Wikivoyage talk:Offline Expedition

Kiwix size halved. Any big cleaning recently?

Swept in from the pub

Surprisingly, the Kiwix file for September is only 447 MB, versus 928 MB in August. In the past it had always been growing.

Has there been some huge cleanup recently? Or have you heard about any change that might explain that? I am using the Kiwix file and it seems to contain everything (images, destinations, guides, phrasebooks) so I don't think it is a bug in the Kiwix generation algorithm. Syced (talk) 03:46, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Only change I can think of is the new method of handling pagebanner. --Traveler100 (talk) 04:33, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Are the file counts similar? (between old and new)

The size is mostly comprised of images, and therefore logically that is probably where the change has happened. Maybe you can check some of the larger images and see if they are being packaged at lower resolution than before. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:38, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

@Syced: / @Andrewssi2:: I'm looking into this, still at a preliminary stage but it would appear that the September ZIM has about seven thousand less articles than the August one. Still doesn't account for the big difference, but explains part of it. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 19:31, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Looking further into this, it seems like the difference mainly comes from about 7k missing images and not from articles missing. In fact, the articles folder is about 2MB bigger than it was, while the image folder is about half the size. These appear to be, at least to some extent the banner images. If you load up the August ZIM, you will see that banner images are not displayed anyway, so while further research is needed to verify exactly what kind of images are missing, I suspect it might just be images that were not displayed to begin with, and the system has just gotten better at excluding them. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 20:10, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

That sounds wonderful, I hope your assumption is true :-) I have been using this ZIM extensively and haven't noticed anything missing so far. Syced (talk) 00:48, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Could it be because more than a thousand banners have been moved to Wikidata a few days ago? Or the fact that banners are now rendered by the new banner extension rather than by normal templates? Syced (talk) 06:35, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

That seems the cause, yes. Since the banners weren't being displayed in Kiwix even before this however, no loss of functionality occurred. Further analysis shows that out of 7k+ images that were not included in the lastest ZIM, only 415 do not contain some form of the word "banner" in their name. A cursory glance at a couple of those images seem to show that even those 415 are still in some greater or lesser part banners. See User:Snowolf/zim dumps issue#Statistics of the diff between 08/I and 09/I for that data. I think we can safely consider this issue "solved". Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 01:02, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Was there a mass deletion of images in Wikivoyage since last month?

Swept in from the pub

Hi, I believe this is the correct place to bring this issue.

Kiwix is a software that makes the whole Wikivoyage available offline, with pictures, and I recommend it.

The issue is that their big September file of English Wikivoyage has dropped to about half the size of previous months. The maintainer (Kelson) could find no error from their part in principle, and it seemed to him that there was some massive deletion of images from August to September. This sounded strange to both of us. The tendency is for Wikimedia projects to always increase in size and nothing ever be deleted.

Can anybody confirm if anything like this happened and is correct?

If you think you can help solve the mystery, please enter in contact with Kelson.

The conversation happened here: http://sourceforge.net/p/kiwix/discussion/604121/thread/353a8701/#22ff

Thanks ! —The preceding comment was added by 198.8.80.22 (talk • contribs)

A similar question was asked above in the #Kiwix size halved. Any big cleaning recently? thread. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:58, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

@198.8.80.22: I've commented in the thread above that Ryan links to. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 19:32, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Printing sections of articles

Swept in from the pub

Is it possible to export as a PDF or, even better, as a book only sections of an article. For example, if I know I am going to fly somewhere I don't need the information on how to get there by boat! 137.157.8.253 02:56, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Quick solution One thing that you can do in a pinch is if you have a userpage, you can create something like User:Koavf/Sections I need and then use the "Print/export" options there. If you want, you can attach the "delete template" to the page after you are done and an admin will delete it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:31, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you so much for the quick response, that does exactly what I needed AusKat (talk) 21:38, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Just a thought...

