[OLPC library] wikimedia parser

[David Farning]

Hello all,

I would like to thank you all for the great work you are doing with
the laptop.

First, a real life reaction to the laptop.  I bought the laptop for
myself under the g1g1 program.  I tested it for a few days for before
deciding that the xo was too valuable to sit in my office.

I gave it to my 5th grade niece for Christmas. It was a big hit.

How does this relate to the list?  When I saw her again for new years,
she was showing all of her cousins how to use wikipedia.  The kids
spent the rest of the day sledding and seaching wikipedia.  How
amazing is that.

This positive response has encouraged me to get involved with the
project.  My interest is helping create the library.

I have been looking at the process of bringing content into the library.
I am interested in generalizing wiki splice to
allow it to import item from different sources and automatically
create .xols.

My basic premises are that content curators should not have to worry
about the details of making a bundle.  Programmers should worry about
the content in the bundle.

I have started rewritting wikisplice in more generalized manner so that
it can take different types of input and build the bundles
automatically.

A interesting development is mwlib found at
http://code.pediapress.com/wiki/wiki that is sponsored by the
wikimedia foundation.  It is a library for parsing raw mediawiki text.

I will hopefully have some prototype code ready for submission in a few days.

Thank
David Farning