Monday 19 February 2007

The Forthcoming Wikipedia TomeRaider File

To accompany TomeRaider 3.5 we are going to release a new cut of the Wikipedia as a TomeRaider file.

The Problem With The Wikipedia from a Portable Point of View

When Erik Zachte first spent month converting the Wikipedia to TomeRaider format a few years back the Wiki was a huge but manageable beast. But in that time its grown exponentially both in terms of articles and individual article content. It’s a wonderful thing, but its pretty cumbersome, even when powered by the TR engine.

We did do some various reduced size versions but when your dealing with 1.3 million articles and you want to cut that down there is no clear point at which to “yay or nay” any given data.

What our research found for the vast majority of Wikipedia uses is that most “day to day” uses of the Wikipeda involve that first paragraph, the abstract that every article has. The bit that sums up the article in a nut shell. The new TomeRadier wiki uses just this initial summary with a link to the full article online.

It is hard to express just how blindingly fast and cool this is. All 1.3 million entries in your pocket and, in the new TR 3.5 interface, browsing is close to addictive.

The new TomeRaider Wikipedia will be released within days and comes in at a super compressed 270 Megs.

1 comment:

Blogger888 said...

I've so far three version of wikipedia TR3 files. The 1.2 GB version that is the "latest"; the 1.9GB version dated 2005 December, and an even earlier (may be 2003) version that is about 2.6GB. I must say that I'm extremely disapointed with the newest 1.2GB version, as most entries that I type in are not available. The oldest 2003 version with full image is the best, as I can read the wording in the image clearly. The downside is it is dated.
As for the 2005 version, I made the mistake of ordering the 1.8GB version with thumb nail images, which is impossible to read.

I would very much hope to see Erik going back to the full version like the 4GB 2005 version (of course updated).