version is a minor release. It fixes an import issue with English Wikipedia on older machines, has several Scribunto and Wikibase fixes for Russian wikis, and has some page sync issues

The Android version has no release.

(Wiki) Publish 2016-11 Dutch and Russian wikis. Also, 2016-11 German Wikipedia

As per the section title, 2016-11 Dutch and Russian wikis are up at archive.org. You can check Wiki_setup/Listing or Special:XowaDownloadCentral

Again, thanks to Ope30 for testing these wikis.

(PC) Fix "stalled" English Wikipedia import on older machines

This issue was reported in issue 98 and and issue 108.

Due to changes in the English Wikipedia Category system, XOWA needed to import a lot more data. Unfortunately, this caused the English Wikipedia import to stall on older machines. I was unable to reproduce it on my current machine (i7 CPU on either SSD or HDD), but was able to reproduce it on my laptop (Core Duo with HDD).

This issue was resolved by adding a new SQL index during the category import. The total time will still be noticeably longer (from 2 hours to 5 hours), but it should complete in the end.

(PC) Fix various minor Scribunto and Wikibase errors with Russian Wikipedia including inferred datatype

There were a number of minor fixes around the 2016-11 Russian wikis.

The most significant one was an issue with Wikidata and missing infobox images. For more detail, you can look at https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata/2016-November/010019.html . This was fixed for any Russian Wiki imported through Import Online or Import Offline. However, Russian wikis downloaded through Download Central will still be missing images, until the next time I rebuild them.

For the other changes, you can take a look at the Scribunto and Wikibase items at Change log/v3.12.1.1

(PC) Fix page sync issues when syncing File or Chinese pages with math

First, thanks to khanhhung2512 for reporting these issues.

XOWA had the following page sync issues:

• Failed when downloading "File:" pages
• Failed when downloading Chinese pages with Math
• Always downloaded every page, instead of those listed in the Options page

These fixes are included in this release.

Next release: v3.12.2

• Wikis: I'm generating wikis for the 2016-11 Italian wikis. I'll also kick off 2016-12 English Wikipedia as well.
• Options: I'm almost done rewriting the Options system. I also plan to add an update feature for the desktop app. I'm still planning to do some more work on Page Sync and full-text search, though my time recently has been limited.