<ahref="#.28Desktop.29_Minor_parser_changes_and_fixes.2C_including_using_non-ASCII_strings_for_gsub_find"><spanclass="tocnumber">1.3</span><spanclass="toctext">(Desktop) Minor parser changes and fixes, including using non-ASCII strings for gsub find</span></a>
<ahref="#.28Android.29_XOWA_Android_app_on_Play_Store"><spanclass="tocnumber">2.1</span><spanclass="toctext">(Android) XOWA Android app on Play Store</span></a>
</li>
<liclass="toclevel-2 tocsection-8">
<ahref="#.28Android.29_Kit-Kat_support_for_Android_app"><spanclass="tocnumber">2.2</span><spanclass="toctext">(Android) Kit-Kat support for Android app</span></a>
<ahref="#.28Desktop.29_Minor_changes_and_fixes.2C_including_missing_random_sub-pages_in_Portal.2C_missing_Wikis_sidebar_in_home_wiki_and_no_.7B.7BDisplayTitle.7D.7D"><spanclass="tocnumber">2.3</span><spanclass="toctext">(Desktop) Minor changes and fixes, including missing random sub-pages in Portal, missing Wikis sidebar in home wiki and no {{DisplayTitle}}</span></a>
<ahref="#.28Desktop.29_New_http:.2F.2Fxowa.org_domain_with_entire_home_wiki"><spanclass="tocnumber">2.4</span><spanclass="toctext">(Desktop) New http://xowa.org domain with entire home wiki</span></a>
<ahref="#.28Desktop.29_New_English_Wikipedia_images_update_.282016-03.29"><spanclass="tocnumber">4.2</span><spanclass="toctext">(Desktop) New English Wikipedia images update (2016-03)</span></a>
<ahref="#.28Android.29_New_pages_for_.22Import_new_wiki.22_and_.22XOWA_Wikis.22"><spanclass="tocnumber">4.4</span><spanclass="toctext">(Android) New pages for "Import new wiki" and "XOWA Wikis"</span></a>
<ahref="#.28Android.29_Minor_fixes_for_crashes_.2F_obsoleted_items"><spanclass="tocnumber">4.5</span><spanclass="toctext">(Android) Minor fixes for crashes / obsoleted items</span></a>
<ahref="#.28Desktop.29_Fixes_for_old_.sqlite3_wikis"><spanclass="tocnumber">5.1</span><spanclass="toctext">(Desktop) Fixes for old .sqlite3 wikis</span></a>
</li>
<liclass="toclevel-2 tocsection-22">
<ahref="#.28Desktop.29_Fix_for_offline_import_of_large_wikis"><spanclass="tocnumber">5.2</span><spanclass="toctext">(Desktop) Fix for offline import of large wikis</span></a>
</li>
<liclass="toclevel-2 tocsection-23">
<ahref="#.28Desktop.29_Command_to_shrink_English_Wikipedia_images_by_8_GB"><spanclass="tocnumber">5.3</span><spanclass="toctext">(Desktop) Command to shrink English Wikipedia images by 8 GB</span></a>
</li>
<liclass="toclevel-2 tocsection-24">
<ahref="#.28Package.29_Release_of_French_Wikipedia_2016-03"><spanclass="tocnumber">5.4</span><spanclass="toctext">(Package) Release of French Wikipedia 2016-03</span></a>
The desktop app is a trivial release. It has a few minor parser fixes, primarily for German Wikipedia.
</p>
<p>
The Android app is a minor release. It has one significant fix for not requiring one database: file-xowa. This will only be necessary for the German wikis
</p>
<h3>
<spanclass="mw-headline"id=".28Package.29_Update_German_wikis_.282016-04.29:_https:.2F.2Farchive.org.2Fdetails.2FXowa_dewiki_latest">(Package) Update German wikis (2016-04): <ahref="https://archive.org/details/Xowa_dewiki_latest"rel="nofollow"class="external free">https://archive.org/details/Xowa_dewiki_latest</a></span>
</h3>
<p>
I updated the German wikis this week. You can find them at <ahref="https://archive.org/details/Xowa_dewiki_latest"rel="nofollow"class="external free">https://archive.org/details/Xowa_dewiki_latest</a> Note the following:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
The images are an update to the 2015-09 set. If you already have the 2015-09 set, just download the 2016-04 update: <ahref="https://archive.org/download/Xowa_dewiki_latest/Xowa_dewiki_2016-04-07_file_update.7z"rel="nofollow"class="external free">https://archive.org/download/Xowa_dewiki_latest/Xowa_dewiki_2016-04-07_file_update.7z</a>
For Android, download all the de.wikipedia.org files in <ahref="http://xowa.org/home/wiki/Android/Setup.html"id="xolnki_13"title="Android/Setup">Android/Setup</a>
For the other German wikis, the process is similar. Download <ahref="https://archive.org/download/Xowa_dewiki_latest/Xowa_debundle_2016-04-07.7z"rel="nofollow"class="external free">https://archive.org/download/Xowa_dewiki_latest/Xowa_debundle_2016-04-07.7z</a> and copy the files to your microSD card.
