On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 21:03:47 +0000, Theresa Knott <theresaknott(a)gmail.com> wrote: [snip] But wouldn't a solution like this (which is incidentally IE-specific) only provide the articles in rendered (i.e. HTML) format? When downloading articles for editing, one would surely want the wiki plaintext, no? How does one get at that automatically, short of using a bot? Steve

Stephen Forrest said: There is a tool in Special to do this. It should work on any Wikipedia, not just en. Type the following command into the search box on Wikipedia: Special:export Follow the straightforward instructions. Basically you type names of articles, one per line, into the textbox, and set the checkbox appropriately according to whether you want only the latest version or the whole history (all versions). Then when you click on "Submit Query" you will get a xml document containing what you asked for. Your browser may require you to "view page source" in order to get at the full XML source. For instance here is what the start and end of my query for the current version of "falling" and "hat" looked like. As you can see it contains the raw wikitext. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <mediawiki version="0.1" xml:lang="en"> <page> <title>Falling</title> <revision> <timestamp>2005-02-12T23:16:39Z</timestamp> <contributor><username>Rich Farmbrough</username></contributor> <text>''For other meanings of ''fall'', see [[fall (disambiguation)]]'' ---- The word '''falling''' describes movement due to [[gravity]]. By analogy, it has other uses not directly related to gravity. ==[[sense|Sensation]]== A [[sense|sensation]] of '''falling''' occurs when the [[Labyrinth (inner ear)|labyrinth]] or ''vestibular apparatus'', a system of fluid-filled passages in the [[ear|inner ear]], detects motion. The same system also detects rotary motion. A similar sensation of falling can be induced when the eyes detect rapid apparent motion with respect to the environment. This system enables us to keep our balance by signalling when a physical correction is necessary. [...] [[Category:Hats]] [[de:Hut (Kopfbedeckung)]] [[nl:Hoed]]</text> </revision> </page> </mediawiki>

Sorry if you see this twice. I got a bounce. Stephen Forrest said: There is a tool in Special to do this. It should work on any Wikipedia, not just en. Type the following command into the search box on Wikipedia: Special:export Follow the straightforward instructions. Basically you type names of articles, one per line, into the textbox, and set the checkbox appropriately according to whether you want only the latest version or the whole history (all versions). Then when you click on "Submit Query" you will get a xml document containing what you asked for. Your browser may require you to "view page source" in order to get at the full XML source. For instance here is what the start and end of my query for the current version of "falling" and "hat" looked like. As you can see it contains the raw wikitext. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <mediawiki version="0.1" xml:lang="en"> <page> <title>Falling</title> <revision> <timestamp>2005-02-12T23:16:39Z</timestamp> <contributor><username>Rich Farmbrough</username></contributor> <text>''For other meanings of ''fall'', see [[fall (disambiguation)]]'' ---- The word '''falling''' describes movement due to [[gravity]]. By analogy, it has other uses not directly related to gravity. ==[[sense|Sensation]]== A [[sense|sensation]] of '''falling''' occurs when the [[Labyrinth (inner ear)|labyrinth]] or ''vestibular apparatus'', a system of fluid-filled passages in the [[ear|inner ear]], detects motion. The same system also detects rotary motion. A similar sensation of falling can be induced when the eyes detect rapid apparent motion with respect to the environment. This system enables us to keep our balance by signalling when a physical correction is necessary. [...] [[Category:Hats]] [[de:Hut (Kopfbedeckung)]] [[nl:Hoed]]</text> </revision> </page> </mediawiki>