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

Release: NONE (2016-08-28 22:00 Sun)

I'm postponing the release till tomorrow night. I uploaded 2016-08 English and German Wikipedia, but there are a few minor tweaks I want to make before release.

Thanks.

Release: NONE (2016-08-21 20:00 Sun)

I'm skipping the release this week. I'm still working on the 2016-08 English Wikipedia. I am close, but I still don't have a clean HTML dump yet. Please check again next week.

Release: v3.8.3.1 (2016-08-14 20:00 Sun)

The PC version has no release.

The Android version has a trivial release to fix an uncommon crash when starting XOWA.

(Android) Fix app crash when starting XOWA: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{org.xowa/org.wikipedia.page.PageActivity}

Some quick details:

  • I've received two reports of this crash, but haven't been able to reproduce it.
  • The crash would occur when XOWA is starting. I think it has to do with resuming XOWA after Android has slept.
  • Starting XOWA a second time would work without a problem.

For this version, I added better guards against null references around the cited code. Thanks to the anonymous users who sent me the crash reports

Next release: v3.8.4

  • Wikis: I didn't finish 2016-08 English Wikipedia this week. I'm making a lot of significant changes to handle several minor issues. They primarily affect packed galleries, image maps, and certain video files (particularly .ogg ones). I should be on schedule for releasing 2016-08 English Wikipedia for next Monday's release.
  • Dynamic update of wiki pages: I didn't do anything on this issue this week as English Wikipedia took all my time. I'll put aside time for this week.

Release: v3.8.2.1 (2016-08-07 19:30 Sun)

The PC version is a major release. It fixes random "SSL peer shut down incorrectly" when downloading, "Script Error:Module Protection expiry" on many en.w pages, and some parser issues on pl.w.

The Android version has no release.

(Wiki) Publish 2016-07 Polish Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, and Wikinews

The 2016-07 versions of the Polish wikis are up. You can get them through Download Central.

(PC) Fix random "SSL peer shut down incorrectly" when downloading database dumps

In the past week, XOWA would fail while downloading database dumps from the Wikimedia servers at https://dumps.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html . After some investigation, it looks like Wikimedia is currently resetting all connections at the 17 and 47 minute mark of every hour (EX: 1:17, 1:47, 2:17, 2:47, etc.) . For more info, see https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/xmldatadumps-l/2016-August/001325.html

As the issue is still ongoing, I'm going to point XOWA to default to http://your.org instead. Note that your.org is an official backup as per https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mirroring_Wikimedia_project_XML_dumps .

If you want to change your.org to point elsewhere, do the following:

  • Go to home/wiki/Options/Import
  • Change "Dump servers" to the following
https://dumps.wikimedia.org/,
http://dumps.wikimedia.your.org/,
http://wikipedia.c3sl.ufpr.br/,
http://ftp.fi.muni.cz/pub/wikimedia/
  • Press "Save"

Many thanks to Kevin Day and your.org for their assistance and support with this issue.

(PC) Fix "Script error:Module:Effective protection expiry" for many English Wikipedia pages

The 2016-07-20 version of English Wikipedia would show "Script error" on many pages. This was due to a minor typo on my side for "infinite" vs "infinity". It is fixed with of this release.

Thanks to William to reporting this issue.

(PC) Fix parser issues for Polish Wikipedia pages, including location maps and broken infoboxes

Polish Wikipedia required two major changes:

  • Location maps weren't showing due to issues with JSON parsing.
  • Some infoboxes were garbled because of incorrect parsing of <ref%> tags.

Next release: v3.8.3

  • Wikis: I'm working on 2016-08 English Wikipedia now, and want to add a few fixes for this HTML dump release. Unfortunately, the new HTML generator is not ready yet, so English Wikipedia will probably take the full week.
  • Dynamic update of wiki pages: I added "wikimedia API" calls this week. I'm going to work on recursively parsing all templates for this week.requested in https://github.com/gnosygnu/xowa/issues/72 . This will probably take a few weeks. For next week, I'm going to work on the simpler "wikimedia API" calls
  • Redlinks for HTTP Server: This has kept slipping for a few weeks. I'm going to table this for now, and come back to it later.
  • mwad integration with the status bar: I'm also tabling this as well.

Release: v3.8.1.1 (2016-07-31 19:30 Sun)

The PC version is a minor release. It fixes a bug with "invalid title" when clicking on the left-hand sidebar.

The Android version is a minor release. It fixes a random crash when restarting the app while downloading wikis

(Wiki) Publish 2016-07 Arabic Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, and Wikinews

The 2016-07 versions of the Arabic wikis are up. You can get them through Download Central.

(PC) Fix "invalid title" when clicking on wikis in left-hand nav

This was kindly reported by markusmaresch in https://github.com/gnosygnu/xowa/issues/73 . Basically, clicking on a wiki in the left-hand sidebar would fail with "invalid title". This was due to some changes I made with the UI in a recent release.

v3.8.1 fixes the issue

(PC) Minor wikibase update for "renderSnaks"

Wikidata (www.wikidata.org), or "Wikibase", is a continually evolving project. French Wikipedia started using two new methods recently: renderSnaks and renderSnak. I added support for these calls in this release. I also cleaned up some Wikibase code.

(Android) Fix random failure when restarting XOWA while downloading wikis

A helpful anonymous user forwarded me a crash report for XOWA Android. Sometimes, XOWA Android would fail to restart when in the process of downloading wikis from Download Central. This was broken since the initial release of Download Central.

This fix was pushed out by a separate Play Store release last week. It is included formally in the apk-build now.

Next release: v3.8.2

  • Wikis: I'm going to work on Polish this week.
  • New HTML database generator: I'm still been plugging away at the HTML generator. It's closer to 99% now, and I'll start phasing it in over the next few releases.
  • Dynamic update of wiki pages: This was requested in https://github.com/gnosygnu/xowa/issues/72 . This will probably take a few weeks. For next week, I'm going to work on the simpler "wikimedia API" calls.
  • Redlinks for HTTP Server: This too has also slipped another week.
  • mwad integration with the status bar: Another week of slippage here as well.

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