As you may know, the German Wikipedia has been published on DVD
several times now, the last one only a few weeks ago. This is thanks
to directmedia [1], a German company.
For this last release, they have changed their data format to
accomodate the sheer mass that is Wikipedia. Instead of their
(proprietary) reader software, they now use a software that acts as a
mini-server so one can read and search Wikipedia from DVD or harddisk
in the browser. While this mini-server is proprietary as well, they
have asked for the development of an open source implementation,
opening their format description [2].
DaB has written a version in Java, and I have started one in
C++/wxWidgets. I put mine into SVN, "yawr" (Yet Another Wikipedia
Reader). Article browsing with images works quite well already, and
I'm working on (fulltext!) search, some special pages, and a zillion
other things.
Just letting you know what that thing is I put in SVN, and inviting
everyone to help.
Merry Christmas,
Magnus
[1]
http://www.digitale-bibliothek.de
[2]
http://wiki.directmedia.de/index.php/ZenoReader/Open_Source