Are you a big fan of Wikipedia and wondering how to read the big Wikipedia offline? There are several times we want to read a few articles about a topic on Wikipedia or about some topics related to some specific category. If you have a limited bandwidth or a slow connection, you cannot access to the site all time. The best way to get a few pages from Wikipedia for offline reading is creating a PDF file of the page or create a book about the topic of interest. But it have some limitations, it is not easy to copy all the documents associated with a topic as a PDF document. So a software to read the Wikipedia offline is a boon. Here I am going to introduce some of the highly useful and widely used tools to read Wikipedia offline.
The first step is to download the Wikipedia database. Wikipedia offers free copies of all available content to interested users. These databases can be used for mirroring, personal use, informal backups, offline use or database queries. The database dumps are available as .xml.bz2 files that can easily open using some free offline Wikipedia reader software.
Kiwix
Kiwix is an offline reader for Web content. The software is intended to make Wikipedia available offline. The software can read the ZIM files, a highly compressed open format with additional meta-data. To read the Wikipedia articles offline, download the Zim file relating to the specific Wikipedia you want. There are several languages of Wikipedia available, you can see their size and last-date update and can be download from Kiwix site. There are two options to download for each non-indexed and pre-indexed versions. In direct download method you can download the file directly from Wikimedia servers. In Bittorent method you can download the file with a torrent software. The Kiwix software have some advanced features like, bookmarks and notes , ZIM based HTTP server, PDF/HTML export , localized in more than 80 languages, Search suggestions, ZIM file Index capacity, tabs navigation and integrated content manager or downloader.
WikiTaxi
Wikitaxi is a free toll which enables you to read, search, and browse Wikipedia offline. No Internet connection is needed, all pages are stored in a WikiTaxi database. WikiTaxi equipped with an importer that will first un-compress the Wikipedia database files (.bz2) and then converts them into a .taxi file format. For the first time users, the time showing on for loading the database may not be accurate, just wait a few minutes- the Wikipedia database files will convert to .taxi file format within a few minutes-the speed depends on your computer speed.
Pocket Wikipedia
Pocket Wikipedia, hand-checked selection from Wikipedia which is about the size of a fifteen volume encyclopaedia. This application it’s a freeware software, works on PocketPC, Windows and Linux.
Wiki Offline
Wiki Offline is an app for iPhone/iPad/iPod mobile devices, the app delivers flexibility and joy for the Wikipedia experience. The full text of all Wikipedia articles are stored to your iPhone/iPad/iPod.
What you think about this list? Which tool you are using to read Wikipedia offline? Can you suggest any new tools to read Wikipedia offline?