Hi, I was just reading this page, and I just had a few thoughts, namely about the Desirable features section. Reading the Reading articles offline bullet point, I thought maybe when the reader downloads articles for offline use, they could have some sort of comments box or something similar where they can write notes about the location they're visiting. So they can write if a certain restaurant has closed or if they stayed somewhere which was really good which wasn't on the Wikivoyage article. They could also upload photos they take of attractions etc. all of which are uploaded to the page's talk page when they get an internet connection so another editor (or the person who wrote the notes) can update the article later. (This is different to the current suggestion there as it suggests that they actually edit the page, while I'm suggesting they write notes/comments). I also thought that there could be some sort of "service" where readers can ask other editors for a specially compiled book or collection of offline articles for download. So for example, if someone wanted to visit the south of France - but didn't know exactly where, they could click a button on the side of the page (similar to the Wikipedia link) and say what they wanted to see there and what they wanted to do, and another editor could compile a list of articles in the south of France that they think would be of interest to that reader based on what they asked for. (Or is this too similar to the docent system?) This is just me having a few thoughts, maybe this'll be used later, maybe not? Anyway, thanks.  Seagull123  Φ  17:51, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

PDF Download Format

Swept in from the pub

May be dead topic; if so, my apologies...

Currently, the default format is two columns, in contrast to what we edit and read on-line. Am blessed with add-on for Firefox that converts on-line article to same format as seen on screen. I find it far more readable, e.g., reach end of page, continue on next page. With dual columns, after reading to bottom of left column, must "page-up" 2-3 times to continue at top of right column.

So...can we re-visit the default PDF format...or offer a choice of format as WV builds the download? Best regards to all, and have wonderful holidays and entire new year, Hennejohn talk) 18:32, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Strong support. At a minimum, the more readable single column format should be the default. I see no reason to even offer two columns as an option, but I will not object if others do provided it is not the default. Pashley (talk) 18:53, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Having tried to use the two column output on a small kindle the other week, yes I think it would be a good idea to move t other formatting. --Traveler100 (talk) 19:35, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't follow. (Nor do I see what this has to do with grayed-out maps.) The PDF download format is two columns because narrower columns are more readable when printed out. Wikitravel Press guidebooks used a two-column format, as do many other printed guidebooks. In what way is a single-column format more readable? Surely we don't expect readers to use the PDFs as their primary on-line viewing mode? Powers ^(talk) 19:54, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

I've changed the heading for this thread to second-level so that it doesn't appear as a sub-discussion of the previous maps thread. -- Ryan • (talk) •

I'll support a change. Ideally it would be best to have a user preference when generating the PDF, but in the absence of that capability, if we have to choose between single column or multiple columns I think a single column is more readable. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:15, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Online, yes, but surely not in print? On an 8.5x11 sheet of paper, with what looks to be 10-point text? Have you tried actually printing it out in a single column and reading the entire article? Powers ^(talk) 02:46, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I would be shocked if most people generating PDFs are actually printing those PDFs to paper. Instead, I would bet heavily that the majority will use the PDF on a tablet or similar device. -- Ryan • (talk) • 03:40, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I have not actually printed it (do not have a printer while travelling) but I have generated a PDF and looked at it. The two-column format is appalling. No question single column would be better both online & printed. 12-point text might also be an improvement, but that is not the question here. Pashley (talk) 03:42, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I support changing to single column. Two columns may look good when printed professionally, but on a cheap home printer I am not sure. I mainly use pdfs for saving for reading on a computer, and as I an travelling at the moment I also have a load of saved on my phone (not WV articles as I have a WV app). AlasdairW (talk) 10:07, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Really? I thought also consumer grade printers of today were adequate for printing text. If you want decent one-column output you have to have a big font and wide margins, and I think having our articles on as few sheets as possible is important for the dead wood version. We can of course abandon dead wood as a well supported medium, but then we should do that consciously.

