Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Can we use Wave to edit MediaWiki on a mobile ?

I spend quite a lot of time helping the Mobile Wikipedia become more prominent. I learned a lot from doing this so I consider it time well spend. The number of languages with sufficient localisation has gone up from 20 to 52 or 34 depending on how you count. We created some concept mobile main pages and we requested the implementation of two main pages for two Wikipedias.

The software used is build in Ruby on Rails and it is developed separate from MediaWiki. It is currently useful to read Wikipedia articles, you cannot edit and you can not sign on or set personal preferences.

The MediaWikiWave project proved the concept that it is possible to create a WYSIWYG interface for MediaWiki. We have a functional editor for MediaWiki, the question is will it also work on a mobile phone, the question is will it also work with other languages and scripts.

I expect that for Wave to succeed, it will support both mobile phones and other languages and scripts. We have been told that internationalisation is part of the core MediaWiki functionality, and as I argued earlier, internationalisation and localisation need proper support for bots and gadgets as well. The one thing I am not sure about is mobile telephone support. What I do expect is, if not great then rapidly improving, support in Chrome and on Android and Chrome OS devices.
Thanks,
       GerardM

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