User:TuukkaH/Wikitin

I'm working on Wikitin, a free software program for using Wikipedia without a web browser, since 2006-04-14. My immediate hope was a program that can show a better watchlist and give visual notification when a page has a new version available. The program can fetch the watchlist and get additional information about the pages. To receive real-time notification of edits, it can connect to the IRC channel which gets all Wikipedia events. Other features such as editing are available in a normal web page view for now. With time, Wikitin could gain off-line browsing and editing abilities.

I'm currently developing on Python programming language; PyGTK and Gecko via GtkMozEmbed for the graphical user interface; Twisted Python for the IRC connection. The code is in a Darcs repository. I invite anyone interested in the goals or the tools to collaborate.

The biggest issues currently are the limitations in the Python language bindings for GtkMozEmbed, and the roughness of the programming interfaces of Wikipedia. GtkHtml2 cannot render Wikipedia HTML exactly, but perhaps the articles could be formatted in some simpler markup. Wikitin doesn't currently use Pywikipedia because it's mostly useful for automated editing instead of for user interfaces.

Javascript software such as Tools/Navigation popups and User:Pilaf/Live Preview could target some of the goals too, but I'm aiming more for a desktop application. There's also AutoWikiBrowser which targets "tedious, repetitive task" but is not developed to work on Linux.

Depending on which language rules the naming followed, Wikitin can mean either a tin of wiki, or an apparatus for wiki-ing.


 * http://iki.fi/Tuukka/software/wikitin