News

Updated DVD based on free software

Wikimedia CH has released a new edition of the German Wikipedia DVD on LinuxTag 2009 from 24th to 27th of June, in collaboration with openZIM. The DVD contains more than 900,000 German Wikipedia articles and a full text search index for phrasal search. The openZIM project develops a file format called "ZIM" to store hypertexts like Wikipedia, or other websites, with search indizes and images in the most efficient way. The data is highly compressed; the Wikipedia articles only take up 1.4 GB on the DVD.

Using the free software on the DVD ZIM files can be read and also be created. A library with all necessary features enables software developers and publishers to integrate the ZIM format in their own products. As the software is still in testing, the swiss Wikimedia chapter has, at first, produced 500 Wikipedia DVDs which will be given away for free at LinuxTag in Berlin. Manuel Schneider, project lead of openZIM and member of Wikimedia CH, says: "Even though we are still testing this first release is very important for us, we are always happy about help. Reporting bugs and problems with our software is part of that."

Since April 2009 there has been a collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation, the operator of Wikipedia based in San Fransisco/USA. Software developers of the Wikimedia Foundation are working on integrating the ZIM format into the regular exporting process, which will provide ZIM files of all Wikimedia projects in all languages in the future. Furthermore, it is planned to build a similar feature into MediaWiki, the wiki software behind Wikipedia and countless other wikis. A new edition of the Wikipedia DVD, in Spanish, is planned for the Wikimania conference from August 26th to 28th of 2009 in Buenos Aires.

Further information about the openZIM project

The openZIM project has existed since February 2009. The ancestor was the TntReader project, which followed a call by Directmedia to develop an open source reader application for the Zeno file format. Directmedia defined this format to publish Wikipedia on a DVD. The last DVD of 2007/2008, published by Directmedia, contained the proprietary reader for Windows for the first time, with the TntReader, as open source software which ran on Linux and Mac OS X. The openZIM project expanded and published the Zeno file format as the ZIM (Zeno IMproved) file format. All software and documentation which was made by openZIM is released under GPL.

The openZIM is present at LinuxTag from June 24th to 27th in Berlin on booth 113a (hall 7.2a). More information at: http://openzim.org/ or http://www.linuxtag.de/.

The main interest of the General Assembly of Wikimedia CH held on Saturday March 28 at the National Library in Bern was the election of a new committee. With the withdrawal of President Michael Bimmler, Treasurer Robin Schwab and Nando Stöcklin, there were in fact three of the four Swiss German seats of the committee of six people who had to be renewed. No fewer than 10 candidates had expressed their interest to join the committee, including four persons for the post of president.

After confirming the number of 6 persons for the committee, the assembly elected in order:

• Frédéric Schütz (reelection),
• Ludovic Péron,
• Mourad Ben Abdallah (president),
• Gion Hosang,
• Bagawathram Maheswaran,
• Ilario Valdelli (reelection).

The committee is now composed of three Swiss French, a Swiss German (Bagawathram Maheswaran), a Swiss Italian (Ilario Valdelli) and a Romansh representative (Gion Hosang). It will officially take office 60 days after his election and we wish him good luck and success!

(This communication is not the result of the formal protocol that must be followed in coming days)

Wikimedia CH encourages the development of a free standard for Wikipedia offline content as well as all neccessary tools to create and read such data.

The free file format ZIM is based on Zeno files which were developed in 2006 by the berlin publisher Directmedia. It is enables the usage of libraries like Wikipedia without internet access. The german Wikipedia DVD 2006/2007 was the first release based on this file format and was shipped with the ZenoReader - a webserver application - which served the articles to the local webbrowser.

Tommi Mäkitalo of the Tntnet project developed the first complete replacement for the proprietary ZenoReader. The Tntreader runs on all POSIX compatible operating systems. In cooperation with Directmedia file format and reader were further developed, resulting in the german Wikipedia DVD 2007/2008 which was bundled with Mäkitalo's free software.

The availability of free software and an efficient file format sparked the interest in being able to create individual Zeno files to make more libraries offline available. Wikimedia CH supports these efforts by providing the project team around Tommi Mäkitalo with a server and a budget for developer meetings.

The first developers meeting took place this weekend around February 21st 2009. The project team meet for the first time to know each other personally, created a roadmap, discussed technical concepts and some improvements of the format. As it is now an entirely free project of the open source community it was renamed to openZIM: The open implementation of the improved Zeno format (ZIM).

It is planned to have all the tools ready to create a ZIM file containing the german Wikipedia by the LinuxTag 2009 where the project will be presented.

Website: http://openzim.org