</li>
</ul>
<h3>
<spanclass="mw-headline"id=".28Android.29_Fix_for_missing_file-user.xowa_database">(Android) Fix for missing file-user.xowa database</span>
</h3>
<p>
The Android app would crash if it was missing this database: *-file-user.xowa. See <ahref="https://github.com/gnosygnu/xowa/issues/36#issuecomment-172292021"rel="nofollow"class="external free">https://github.com/gnosygnu/xowa/issues/36#issuecomment-172292021</a> .
</p>
<p>
Here's the short version:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
If you are planning to use the German wikis, or want to be prepared for future dumps (English Wiktionary), you should install v3.4.4.
</li>
</ul>
<p>
Here's the long version:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
XOWA desktop allows you to download the original versions of images for offline viewing
<ul>
<li>
You can download these original versions by clicking on any image in an article
</li>
<li>
These images are stored in a file like en.wikipedia.org-file-user.xowa
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
XOWA's file database system requires that this database is always present.
<ul>
<li>
If the file-user.xowa is not present, XOWA creates one automatically.
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
All XOWA packages on archive.org do not include file-user.xowa
<ul>
<li>
I don't include this file, because I don't want to overwrite a pre-existing file-user.xowa when a user upgrades to a new package.
</li>
<li>
I was relying on the auto-create mechanism to create a file-user.xowa.
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
However, on Android, all apps have extremely limited write permissions. On an external SD card, they can only write to one directory: /<sd_card_mount>/Android/data/<package_name>
</li>
<li>
If there was no file-user.xowa, XOWA Android tried to create it. Because of the limited write permissions, it crashed when it couldn't do so.
</li>
</ul>
<p>
v3.4.4 still tries to create the file-user.xowa file, but no longer crashes if it can't.
</p>
<h3>
<spanclass="mw-headline"id=".28Desktop.29_Minor_parser_changes_and_fixes.2C_including_using_non-ASCII_strings_for_gsub_find">(Desktop) Minor parser changes and fixes, including using non-ASCII strings for gsub find</span>
</h3>
<p>
These are a bunch of minor parser fixes for German Wikipedia. They affect a small number of pages (<100) and don't affect content. The most interesting item is that it required another change to <ahref="https://sourceforge.net/projects/luaj/"rel="nofollow"class="external text">LuaJ</a>. It mistakenly disregarded UTF8 byte encoding for bytes between 128 and 255. This caused gsub and similar calls to fail when using non-ASCII characters, like "ß"
The desktop app is a minor release. It has various minor fixes, including broken Portal pages and a missing Wikis sidebar
</p>
<p>
The Android app is a major release. It has support for Kit-Kat. In addition, it has finally been released to the Play Store!
</p>
<h3>
<spanclass="mw-headline"id=".28Android.29_XOWA_Android_app_on_Play_Store">(Android) XOWA Android app on Play Store</span>
</h3>
<p>
The XOWA Android app has finally been released to the Play Store. Surprisingly, this involved a lot of unforeseen tasks, like graphic design, video recording, icon generation, secure signing, etc. Many thanks to anonymous4 for invaluable help, feedback and support.
</p>
<p>
Here are some useful links:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<b>Play Store Link</b>: <ahref="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.xowa"rel="nofollow"class="external free">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.xowa</a>
Finally, if you've been using any of the earlier Android App versions, I recommend you update to this version. It only has more UI tweaks in terms of the icons and Settings page, but it is the official release version.
</p>
<h3>
<spanclass="mw-headline"id=".28Android.29_Kit-Kat_support_for_Android_app">(Android) Kit-Kat support for Android app</span>
</h3>
<p>
The other major item in the Android app release is support for Kit-Kat. This too was made possible by anonymous4 and provision of a Kit-Kat device.
</p>
<p>
If you have a Kit-Kat device, please give it a try.
