Berlin 2015

This page summarizes the action plan for the Kiwix winter hackathon 2015. This hackathon has not a special motto but has for purpose to gather the developers who are currently the most involved in the developement of openZIM/Kiwix.

Goals

Kiwix-plug for RaspberryPi

Kiwix-plug works already with RasberryPi but this still needs a little bit work to have a public ready industrial solution.

Content/Download manger for Android

Kiwix for Android lacks a content manager allowing to quickly download/load/remove content within the app and without using the web browser

Better library system based on OPDS

The current solution based on a custom format has many flaws (the most important one being that it does not scale correctly). We should adopt a more standard & better format (based on) OPDS.

Kiwix for the Web

Kiwix for the Web development has already been started within the Evopedia project. The hackathon should be the occasion to release a first version.

Integrate geo-coordinates to the ZIM specs & standard library

World is going mobile and Kiwix users more an more have a device with geolocation abilities. User want to be able to search content based on geo-coordinates.

Make KA Lite interoperable with ZIM

Output forecast

Kiwix library online OPDS backend

• Server-side solution to feed a SQLite library database (probably by extending manageContentRepository.pl)
• OPDS service able to read the SQLite database and provide list/search features (to be newly developed in PHP or Python)

OPDS ready library/download manager

• New Android app release using OPDS backend with a iOS/PC like lirbrary/download manager

Kiwix for the Web

• Launch a first version of web app
• Upgrade jszim to fix the few last issues and release a first official release

Kiwix-plug for Raspberry Pi

• Upgrade current solution to work as good with Raspberry Pi than with Dreamplug (clean and improve current draft of solution)
• Try to install and benchmark XSCE/Kwiizi/Ideasbox/edupi

Geo-localisation

• Release new version of zimlib with geoloc. index support
• Patch zimwriterfs to generate ZIM files with geoloc. index
• Upgrade ios/Android app to have a minimal support of this feature

KA Lite

• Kiwix will be able to have the latest static Khan Academy Video contents exported for any given language that exists in KA Lite.
• KA Lite will be able to import ZIM contents so content from Kiwix can be turned into a KA Lite channel

Achievements

• Speed up Kiwix wiki by cleaning automatically content library history page.
• Allow kiwix-serve to listen only on a specific interface (works on OSX & Linux) Feature request #935
• Migrating all Sourceforge git code repository to Github
• Finish kiwix-plug port for RaspberryPi(2)
• Create, mentor and merge patches of 5 GCI tasks (mostly for Kiwix for Android)
• Welcome a new developer with his code to add support of Xapian (fulltext search) in Kiwix for Android.

Impact

• The improved versions (better content manager and new "near by" function) are longstanding feature requests. With them we will hopefully get more mobile satisfied users.
• Javascript is going to be the most portable language and this is therefore important to be able to release a first version of a zim library in this language.
• The Web is the ultime agnostic plateform. Having a Kiwix for the web allows us to provide a solution to everyone to read ZIM files.
• RaspberryPi is the most famous cheap computer on the market et would allow us to propose kiwix-plus ~100 USD cheaper than with the Dreamplug. It's important to be able to install kiwix-plug on it.
• This hackathon is also important on the personal level to be able to meet 3 new Kiwix developers who have done a serious job in the last 12 months.
• Releasing a new version of Android will automatically make Kiwix appearing in the F-Droid FOSS app store.

Method

5 developers meet during a week to make this steps forward.

Place

Berlin, Germany

Agenda

3th -> 10th January 2016 (1 week, Sunday to Sunday)

People

• Emmanuel
• Mossroy
• Rashiq
• Christian
• Benjamin

Costs

• Flight Mossroy: ~ 200 CHF
• Flight Kelson: ~ 200 CHF
• Accomodation: ~1500
• Meals & local transportation: ~ 800 CHF
• Train Christian: 150 CHF
• Tee-shirts: ~200CHF

=> ~ 3000 CHF