Blog

Release: v4.2.0.1702 (2017-02-11 10:00 Sun)

The PC version is a major release. It adds support for personal wikis.

The Android version has no release.

(PC) Support creation of personal wikis. See App/Personal_wikis

A user was kind enough to suggest supporting personal wikis. These are standalone wikis that are entirely created and edited by a user. A reddit thread was created and there looks like there's some interest in the worldbuilding community:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/5t35ys/i_finally_found_a_wikipedialike_desktop_program/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/xowa/comments/5t3ead/worldbuilders_test_feedback_thread/

To use it, do the following:

• From the Main Menu, do Personal wikis -> New personal wiki
• Fill out domain, name, folder
• Press the Save icon
• Experiment in the new wiki

I've used the XOWA home wiki as a personal wiki for over three years, and find it useful. Hopefully others will as well.

(PC) Add minor changes to Download Central

There were basically two minor changes:

• A minus icon to remove items from the Available list.
• Moving items between the list add them back to the correct spot (instead of at the bottom of the list)

Next release

• New 2017-02 wikis: I'm almost done uploading 2017-02 English Wikipedia, but am waiting on archive.org to release some things. I've hit a snag in terms of building new wikis as my Linux box is effectively broken. I'm going to rebuild it this week, but that may set me back
• Shrinking XOWA wikis: I'll also release a deletion database for 2017-02 English Wikipedia. The final size of images should be around 92 GB
• Personal wikis: Depending on feedback from others, I may work on personal wiki features.

Release: v4.1.0.1702 (2017-02-04 21:00 Sat)

The PC version is a major release. It adds a new in-app updater and better support for images in custom wikis

The Android version has no release.

(PC) Add new in-app updater

v4.1.0 has a new in-app updater. It has two main features:

• A new page to show any pending updates : This can be reached by doing Help -> Update XOWA or by going to Special:XowaAppUpdate
• An in-app update feature : If an update is availabe, it can be installed with a click of a button.

More info is available at App/Setup/Update/In-app

(PC) Add better support for images in Wikia and other custom wikis

XOWA had only minimal support for images in Wikia wikis. However, as a result of tickets #124 and #125, the following changes were made:

• Images in the File namespace will now show: For example, https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/File:Keyboard_shortcuts.svg . Note that clicking on an image here will also open it up in the image viewer.
• File names with spaces are automatically renamed to use underscores: For example, SpellIcon PsionicBlast.png will be renamed to SpellIcon_PsionicBlast.png
• SVG thumbnails will now use ".png" instead of ".svg": For example, "C:\xowa\file\nethackwiki.com\thumb\8\3\f\d\Keyboard_shortcuts.svg\800px.png"
• View HTML will now show the img src and width info: For example, <img id="xoimg_1" alt="File%3AKeyboard+shortcuts.svg" src="file:///D:/xowa_temp/file/nethackwiki.com/thumb/8/3/f/d/Keyboard_shortcuts.svg/800px.png" width="800" height="293" />
• Images are now integrated directly into the app file cache: See home/wiki/Special:XowaCfg?grp=xowa.files.general. This means that a separate thumbs directory is no longer generated
• A startup script is no longer needed: No startup script is needed at home/wiki/Special:XowaCfg?grp=xowa.app.startup. XOWA now automatically assumes that all non-WMF wikis will have offline files in the wiki directory. For example, C:\\xowa\\wiki\\your_wiki\\file\\orig\\
• Updated instructions: Instructions were updated at http://xowa.org/home/wiki/App/Wiki_types/Wikia.com

(PC) Fix Random not working for HTML databases

This was reported in issue #121: https://github.com/gnosygnu/xowa/issues/121

Basically, the Random feature was not working for wikis downloaded through Download Central.

Thanks to Ope30 for reporting the issue

(PC) Add Creative Commons footer to bottom of page

This was a minor request made by Ope30 also. Pages will now show the Creative Commons footer at the bottom of the page. I also redesigned the footer as well.

Next release

• New 2017-02 wikis: I skipped the 2017-01 series due to personal reasons. I should have a 2017-02 English Wikipedia in the coming week
• Shrinking XOWA wikis: I'm going to try to reduce the size of the XOWA wikis. Among other things, I'm planning to remove obsolete images (images once used, but since removed) and also do some configurable downloads for Category / other namespaces