</p>
<h3>
<spanclass="mw-headline"id=".28Desktop.29_Minor_changes_and_fixes.2C_including_missing_random_sub-pages_in_Portal.2C_missing_Wikis_sidebar_in_home_wiki_and_no_.7B.7BDisplayTitle.7D.7D">(Desktop) Minor changes and fixes, including missing random sub-pages in Portal, missing Wikis sidebar in home wiki and no {{DisplayTitle}}</span>
</h3>
<p>
v3.4.2.1 has a number of minor fixes. In brief:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<b>Broken sub-pages in [[Portal]]</b>: Portal pages often display a Random sub-panel. These panels were broken due to an obscure XOWA Luaj bug (# of pages from int to long).
</li>
<li>
<b>Missing Wikis sidebar in the home wiki</b>: The Wikis sidebar did not show in the home wiki due to some CSS changes last week.
</li>
<li>
<b>{{DisplayTitle}} was ignored</b>: {{DisplayTitle}} was broken due to recent changes for PageBanner. This means that a page like <ahref="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/gzip"rel="nofollow"class="external free">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/gzip</a> showed "Gzip" as the title instead of "gzip".
</li>
<li>
<b>Script error for cycling tables on de.wikipedia.org</b>: A few dozen cycling-related pages on German Wikipedia showed script errors. This was due to an obscure XOWA ParserFunction bug that returned ServerName as "<ahref="http://de.wikipedia.org"rel="nofollow"class="external free">http://de.wikipedia.org</a>" instead of "//de.wikipedia.org"
</li>
<li>
<b>Support for Wikia TabView and Tabber functions</b>: XOWA now supports two core Wikia parser functions for generating sub-tabs within a page
</li>
</ul>
<h3>
<spanclass="mw-headline"id=".28Desktop.29_New_http:.2F.2Fxowa.org_domain_with_entire_home_wiki">(Desktop) New <ahref="http://xowa.org"rel="nofollow"class="external free">http://xowa.org</a> domain with entire home wiki</span>
</h3>
<p>
I finally linked the <ahref="http://xowa.org"rel="nofollow"class="external free">http://xowa.org</a> domain to <ahref="https://gnosygnu.github.io/xowa"rel="nofollow"class="external free">https://gnosygnu.github.io/xowa</a> . Hopefully that will make the link more memorable. Again, much gratitude goes to anonymous4 for helping me set-up the cross-domain links.
</p>
<p>
Also, I uploaded all the home documentation to <ahref="http://xowa.org"rel="nofollow"class="external free">http://xowa.org</a> You can navigate to any page by taking the page url and adding <ahref="http://xowa.org"rel="nofollow"class="external free">http://xowa.org</a> in front of it.
</p>
<p>
For example, <code><ahref="http://xowa.org/"rel="nofollow"class="external free">http://xowa.org/</a></code> + <code>home/wiki/Help/Contents</code> -><code><ahref="http://xowa.org/home/wiki/Help/Contents"rel="nofollow"class="external free">http://xowa.org/home/wiki/Help/Contents</a></code>
I ran into a minor parser issue with Luaj that ended up pushing German Wikipedia back a week. I'll upload an update this week, along with Android wikis.
</p>
<p>
Also, Wikimedia's 2016-April English Wikipedia dump is broken. Don't bother importing your English Wikipedia this month as a lot of the pages will fail due to missing Modules. See <ahref="https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/xmldatadumps-l/2016-April/001298.html"rel="nofollow"class="external free">https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/xmldatadumps-l/2016-April/001298.html</a>
</p>
<p>
For next week, I'm going to work on generating mini-wikis for download to Android. I'll also start going through some old parser bugs.
<spanclass="mw-headline"id="Patch:_Missing_wikis_in_sidebar_.282016-04-13_21:34_Wed.29">Patch: Missing wikis in sidebar (2016-04-13 21:34 Wed)</span>
</h2>
<p>
This is a patch for a defect in v3.4.2.1.
</p>
<p>
v3.4.2.1 updated the CSS for the home wiki to fix a narrow search box. See <ahref="https://github.com/gnosygnu/xowa/issues/54"rel="nofollow"class="external free">https://github.com/gnosygnu/xowa/issues/54</a>
</p>
<p>
Unfortunately, this CSS also removed the wiki sidebar in the home wiki. I didn't notice this until yesterday.
</p>
<p>
The patch updates one file: /xowa/bin/any/xowa/cfg/app/xowa.gfs . Just replace your version with it.
</p>
<p>
You can also change this manually by finding the div_logo snippet and updating with the snippet below.