For reading on a display, two columns on a "sheet" taller than the screen is of course awful. The main problem is that PDF by design does not adapt to the device – which HTML was designed to do. Is there a page layout that is universally usable on portable devices? Why are our PDFs better than our HTML on some of them?

--LPfi (talk) 11:13, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Are the PDFs used because saving HTML versions for offline use is badly supported in web browsers and other software? What about generating archives (pkzip or similar)? --LPfi (talk) 11:16, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree completely with LPfi. Single-column formats in print are unsuited to large page sizes. (There's already a way to print out a single-column format anyway: just print the web page.) Generating PDFs for offline use on electronic devices is a kludge; PDFs are designed for printing. If there is a need for an offline format different from the native online HTML, then we should address that problem, rather than codifying the kludge as the default usage of our printable PDF functionality. Powers ^(talk) 20:28, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Here is a document that explains ideal column widths. It looks like our current PDFs average 45-60 characters per column, which is near ideal. In a single-column format we'd have over 100, which is far too many for readability. You could increase the point size, but then you're using more paper and doing more scrolling. Powers ^(talk) 20:43, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Good points all. I constantly use PDF downloads for travel with laptop. However, before putting them there, I read each article carefully and add highlighting or comments wherever important to the destination and needed as quick reminders. The "research" greatly adds to our travel experience and trouble avoidance. Perhaps we can "fix" PDF columns (with its useful features) for now, then pursue HTML solution(s) when feasible across browsers and offering at least similar user capabilities. OR, I could just use the editor add-on installed for Firefox that converts articles to PDF. Again, very best regards, Hennejohn (talk) 20:34, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikisurfer for Wikivoyage

Just came across this app on the Apple App Store, Wikisurfer for Wikivoyage. It isn't listed on this page, but I don't know what the criteria are for being listed, so I'm just writing this here. Part of the description from the App Store includes, "A mobile app for Wikivoyage™, a free worldwide travel guide. ... WikiSurfer was built by Avelgood Apps straight off from the code for the official Wikipedia™ Mobile app developed by the Wikimedia Foundation." Then at the end it says, "Wikivoyage and Wikipedia are trademarks ... and are used with permission of the Wikimedia Foundation. ... 5% of revenue from this app will be donated to the Wikimedia Foundation." It also says they are not endorsed or affiliated by the WMF. Link to app description. I'm just wondering whether Wikivoyage already knew about this app or not. It's free, so the 5% revenue thing does confuse me a bit and it's also apparently available on the Google Play store. I don't think this is a 'problem' or anything, I'm just wondering whether this should be on the list or not. (another, possibly relevant link: ).  Seagull123  Φ  21:15, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Pocket Earth iOS App

It's not noted on the Project Page and as a new contributor and not a expedition member I feel not for me to add it but PocketEarth iOS app https://pocketearth.com also downloads WikiVoyage data for offline use. It's a mapping app and has a Settings option to control is WV data should also be downloaded for offline use (for the same areas as the offline mapping has been downloaded for0. i have the app but not really used it much. Don't know if anybody wants to dd it to the Project page. PsamatheM (talk) 22:24, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

• There is a short list of offline apps reusing Wikivoyage content at Wikivoyage:Database dump#Applications
• Web sites mirroring Wikivoyage for online use are listed at Wikivoyage:List of content re-users.

It may make more sense to list existing, proprietary apps there as the "expedition" pages are WikiProjects, project pages for the co-ordination of efforts to create something open and new. K7L (talk) 23:52, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Offline Wikivoyage partly broken

Swept in from the pub

Does anyone know which code is used to convert the listings into static htmls, that are part of the offline ZIM archives? kartographer, or something else? Or even better - is there some "developer overview" of wikivoyage? Currently, the offline dump has broken indices (all listings are "1") - and I'd say also some static copy (at least a screenshot with some link to online wikivoyage perhaps?) of the dynamic maps wouldn't hurt. Andree.sk (talk) 09:43, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I know this problem form the German archives, too. Some weeks ago the Kiwix team changed the creation of the archives. In the past they were derived from the Vector skin, but now from mobile skin. It seems that the CSS styles are missing, too. We had to prepare a failure ticket to the Kiwix team. --RolandUnger (talk) 07:15, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

What mobile apps are there to use wikivoyage on the road?

