Difference between revisions of "Mission"

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== The great Goals ==
Our mission is to '''make web content available offline''', with a primary focus on [http://www.wikipedia.org Wikipedia] and [http://www.wikimedia.org/ other Wikimedia projects].
Our target is to make Wiki content offline available, especially contents from Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia.


The general goals we want to achieve:
We focus on extracting and encoding data from [http://www.mediawiki.org Mediawiki] for offline use. We would like to also add support for other [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_engine wiki engines] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system content management systems] so that this can become a ubiquitous file format for offline usages.
* the file format is the most efficient and works on all platforms, embedded devices and desktop computers
* the file format is used by all kind of publishers and even outside the Wikimedia community
* both reader applications and content files are freely interchangeable
* everyone can implement software for this file format because it is an open and documented standard
* there is at least one free implementation which is open source
* the free implementation can be used easily in other software to make it easy to use the file format without having to implement it


== Our way to achieve these Goals ==
We even believe the file format could be flexible enough to support any kind of web data:
=== The [[ZIM File Format]] ===
* The ZIM file format is the most efficient and works on all platforms, embedded devices and desktop computers.
* compresses 900.000 articles (full german Wikipedia beginning 2009) to only 1.3 GB
* The ZIM file format is used by all kind of publishers, even outside the Wikimedia community.
* features a fulltext search index
* Both ZIM reader applications and ZIM files are freely interchangeable.
* features native category and image handling similar to MediaWiki
* Everyone can implement software for ZIM files because it is in a open and documented standard.
* is fully documented on this website - [[ZIM File Format]]
* There is at least one free implementation which is open source ([https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html GPLv2]), the [[libzim]].
* if you need help implementing it just contact our [[Mailinglists|mailinglist]]
* The [[libzim]] can be used easily in other software to make it easy to use the file format without having to implement it.
* we are working on a [[ZIM File Archive]] to provide a central place to publish ZIM files including mirroring etc.


=== The openZIM implementation ===
== See also ==
* is all free and open source (GPL)
* [[Features]]
* is based on [[ZIMlib]], a library written in C++
* [[Roadmap]]
* provides a [[ZIMwriter]] to create ZIM files from a HTML dump (eg. a prepared database)
* provides a [[ZIMreader]] as an example how to read ZIM files; ZIMreader acts as a local webserver
* there are some more tools such as the [[ZIMdumper]] to have a look into ZIM files or check them
 
== What openZIM is NOT ==
* we are not going to create Wikipedia dumps or publishing own content in ZIM files
* we are a team of volunteers and enthusiasts, not a business
* we might not be able to provide you with a implementation in your favourite programming language
* maybe we can not add a feature especially for you (if it doesn't fit in the openZIM goals)

Latest revision as of 13:05, 24 January 2022

Our mission is to make web content available offline, with a primary focus on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

We focus on extracting and encoding data from Mediawiki for offline use. We would like to also add support for other wiki engines and content management systems so that this can become a ubiquitous file format for offline usages.

We even believe the file format could be flexible enough to support any kind of web data:

  • The ZIM file format is the most efficient and works on all platforms, embedded devices and desktop computers.
  • The ZIM file format is used by all kind of publishers, even outside the Wikimedia community.
  • Both ZIM reader applications and ZIM files are freely interchangeable.
  • Everyone can implement software for ZIM files because it is in a open and documented standard.
  • There is at least one free implementation which is open source (GPLv2), the libzim.
  • The libzim can be used easily in other software to make it easy to use the file format without having to implement it.

See also