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[[image:android.jpg|right|150px|Android logo]] | [[image:android.jpg|right|150px|Android logo]] | ||
Ever more people use [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Smartphone smartphones] as a medium for their digital life. This is especially the case in emerging countries, which are targeted by Kiwix. We think [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Android_%28operating_system%29 Android] will be the most important mobile platform in the next years, especially for the cheapest devices. Android is in addition, [http://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance unlike the Apple AppStore], open to free software. Consequently, our next big step is to port Kiwix to Android. | |||
The [http://www.wikimedia.org Wikimedia Fundation] is really interested in the Android | The [http://www.wikimedia.org Wikimedia Fundation] is really interested in the Android version and financially supports the development of this port. | ||
We focus on tablets because this seems to be there where Kiwix can help a lot, especially in India, but the software should also run on smartphones | We focus on tablets because this seems to be there where Kiwix can help a lot, especially in India, but the software should also run on smartphones and we will do our best in that way. | ||
== Technology == | == Technology == | ||
We do not want to start | We do not want to start a separate project, which would generate a lot of additional code to develop and maintain. So, the current Kiwix code base has to be reused and ported. Kiwix runs currently with the help of [https://developer.mozilla.org/fr/xulrunner Xulrunner], but it also runs perfectly using Firefox. [https://developer.mozilla.org/en/getting_started_with_xulrunner#Alternative.3a_Use_Firefox3_-app_to_run_XUL_apps Firefox can since version 3 launch third party software], like Kiwix. [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Fennec Fennec], Firefox for mobiles, was launched a few month ago for Android, so we hope that Kiwix could be ported to Android using Fennec or something similar (see [http://joliclic.free.fr/blog/index.php?category/mozilla this example]). | ||
== Challenges == | == Challenges == | ||
One difficulty is that Android devices have [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM ARM] CPUs. So we need to cross-compile Kiwix for ARM on GNU/Linux. We | One difficulty is that Android devices have [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM ARM] CPUs. So we need to cross-compile Kiwix for ARM on GNU/Linux. We know that it's possible to cross-compile Firefox Mobile; we also know that part of our code compiles for ARM because we have ported kiwix-serve... but we never did it for the whole software. | ||
Porting a Xulrunner application to Android is not documented and it seems we are one of the first projects trying to do that. Here are three different approaches: | Porting a Xulrunner application to Android is not documented and it seems we are one of the first projects trying to do that. Here are three different approaches: |
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