Swept in from the pub

Hello everyone,

whenever I'm planning a trip I prepare the potential places I visit as PDF exports from WV. Are there any good offline apps for WikiVoyage I might have missed?

Cheers, Spekulatius2410 (talk)

There's the wikivoyage app. Its one major flaw is that it does not include dynamic maps. Ar2332 (talk) 09:37, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

AFAIR the wikivoyage app wasn't updated too regularly, so the normal kiwix app+downloading wikivoyage data was better... but anyway, see Wikivoyage:Offline_Expedition. -- andree.sk(talk) 07:48, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, that was my experience as well. The data seemed rather outdated. Spekulatius2410 (talk) 08:42, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

A function I sometimes find eating in the app is to make notes for edits to make in the future. And more frequent updates of the underlying data. Last I checked the Costa Rica data was from 2016. Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:52, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Spekulatius2410, I think OSMand's travel guide functionality is great. --Renek78 (talk) 11:01, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Mobile readers

Swept in from the pub

Some of you may be interested in this new page: mw:Recommendations for mobile friendly articles WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:37, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Unfortunately some of the points go against the readability on desktop. E.g. putting infobox after the main text will likely cause the floating infobox (or photo, weatherbox, whatever) to show up after the section where it belongs... :-/ -- andree.sk(talk) 05:13, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

How can I code a page so its format is slightly different on mobile and desktop? --Traveler100 (talk) 08:07, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

One of the main authors is a regular editor here: pinging Jon. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:35, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

We have code that moves the infobox above the lead paragraph on mobile, so provided when you add an infobox you test this on mobile, you should be fine. With regards to "code a page so its format is slightly different on mobile and desktop", ideally you wouldn't want mobile/desktop to have different HTML, but you can certainly target styles at different skins (for which the mobile site is one - mw:Skin:MinervaNeue) mw:Extension:TemplateStyles. What specifically are you trying to fix? Hopefully with that information I can be of more use. Jdlrobson (talk) 15:54, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Oh, OK, didn't know about such thing... but it only applies to infoboxes, not images or other floating templates, right? I actually didn't see any infobox problems - but if I put e.g. {{climate chart}} after the text, then it is placet at the line where it's added (instead of e.g. floating from the beginning of the previous paragraph). So I guess a similar 'move when mobile' action could be done there too...? Also I'd like if floating templates had "higher priority" than pictures (which typically overflow through many sections), but that's probably not too easy to do w/ CSS only... -- andree.sk(talk) 19:15, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Questions ware related to Travel topics which is fine as two columns for desktop but looks better with one. Travel topics/sandbox, on mobile. --Traveler100 (talk) 05:10, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

User:Jdlrobson, Template:Infobox here looks a lot more like w:en:Template:Side box than like w:en:Template:Infobox. It's almost never put at the top of the page, either. See Wikivoyage:Information boxes or examples in Aarhus#Architecture, Albania#Money, or Athens#See. Is this particular piece of advice relevant? I'm not sure that the infobox CSS is present, either, so the re-arranging trick probably either doesn't work (and if it does, is it going to make things weird in the middle of the article?). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:59, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

I think this relates more to the advice around using Table based layouts. TemplateStyles would definitely help here - we could have one column for mobile and two for desktop!! A good start would be to create a template for the wrapper e.g. TopicBoxCollection. Once we have that and it works nicely on desktop, we can use TemplateStyles to format it nicely on mobile. I'd love to help fix this and point to it as an example!