</p>
<p>
This will be part of the next release. I didn't want to release an entire new version for a one-line text-file fix.
<div class="portal"><h3></h3></div><!-- empty heading else wikipedia css will hide next <h3> after <div id='p-logo'>; DATE:2016-04-12-->
As per <ahref="https://github.com/gnosygnu/xowa/issues/53"rel="nofollow"class="external free">https://github.com/gnosygnu/xowa/issues/53</a> William was unable to build the new search databases on his machine. I tried it on an older dev machine, and found that it could take upwards of 5 hours to complete.
</p>
<p>
I optimized some of the SQL code and reduced it to about 2 hours. That said, note the following:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<b>Fails on my 32-bit Windows XP dev machine</b>: I don't know why. The same build works on 2 Windows 7 64-bit machines, 1 openSUSE Linux 64-bit machine, and 1 Mac OS X 64-bit machine. It also works on the 32-bit JVM on the Windows 7 64-bit machine. However, the lone 32-bit Windows machine fails, and fails in a very strange way (it fails silently in release mode, and hangs in debug mode). I'm going to hope this is the non-dominant behavior, and reinvestigate at a later point in time.
</li>
<li>
<b>Really benefits from an SSD</b>: SQLite really does better with an SSD. I tried some tricks like changing PRAGMA synchronous to OFF, but this only shaves off a dozen or so minutes. In contrast, an SSD will easily knock off an hour if not more (from 2 hours to about 40 min)
<b>If you want the new search, downloading from archive.org is the easiest way</b>: There are other complexities with the search database rebuild (PageRank algorithm and the 10 GB pagelinks dump: See <ahref="http://xowa.org/home/wiki/App/Search.html"id="xolnki_15"title="App/Search">App/Search</a>). As such, the easiest way is to download prebuilt copies from archive.org:
<spanclass="mw-headline"id=".28Desktop.29_New_English_Wikipedia_images_update_.282016-03.29">(Desktop) New English Wikipedia images update (2016-03)</span>
</h3>
<p>
I uploaded new consolidated versions of English Wikipedia images (2016-03) to archive.org. See <ahref="https://archive.org/details/Xowa_enwiki_latest"rel="nofollow"class="external free">https://archive.org/details/Xowa_enwiki_latest</a>.
</p>
<p>
In terms of usage, pick one of the following:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<b>New user</b>: Download the new 2016-03 version. Previously you would have to download 2015-06 set, and then download separate updates for every month between 2015-07 and 2016-03. This was just too cumbersome.
<b>Existing user (2015-06)</b>: Ignore the 2016-03 version. You downloaded the 2015-06 set and presumably have been keeping up with the monthly updates. The 2016-03 set is the same as your set, except it is smaller (it no longer has deleted images). If you want to remove about 8 GB of deleted images, see <ahref="http://xowa.org/home/wiki/Dashboard/Files/Deletion.html"id="xolnki_16"title="Dashboard/Files/Deletion">Dashboard/Files/Deletion</a>. Once you remove the deleted images, you will have a set that is exactly the same as the 2016-03 version.
<b>Existing user (2013-11 or something else)</b>: Download the 2016-03 version. You have an old set of XOWA image databases that I really can't support any longer (they have an extension of .sqlite3). I know downloading 80 GB is painful, but I'm not planning to change database formats again in the future.
</li>
</ul>
<p>
Finally, after I release XOWA Beta for Android, I'm going to work on a new update feature that will more gracefully handle monthly updates. In the meantime, please bear with the manual process.
</p>
<h3>
<spanclass="mw-headline"id=".28Desktop.29_Minor_Wikia_parser_tags">(Desktop) Minor Wikia parser tags</span>
</h3>
<p>
A user requested some parser functionality for Wikia wikis (see <ahref="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Gnosygnu"rel="nofollow"class="external free">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Gnosygnu</a> . This release now supports the <choose> and <tabber> extensions.
</p>
<h3>
<spanclass="mw-headline"id=".28Android.29_New_pages_for_.22Import_new_wiki.22_and_.22XOWA_Wikis.22">(Android) New pages for "Import new wiki" and "XOWA Wikis"</span>
</h3>
<p>
The last major piece for XOWA Beta was more usable screens for importing wikis and managing wikis. Both these pages are now part of the latest release:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<b>XOWA Wikis</b>: The "XOWA" button in the left-nav now opens a page that lists all wikis. It also allows you to import a new one by pressing the "+" icon.
</li>
<li>
<b>Import new wikis</b>: The "Import" screen got a new design overhaul to make it much prettier and more intuitive. A lot of thanks goes to anonymous4 for helping with layout and feedback.
