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Reploid

Member

From: Cold Country up North

Registered: 2008-03-27

Posts: 110

Project idea, need some guidance!

As discussed in the final part of this thread, I have an idea for a new editable, searchable and downloadable medical wikipedia, as commercial programs available for browsing diseases and medication are non-flexible and insufficient. Linux support is horrible for most palm applications, but pda has a huge potential in medicine, I mean, who can put 10 textbooks in their lab coat when on call?

The problem is, I don't know how to go about this project myself, as I lack programming skills. After some helpful tips by Xyne (who has been thinking along the same lines as well), I have worked through a few tutorials on XML, HTML and XSLT, but I have started to think that it is not very likely that I will be able to do all of this myself, and have it work great.

So I am basically wondering how to go about it to ensure two things: 1. create such a wiki + client to read files on linux (and eventually e.g google android) 2: be on the credit list in the GPL. How do I get ppl who are willing to work on such a project, what kinda ppl do I need, how should information between server and client be exchanged, what should the clients look like, what file formats should be saved on your own computer, what programming language should be used/ which one should I start learning, etc.

Last edited by Reploid (2008-10-25 11:57:04)

skymt

Member

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 443

Re: Project idea, need some guidance!

Is there any reason you couldn't just use MediaWiki, the software Wikipedia uses?

catwell

Member

From: Bretagne, France

Registered: 2008-02-20

Posts: 207

Website

Re: Project idea, need some guidance!

It wouldn't be easy to download something based on MediaWiki. Something like tiddlywiki could maybe do the trick, but I'm not sure whether it would scale up. You could still take a look at it...

skymt

Member

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 443

Re: Project idea, need some guidance!

It wouldn't be easy to download something based on MediaWiki. Something like tiddlywiki could maybe do the trick, but I'm not sure whether it would scale up. You could still take a look at it...

MediaWiki supports exporting a wiki to a special XML format. Here's the game plan I'd recommend:

1. Put up a simple MediaWiki wiki and try to fill it. Keep in mind the first and second rules of wikis: the more users you have, the more useful your wiki will be, and the more useful your wiki is, the more users you will have. That means you'll be doing a lot of the work at first.
2. Once you reach critical mass and have something genuinely useful with a significant user base, ask for help from programmers to build a PDA-based client.
3. Write (or have your programmers write) a program on the server that dumps the entire database to an SQLite db (possibly going through MediaWiki's XML-based export, or possibly going directly from MySQL). That's your data file. Put it up on an easy-to-find page in the wiki.
4. Write (or have your programmers write) a PDA-based program to browse the data file.

Reploid

Member

From: Cold Country up North

Registered: 2008-03-27

Posts: 110

Re: Project idea, need some guidance!

It wouldn't be easy to download something based on MediaWiki. Something like tiddlywiki could maybe do the trick, but I'm not sure whether it would scale up. You could still take a look at it...

MediaWiki supports exporting a wiki to a special XML format. Here's the game plan I'd recommend:

1. Put up a simple MediaWiki wiki and try to fill it. Keep in mind the first and second rules of wikis: the more users you have, the more useful your wiki will be, and the more useful your wiki is, the more users you will have. That means you'll be doing a lot of the work at first.
2. Once you reach critical mass and have something genuinely useful with a significant user base, ask for help from programmers to build a PDA-based client.
3. Write (or have your programmers write) a program on the server that dumps the entire database to an SQLite db (possibly going through MediaWiki's XML-based export, or possibly going directly from MySQL). That's your data file. Put it up on an easy-to-find page in the wiki.
4. Write (or have your programmers write) a PDA-based program to browse the data file.

1. I hadn't heard about MediaWiki before, I am a n00b.
2. If I can download xml from the Media Wiki, would make any sense to create yet another wiki, instead of just create a program to act on the data from the downloaded Wikipedia-XMLs, or from Ask Dr Wiki, as that wiki also uses MediaWiki. Why not start creating an application that can group information from the downloaded XMLs right away?

EDIT: Overlooked some information. Classic much-new-info-at-once-problem

Last edited by Reploid (2008-10-25 15:49:40)

skymt

Member

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 443

Re: Project idea, need some guidance!

If I can download xml from the Media Wiki, would make any sense to create yet another wiki, instead of just create a program to act on the data from the downloaded Wikipedia-XMLs, or from Ask Dr Wiki, as that wiki also uses MediaWiki. Why not start creating an application that can group information from the downloaded XMLs right away?

The XML export needs to be done at the server side, so you need to ask ADW to start running regular dumps if you want to use their information. Try bringing up your idea of a PDA version on their forum.

Reploid

Member

From: Cold Country up North

Registered: 2008-03-27

Posts: 110

Re: Project idea, need some guidance!

Hmm... but according to the first line here http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Export

How to export

There are at least four ways to export pages:

    * Paste the name of the articles in the box in Special:Export or use http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special: … LLPAGENAME.

It sounds as if it should be possible to export pages in xml by using some online pastebox. ???

And what is the advantage of using xml-based export vs. exporting directly from mySql?

By the way, thanks for valuable input. I'll consider just giving the idea to the ask dr wiki guys.

Last edited by Reploid (2008-10-25 16:17:23)

skymt

Member

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 443

Re: Project idea, need some guidance!

Hmm... but according to the first line here http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Export
<snip>
It sounds as if it should be possible to export pages in xml by using some online pastebox. ???

You can export one page at a time that way. The only way to get the entire wiki using Special:Export would be to use a crawler to download each page individually, something that is generally discouraged as it uses quite a lot of the server's resources. The only reasonable way to export an entire MediaWiki wiki is to do it server-side.

And what is the advantage of using xml-based export vs. exporting directly from mySql?

The code for XML export is already written and is the recommended way to get data from a wiki. You'd need to write new code to pull the data directly from MySQL to the format you want. However, making a PDA-based reader that directly reads the XML data would be quite a lot slower than using something like SQLite, so you need to write some conversion code either way (XML->SQLite or MySQL->SQLite).