Blog/2017-04

From XOWA: the free, open-source, offline wiki application

Release: v4.5.2.1704 (2017-04-26 20:00 Wed)

The PC version is a minor release. It adds some full-text search tweaks and fixes parsing issues for 2017-04 English Wikipedia and Wiktionary.

The Android version is a minor release. It also adds some full-text search tweaks.

(Wiki) Publish 2017-04 English Wikipedia

2017-04 English Wikipedia was released over the weekend. You can get them from Download Central or see the following links: Wiki_setup/English_wikis

Note that Download Central wikis have two changes:

  • Full-text search indexes are bundled automatically with the main Articles task
  • A Wikitext task is also available. This allows you to download the Wikitext for editing purposes. Note that if you are using Android or are just viewing wikis you will not need them.

Add minor tweaks for full-text search and title-search

This version has a few minor tweaks for search:

  • Full-text search indexes are now generated automatically for 2017-04 and later Download Central wikis
  • The full-text search UI has a few minor fixes
  • Not directly related to full-text search, but title search now returns results for pages with a page_score of 10,000 or less

Fix parser issues for English Wikipedia, including "convert invalid number", "Check date value in access date", chart errors, and #statements

There were a bunch of parser fixes with 2017-04 English Wikipedia. For more detail, see the change log. In summary, they revolve around the following items:

  • Better support for UNIQ to handle "convert invalid number" and chart issues
  • Fixes for Wikibase and geocordinates as well as #statements
  • A date parser fix which caused "check date value in access date" errors in the references of many en.w pages

Fix parser issues for English Wiktionary including French conjugation tables, Chinese glyph tables, and Russian parts of speech.

In addition, there were also a few significant fixes to handle English Wiktionary:

  • French conjugation tables when Lua scripts use a function for replacing, but sometimes return nil
  • Chinese glyph tables due to Luaj and lack of BMP (1 codepoint; 2-char) support
  • Russian parts of speech issues due to over-eager inclusiong of all matches for ustring.match

Next release

I'm still adjusting to the new work schedule, so time has unfortunately been limited. I also spent a good deal of this month working on parser issues, especially for English Wiktionary.

I'm working on releasing more wikis with full-text search indexes. The English Wikis should be available sometime this weekend, with German and others following. The next release will probably come in late May and probably focus only on parser issues.

Personal: A new job and other changes (2017-04-02 12:00 Sun)

XOWA development will be undergoing some changes in the coming months. As of tomorrow, I'll be starting a new job, and consequently, I won't be able to give as much time to XOWA as before. In fact, few people know this, but I spent the past year working full-time on XOWA. So, strictly by numbers, XOWA is going to go from a 60-80 hour per week schedule to something much less.

With that said, XOWA development will not halt. As demonstrated by the full-year work effort, I care deeply about this project, and I do not plan to stop developing XOWA any time in the future. However, it does mean that there will be a few changes.

First, the pace of development will slow down. The past year has seen a lot of development: from XOWA Android to Download Central to personal wikis to full-text search[1] Given the new schedule, it won't be at all possible to match that output. I still have a bunch of major changes planned, but I expect that only two or three major changes will occur before the end of the year.

Second, I'll be producing Download Central wikis at a slower rate. I do want to do a full update of all wikis, especially with the recent addition of full-text search. However, if I run into issues, I may postpone a wiki for a few weeks to a month until I work them out. I'll try to provide some sort of schedule for changes, but things may be in flux for a while. As always, if you have any requests, please make them, and I'll definitely prioritize them.

Third, I'm going to turn my attention to making XOWA easier for other developers and power users. This means more documentation in building XOWA as well as the Download Central databases. I'd love to have some support from others, and really don't want to have XOWA development depend entirely on me.

I'm sure there will probably be other noticeable changes as well. Again, I want to assure you that XOWA is not going to go away anytime soon. If anything, it will continue to grow -- especially with more support from others.

  1. ^ There's also a lot more such as HTML databases, PageRank, Auto-complete URL bar, Page Sync, Options, ICU Categories, Page Banner, multi-threaded parsers, nightmode, hdpi support, and dozens of parser issues.

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