OpenZIM files can be read in multiple reader applications, the most popular of which is Kiwix, available for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Sugar.

Start your BitTorrent client and grab a copy of the 9.7GB file (.torrent link, other download options). You can also download content packages directly from within Kiwix using its library feature, including content from sister projects like Wiktionary and Wikisource, as well as non-Wikimedia content.

While the ZIM file doesn’t include images (that would blow it up to ~100GB for thumbnail-sized images), it does come with all the lists, tables, citations, and even mathematical formulas included in the online version.

Wikimedia content has always been made available under free and open licensing terms in raw copies, but ZIM content packages offer a higher level of convenience for the end user.

Please note that this OpenZIM file was prepared by Emmanuel Engelhart, the developer of Kiwix, and feedback should be directed to him (contact at kiwix dot org) or submitted through the Kiwix feedback system.

Source: “Fuse-Project”; upload to OLPC-Wiki: OLPC user “Walter” (CC-BY-SA-2.5)

In the quest to get the information resource Wikipedia into the hands of the entire world, we are excited to note that the offline Wikipedia reader Kiwix has recently been extended to read offline Wikipedia files on the Sugar operating system!

Sugar is an open source desktop environment specifically customized for children. It runs on the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) XO computers, which are often distributed throughout areas of the world without access to the Internet. Now, the students who get one of these computers will have the ability to access information from the largest open educational resource in the world via a great interface!

Congratulations to developers reg and Kelson and to Wikimedia Switzerland for the execution and funding of this project. We hope to hear many inspiring stories about deployments and use cases! To help beta test, see the downloading options at sugarlabs (be sure to download Sugar first). See the Offline Projects page for a broad overview of Offline Wikipedia and information on how to get involved.

Jessie Wild
Special Projects Manager, Global Development

About Kiwix:

Kiwix is a full featured offline reader for Web content, specifically designed for the Offline Wikipedia projects. It stores the content in the ZIM file format, a highly compressed open format with additional metadata. The project is supported by a host of volunteers led by developers reg and Kelson. Kiwix is free software and offers localized options. For more information, see www.kiwix.org.

Seven Indians and a German created an input method for their language. A Russian keyboard method is promised for the next day. There was a jQuery wizard who created a wonderful and necessary addition to the Narayam extension: a visual cue to where the characters are on the keyboard. This information comes directly from the Narayam definitions and the best part is that the visual cue actually works as well.

The WebFonts extension got its reality check. WebFonts provides default fonts in order to ensure that nobody sees the infamous Unicode squares and numbers instead of the desired characters. The MediaWiki software is exclusively open source, and consequently the fonts we deliver through the WebFonts extension need to be freely licensed, too.  The default font we use for the Indic languages is the Lohit font produced by Red Hat. It was quite astonishing to learn that some of the characters are not what the character should look like. Bugs have been filed for this at Red Hat and more work will be done.

We are going to roll out the WebFonts extension on December 12th. Our aim is to install it on the Indic projects. When we have freely licensed fonts that show languages correctly, we will finally be able to provide readable content to everyone. We will be working towards resolving the issues identified at the hackathon.

The Mumbai hackathon has also been good for the Kiwix off-line reader; not only was the software localised into several languages, new developers also familiarized themselves with the software itself to implement further improvements. This is quite important because many Indian people have no or intermittent access to the Internet. In addition to Wikipedia content, there are many projects in India to transcribe books that are in the public domain; as the Kiwix software gets ready to support this content, it will help more and more people get access to India’s rich cultural heritage.

Mobile support was the third centre of gravity; many first-time Wikimedia hackers teamed up with seasoned Wikimedia developers and this produced great results. This included work on a mobile landing page for India, as well as a gateway that allows users to receive Wikipedia articles over SMS and the carrier-specific USSD technology. To appreciate this, many people do not have access to the Internet and consequently to our content. Work also continued on the “Wikipedia Zero” project, which aims to bring Wikipedia and other Wikimedia content to millions of users without data charges.

We also saw an interesting connection with the October 2011 Coding Challenge. Developer Yuvipanda implemented Android 2.2 support for one of the coding challenge submissions, the “Share with Wikimedia Commons” Android app (as well as for the official Wikipedia Android app).

All this will get some review, maybe some polishing but we are quite eager to bring this functionality to you.

Many of the hackers were new to MediaWiki. With an introduction by Erik and private tutoring by Sumana, Tomasz, Patrick, and others, several people really got into the swing of things to the extent that some bugs were smashed.  The hackathon proved as always that when you bring great people together special things can and do happen.

Thanks,
Gerard Meijssen
Internationalization / Localization outreach consultant

There are many instances where people do not have an Internet connection available, or where it is cheaper to work offline, notably in the “Global south”.

Data from Wikimedia projects can be exported to the openZIM format, and then read offline on Kiwix, the only openZIM client.

Several projects with local developers invested a considerable amount of time creating their own offline app for their language, their script or for special requirements like formatting for books.

With the localization of Kiwix on translatewiki.net, it is now much more of an option to work on such features in Kiwix. Customizations like including fonts with a package or having specific formatting for a book or a source remain possible.

We hope our community will help localize Kiwix in the 270+ languages we currently support with Wikimedia projects. Please start translating the interface and let us know how it goes.

Thanks,

Gerard Meijssen
Internationalization / Localization outreach consultant

We’ve added some features that I’ll talk about below but for those of you that are just looking to get involved: download a fresh copy and give us feedback. Head over to our project pages if you want to see our full roadmap.

With this new beta we have some exciting new features:

• Mac OS X version;
• Content Manager
• Revised search interface

While the majority of our user base is Linux and Windows we didn’t want OSX users to feel left out. It’s now part of our regular build process. Three platform builds per release .. that’s our goal.
We’re especially happy with how the content manager has turned out. Rather than having to scour the internet to find openZim files you’ll now be able to discover new ones right within Kiwix.

We’re starting out with a limited set of data files to simplify our testing, but we’ll be expanding in the next months as we connect the download manager to the Books collection extension. This will greatly expand the amount of content you can download from Wikipedia. With the extra content, we’ll also add filtering capabilities to make sorting easier.

Finally, we’ve tweaked the look and feel of search results. It’s now far more similar to search engine results pages, which will hopefully make both search and browse much easier.There are also lots of others change under the hood and for those curious head over to the change log.

Tomasz Finc
Director Mobile & Special Projects

We were inspired by a presentation that Trevor Parscal did last year which showcased how easy it is to run a usability study.

With the help of Sumana Harihareswara and numerous others, we conducted seven interviews that highlighted some of the pain points our users were facing.

Some of the quick observations were:

• Bookmarks are too complicated;
• Tabs are not intuitive;
• Some common command key combinations are not supported.

The test script and full results are available, and we’re now using what we learned to guide our next development sprints.

Some of the issues have already been resolved, as they were either in development or quick fixes, while others will require more research.

All the tests were recorded and the videos are already available on Wikimedia Commons.

We’d like to thank our testers who helped us immensely!

It was also great to see how easy it is to run such a study. We have many great opportunities to do research like this at meet-ups, hackathons, conferences, Wikimania, etc.

I’d love to see our community do more informal testing sessions; running just one in a geographic region would quickly surface issues our users are facing.

Are you interested? Don’t wait! Do your own and let us know how it went, or leave a comment below if you want more information.

Tomasz Finc
Director of Mobile and Special Projects