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WikipediaFS

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WikipediaFS
Developer(s)Mathieu Blondel
Initial release11 June 2006; 18 years ago (2006-06-11)
Stable release
0.4 / 2 August 2010; 14 years ago (2010-08-02)
Preview release
r75[1] / 10 July 2015; 9 years ago (2015-07-10)[1]
Repository
Written inPython
Operating systemMac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD
TypeFilesystem
LicenseGNU GPL
Websitewikipediafs.sourceforge.net

WikipediaFS is a virtual filesystem which allows users to view and edit the articles of any MediaWiki-based site as if they were real files on a local disk drive. This enables a user to edit articles directly with any text editor.[2] WikipediaFS is developed primarily by Mathieu Blondel on SourceForge.net.[3]

WikipediaFS is implemented in Python and uses the FUSE kernel module. The file system 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 GET HTTP request, writing to a POST HTTP request.)

Advantages

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  • 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 because WikipediaFS takes care of the HTTP layer. For example, WikipediaFS could be used to perform a massive content migration from one MediaWiki site to another.

Disadvantages

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  • The project is no longer maintained as of 2007; the software has since been deprecated.
  • It is difficult to go from-page-to-page; users must know the exact name of a page in order to edit it, as WikipediaFS has no local knowledge of what pages exist and which don't.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "WikipediaFS / Code Commit Log".
  2. ^ Striegel, Jason (6 May 2007). "WikipediaFS – a Linux MediaWiki file-system". MAKE. Retrieved 2012-02-10.
  3. ^ "WikipediaFS 0.3 released". www.mblondel.org/journal/ Mathieu's log: Machine Learning, Data Mining, Natural Language Processing...... 2007-05-27. Archived from the original on 2012-02-18. Retrieved 2016-04-17.
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