- WikipediaFS
WikipediaFS is a
virtual filesystem which allows users to view and editWikipedia (or anyMediawiki -based site) articles as if they were real files on a local disk drive. It is not affiliated in any way with theWikimedia Foundation . It is a third-party project created and developed primarily by Mathieu Blondel onSourceForge.net . [cite web|url=http://www.mblondel.org/journal/2007/05/27/wikipediafs-03-released/|title=WikipediaFS 0.3 released |work=www.mblondel.org/journal ]WikipediaFS is implemented in Python and uses the FUSE kernel module.
WikipediaFS works by lazily downloading and uploading article sourcetexts - only sending
HTTP requests to the selected site when a file is accessed. (Reading a file corresponds to a GETHTTP request, writing to a POSTHTTP request.)With WikipediaFS, articles can be directly edited with your favorite text editor. [ [http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archive/2007/05/wikipediafs_a_linux_mediawiki.html "WikipediaFS - a Linux MediaWiki file-system"] by Jason Striegel]
Advantages
* Editing a long Wikipedia article can sometimes turn out to be painful and time-consuming due to web-forms limitations. Instead, when WikipediaFS is mounted on a directory, articles become like real files in that directory: it is thus possible to use a text-editor to edit files. Text-editors are generally more stable and less sluggish than browsers and have useful features such as spell checking and wiki
syntax highlighting .* It is possible to write programs or bots transparently as if they dealt with simple files. This is WikipediaFS which takes care of the HTTP layer. For example, WikipediaFS could be used to perform a massive content migration from a Mediawiki site to another.
Disadvantages
* It is difficult to go from page to page. Therefore the user must know the name of the page to edit (no direct directory view).
* It is not possible to see a preview of modifications.References
ee also
*
Wikifs External links
* [http://wikipediafs.sourceforge.net WikipediaFS official site]
* [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:External_editors Mediawiki help: External editors]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
