Big fan of Wikipedia here. As many know their complete databases are freely available for download for offline reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...abase_download

I think many would love to have a reader on their iPhone for these databases.

I second that!
Does anyone know a way to use the files on the iphone so you can use wikipedia offline?
Cheers

Since the databases are already there, it shouldn't be too hard to make a basic reader. That's my guess anyway.

This is a good idea. It could be a thin client too, ie if you don't have an article in your local database, it could grab it from the online version - the same page you linked has ways to just grab specific information, and probably could "screen scrape" other parts of the page to reformat it. It could also check for updates for the article you're viewing from the local database while you're reading it and update it if needed, and if you have a connection. This could be done in the background while you read the article, as to not be intrusive.

I got some of the way here using code from here:

http://www.softlab.ntua.gr/~ttsiod/b...iaOffline.html

It's pretty straightforward, you just run a python webserver locally and it searches through a local copy of the wikipedia database, split into compressed 1mb chunks. Only problem is that it takes up a good 5GB of my iphone, so not really practical.

I use lexipedia on my Pocket PC. Their databases are free downloads and they are a lot smaller in size.

Databases can be found here,
http://www.revolution.cx/Lexipedia/LexipediaDownAlt.htm

I'd also love to see this! Thanks in advance to those of you that are working on it.

I would also love to see this, especially if it can be used just like the online version. On my palm searching is worthless.

How about a reader that just fetches the info from wikipida.com and displays it without all the BS? kinda like the Mac dictionary thingy.

Originally Posted by rustymetal

How about a reader that just fetches the info from wikipida.com and displays it without all the BS? kinda like the Mac dictionary thingy.

This would be able to pull up stuff much much faster, and when you don't have internet/service.