Can we replace

{|align=center style="border: 1px solid #44718a; border-radius: 0.45em; margin-top: -3.5px;" 
|-
| colspan="2" style="background: #eaf3ff;"|

with something like this?:

{{TopicBoxCollection
  {{Topicbox|title=Accommodation...}}
  {{Topicbox|title=Events...}}
}}

Jdlrobson (talk) 22:11, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

epub format

Any way to automatically make epubs that collect all articles about a state/region?

Wikivoyage offline Android app updated

Swept in from the pub

The Android app has finally been updated: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kiwix.kiwixcustomwikivoyage

Europe only: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kiwix.kiwixcustomwikivoyageeurope

As before, it does not require any Internet connection. Enjoy reading Wikivoyage even while kayaking across the Caribbeans! :-)

Syced (talk) 02:44, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Excellent app. Going to try that out when I travel to Europe in February (again). This raises a question. Why aren't our country pages have the national flag of the country? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:56, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Why do you think they should? Anyway, the answer is that a decision was made that it's not important for readers to see a country's flag before they visit the country. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:13, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Where was the discussion about this decision? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:59, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

@Syced: Any chance of an open-source version of the app? ARR8 (talk) 05:57, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

It is open source :-) https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-android-custom/tree/master/wikivoyage https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-android Syced (talk) 08:25, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

@Syced: That's great to hear! Follow-up question: any chance of an F-Droid release for those of us without Google Play services? ARR8 (talk) 22:46, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

I opened a request: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/rfp/issues/827 Syced (talk) 14:06, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! ARR8 (talk) 01:29, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

[unindent] OhanaUnited, one discussion about flags was at Wikivoyage talk:Listings/Archive 2006–2013#Flags at the beginning of embassy/consulate listings and I remember a much more recent discussion about flag icons being used in prose sections about which countries' citizens were available for what kind of visa to countries x, y and z (that got some very negative response and was shelved). However, I think starting a discussion at Wikivoyage talk:Country article template would be more relevant for you. So go ahead. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:57, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

@Syced: Having sideloaded the app and tried it, I found it very useful, and I'm glad all the content is there! I found a couple of bugs, though. It's possible you know about these, but: there is a large white space beneath every image; tapping on map markers throws an error; the wikipedia and wikidata icons for listings are displayed but have no link; and, after bookmarking enough pages, the app will no longer launch and requires a reset. I would also find it much easier to search for redirects to articles, if that is possible. I am running Android Pie. Please let me know if I can help troubleshoot in any way. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 15:51, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

@ARR8: Thanks for using the app! Would you mind creating an issue for each of these problems at https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-android-custom/issues ? Thanks! Syced (talk) 10:58, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Done, but I'm having some trouble reproducing the crash bug. I'll post it if I can. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 20:01, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Reverting or saving old versions of articles on an Android

Swept in from the pub

I don't see any way to do this, and that sucks. How is it done, and how should the programmers make it evident? We are going to have more and more cellphone users, and if we keep a 90s-style display and user interface for cellphones, they will leave quickly, in disgust. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:37, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

I noticed and used a rollback button on the recent change in Recent changes patrol, but I would have rather reverted with an edit summary, and most users don't have rollback buttons. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:43, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Are you using the mobile web site, or does the Android app support Wikivoyage? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:01, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

I was using the mobile site. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:31, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

w:en:User:FR30799386/undo might be a usable workaround. It seems to me that one of the dev teams was talking about this limitation recently, but I can't find any notes right now, and I don't remember which one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:11, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, but I'm unlikely to be motivated enough to add more software for this, as I usually edit on my laptop. But if that extension works, it should be added to standard Wiki code for everyone's convenience. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:19, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Recommended Android app

Swept in from the pub

I tried searching is there some recommended Android app using https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?search=Android&title=Special:Search&go=Go

So far I found https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kiwix.kiwixcustomwikivoyage but I am wondering is there some sensible alternative, preferably one that is open source with basic documentation allowing to contribute to it Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 16:39, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

@Mateusz Konieczny: See above. I had the same concern; that app is open source. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 16:42, 10 January 2019 (UTC)