</li>
</ul>
<h3>
<spanclass="mw-headline"id=".28Android.29_Minor_fixes_for_crashes_.2F_obsoleted_items">(Android) Minor fixes for crashes / obsoleted items</span>
</h3>
<p>
There were two minor crashes that would occur when using the left-nav button. The main one was pressing "Random" when on the "Import" screen
</p>
<p>
I also removed two features: "Nearby" and "Log in to Wikipedia". Neither of these seem useful for offline XOWA, and I didn't want them taking up screen real-estate.
I'm planning on releasing XOWA Android Beta on Google Play mid-week. I'm sure that there will be spillover work that leads to another Android app update next week.
</p>
<p>
For wikis, the Wikimedia dump server is stalled again. I'm going to wait for it to resume before continuing with German Wikipedia.
The desktop app is a minor release. It has a few fixes related to old .sqlite3 wikis and offline imports.
</p>
<p>
The Android app has not been changed.
</p>
<h3>
<spanclass="mw-headline"id=".28Desktop.29_Fixes_for_old_.sqlite3_wikis">(Desktop) Fixes for old .sqlite3 wikis</span>
</h3>
<p>
As reported in <ahref="https://sourceforge.net/p/xowa/discussion/defects/thread/f142ca23/"rel="nofollow"class="external free">https://sourceforge.net/p/xowa/discussion/defects/thread/f142ca23/</a> v3.3.4 did not work for old .sqlite3 wikis. These wikis were phased out last year (in 2015-04), but I didn't want to drop support for them entirely.
</p>
<p>
v3.4.1 has 2 fixes for the following:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<b>Open old .sqlite3 wikis</b>: Previously, XOWA would just show a blank page
</li>
<li>
<b>Allow old .sqlite3 wikis to upgrade to the new search system</b>: Previously, XOWA would keep prompting to upgrade
</li>
</ul>
<h3>
<spanclass="mw-headline"id=".28Desktop.29_Fix_for_offline_import_of_large_wikis">(Desktop) Fix for offline import of large wikis</span>
</h3>
<p>
This was reported in a separate ticket: <ahref="https://github.com/gnosygnu/xowa/issues/51"rel="nofollow"class="external free">https://github.com/gnosygnu/xowa/issues/51</a> Basically, the new search system caused offline imports to fail for large wikis. A large wiki is defined as one with a dump file of 1.5 GB.
</p>
<p>
v3.4.1 fixes this issue. I tested with English Wikisource 2016-03: <ahref="http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwikisource/20160305/"rel="nofollow"class="external free">http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwikisource/20160305/</a>
</p>
<h3>
<spanclass="mw-headline"id=".28Desktop.29_Command_to_shrink_English_Wikipedia_images_by_8_GB">(Desktop) Command to shrink English Wikipedia images by 8 GB</span>
</h3>
<p>
The total size of English Wikipedia is about 90 GB. 8 GB is from old images: images removed from articles during the day-to-day editing churn.
If you have English Wikipedia and have been following along with the updates, go to <ahref="http://xowa.org/home/wiki/Dashboard/Files/Deletion.html"id="xolnki_17"title="Dashboard/Files/Deletion">Dashboard/Files/Deletion</a> and follow the instructions therein.
<spanclass="mw-headline"id=".28Package.29_Release_of_French_Wikipedia_2016-03">(Package) Release of French Wikipedia 2016-03</span>
</h3>
<p>
I had a request to update French Wikipedia, but have been delaying it for several weeks. I updated French Wiki and uploaded it here: <ahref="https://archive.org/details/Xowa_frwiki_latest"rel="nofollow"class="external free">https://archive.org/details/Xowa_frwiki_latest</a>
<li><ahref="http://dumps.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html"title="Get wiki datababase dumps directly from Wikimedia">Wikimedia dumps</a></li>
<li><ahref="https://archive.org/search.php?query=xowa"title="Search archive.org for XOWA files">XOWA @ archive.org</a></li>
<li><ahref="http://en.wikipedia.org"title="Visit Wikipedia (and compare to XOWA!)">English Wikipedia</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<divclass="portal"id='xowa-portal-donate'>
<h3>Donate</h3>
<divclass="body">
<ul>
<li><ahref="https://archive.org/donate/index.php"title="Support archive.org!">archive.org</a></li><!-- listed first due to recent fire damages: http://blog.archive.org/2013/11/06/scanning-center-fire-please-help-rebuild/ -->
