XOWA

Overview

XOWA is an offline Wikipedia application that lets you run Wikipedia on your computer.

Features

• Run a complete copy of English Wikipedia from your computer.
• Display 5.0+ million articles in full HTML formatting.
• Show images within an article. Access 4.0+ million images using the offline image databases.
• Set up over 800+ other wikis including: English Wiktionary, English Wikisource, English Wikiquote, English Wikivoyage, Non-English wikis (French Wiktionary, German Wikisource, Dutch Wikivoyage), Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons and many more.
• Update your wiki whenever you want, using Wikimedia's database backups.
• Navigate between offline wikis. Click on "Look up this word in Wiktionary" and instantly view the page in Wiktionary.
• Edit articles to remove vandalism or errors.
  
• Install to a flash memory card for portability to other machines.
• Run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. (Android Alpha available)
• Run as an HTTP server to browse from Firefox, Chrome or Safari
• View the HTML source for any wiki page.
• Search for any page by title using a Wikipedia-like Search box. Search across wikis as well.
• Browse pages by alphabetical order using Special:AllPages.
• Find a word on a page.
• Access a history of viewed pages.
• Bookmark your favorite pages.
• Preview articles by hovering over links
• Customize any one of over 50 options

Requirements

XOWA is written in Java and requires 1.7 or above.

Installation

• Download xowa_app_your_operating_system_name.zip from https://github.com/gnosygnu/xowa/releases/
• Unzip to any folder on your hard drive (or flash memory card)
• Run XOWA
  • On '''Windows''', double-click '''C:\xowa\xowa_64.exe'''
  • On '''Linux''', open a terminal and run sh /home/your_user_name/xowa/xowa_linux_64.sh
  • On '''OS X''', open a terminal and run sh /Users/your_user_name/xowa/xowa_macosx_64.sh

Development Info

Dependencies

XOWA has seven dependencies:

• JUnit 4.8.2 (default version with Eclipse)
• SWT 4.5.1
• LuaJ
• JTidy
• SQLite JDBC
• MySQL JDBC
• Postgres JDBC

Compilation instructions (ANT command-line)

Setup the XOWA app

• Download the latest XOWA app package for your operating system. For example, if you're on a 64-bit Linux system, "xowa_app_linux_64_v1.9.5.1.zip".
• Unzip the XOWA app package to a directory. For the sake of simplicity, these instructions assume this directory is "/xowa/"
• Review your directories. You should have the following:
  • An XOWA jar: "/xowa/xowa_linux_64.jar"
  • An XOWA "/bin/any/" directory with several jar files. For example, "/xowa/bin/any/java/apache/commons-compress-1.5.jar"
  • An XOWA "/bin/linux_64/" directory with an SWT jar: "/xowa/bin/linux_64/swt/swt.jar"

Setup the XOWA source

• Download the latest XOWA source archive. For example: "xowa_source_v1.9.5.1.7z"
• Unzip the source to "/xowa/dev". When you're done, you'll have a file called "/xowa/dev/build.xml" as well as others
  • NOTE: if you're not on a Linux 64-bit system, overwrite the swt jar at "/xowa/dev/150_gfui/lib/swt.jar" with the copy from your "/bin/OS" directory. For example, if you're on a 64 bit Windows system, replace "/xowa/dev/150_gfui/lib/swt.jar" with "/bin/windows_64/swt/swt/jar"

Run the ant file

• Open up a console, and run "ant -buildfile build.xml -Dplat_name=linux_64"

IDE instructions (Eclipse)

Environment

The '''xowa_source.7z''' was built with Eclipse Indigo. There are no OS dependencies, nor are there dependencies on Eclipse.

Setup

• Follow the steps in these two sections from above:
  • Setup the XOWA app
  • Setup the XOWA source
• Launch Eclipse. Choose a workbench folder of "/xowa/dev"
• If the projects don't load, do File -> Import -> Existing Projects Into Workspace
• Select all projects. Do File -> Refresh.
• Right-click on 400_xowa in the Package Explorer. Select Debug As -> Java Application. Select Xowa_main. XOWA should launch.
• Right-click on 400_xowa in the Package Explorer. Select Debug As -> JUnit Test. All tests should pass.

Eclipse-specific settings

This section documents specific project customizations that differ from the standard Eclipse defaults.

Project properties

Resource -> Text file encoding -> Other -> UTF-8

Preferences

These settings are available under Window -> Preferences

• Disable Spelling
  • General -> Editors -> Text Editors -> Spelling *Ignore Warnings
  • Java -> Compiler -> Errors/Warnings
    • Annotations -> Unhandled token in '@SuppressWarnings'
    • Potential programming problems -> Serializable class without serialVersionUID
    • Generic Types -> Unnecessary generic type operation (In Eclipse Luna: "Unchecked generic type operation")
    • Generic Types -> Usage of a raw type
    • Unnecessary Code -> Unused import

Configuration arguments

• Configuration arguments
  • Run -> Debug Configurations -> Arguments
    • --root_dir /xowa/ --show_license n --show_args n

License

XOWA is released under the AGPLv3 license. See LICENSE.txt for more information.