Wikipedia has grown over the years. The largest repository on site, the English language version of Wikipedia has broken the 13 Gigabytes barrier lately, and that’s text only. If you add images, you end up at 30+ Gigabytes of space.

Some users may not have Internet access all the time, which means that they cannot access Wikipedia during that time. Maybe you are on Safari in Africa, miles away from the nearest settlement, or on an Island in the Pacific Ocean with less than optimal Internet connections.

I have reviewed quite a few solutions to access Wikipedia without Internet connection. WikiTaxi or Okawix come to mind, or the manual option to install Wikipedia locally.

Okawix has been reviewed before at Ghacks, but that review is two years old. The developers have continuously worked on the application, which justifies another review. Wikipedia in this context refers to all official Wiki projects. This includes Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikibooks and Wikinews.

The program is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and the Android operating system. The Android version has not been available back then, and is one of the core improvements.

The offline reader ships without local Wikipedia databases, which means that you need to download at least one on first run. Databases are available as direct downloads in the program interface, and linked as torrents on the program homepage.

A language screen is displayed if you select to download a Wikipedia database from within the program interface. You need to pick one or multiple languages that you want to download first, and on the second screen one of the available Wikipedia dictionaries or encyclopedias.

The size of each download is displayed on the second page, ranging from less than 100 Megabytes to Gigabytes of data. A click on Download opens a new screen where the installation directory is selected. You can enable image integration which usually increases the size of the download significantly.

The download is then added to the install group on the left sidebar. Already installed Wikis are displayed under the local group.

Installation depends largely on the size of the selected Wiki, and the Internet connection. A progress bar is shown during installation. You can install multiple Wikis at once, but you need to go back to the selection screen after each item that you have added. An option to select multiple Wikis at once would have been handy. The program seems to look up occasionally during installation.

It is usually easier to download the Wikis as torrents. You only need to double-click the downloaded file to add it to the program database, at least that’s the case under Windows.

You can use Wikipedia as you would online once installed, with the exception of account and website related features. You can search Wikipedia for entries, navigate the pages or click on links to be taken to other pages, all without Internet connection

The search is limited to a single Wiki, which you have to select before you begin the search. That’s another aspect that could be better.

The software is generally responsive, but feels heavy at times, especially during installation of Wikis.

Okawix nevertheless makes it relatively easy to download Wikipedia to a local computer system. Interested users find downloads, torrents and documentation on the developer website.

Wikipedia has enabled the ‘Book’ extension to MediaWiki, the content management system it utilises. This adds a ‘add page’ link to every page, allowing users to compile a book. This book can then be sorted by the user into chapters. Afterwards, it can be shared with other Wikipedians. Currently, only logged-in users can utilise this tool.

Wikipedia has a built-in rendering engine which will grabs the pages, fetches the images and parses them before they are given to the user as a PDF or OpenDocument text. The user can also use PediaPress to have the book professionally bound and printed.

The ‘Book’ extension has a number of features for ‘expert’ users. For example, the user can elect to only include a certain version of an article. This could pose useful if the article being covered has reached ‘Featured’ or ‘Good’ quality, as they are sure information in the version which reached that standard is reliable and accurate.

Books can be made on any topic, or combinations of topics, on Wikipedia (or other projects with have enabled this extension, such as Wikibooks). There are some restrictions on what can be printed, as PediaPress are based in Germany so German law applies.

It is an amazing display of quite how big Wikipedia is. I made a book about the European Union, comprising about 45 articles, and when I sent it to PediaPress, it totalled a massive 2444 pages (3 volumes!). I shan’t be buying this, as it will cost me about €80! Prices for smaller books start at $8.90 for 100 pages. A fraction of this is donated to the Wikimedia Foundation. These books are black and white and measure 8″ x 5.5″ (about 20cmx14cm).

The books (from the preview I’ve seen) and the PDFs are well laid out. The PDFs are all selectable and are easy to navigate. It also contains links to the images’ pages. Amusingly, to maintain GFDL compatibility every editor to the article has to be mentioned! I, for example, are credited for writing a minute amount of the article on the Czech Republic.

I question how popular this will be though; as convenient as books may be, I would imagine institutions like schools would rather buy published textbooks than volunteer made ones.

It is worth emphasising that Wikibooks contains resources written as textbook entries, rather than articles. Perhaps that will be a practical application of PediaPress and this new move.

More information is available on the Wikpedia help page.

TechCrunch has also covered this story, but I simply found it through browsing Wikipedia!

You have the option to switch the language and find books for that language, all major languages are supported.