Rodovid Mobile Access

From Rodovid Engine

This discussion started at Rd Engine:Community Portal#Mobile access

Hi,

First, sorry if I don't follow some rules I may have missed to post this comment. I'm quite new and still in that system and still learning.

I would like to discuss about the mobile phone access topic. Nowadays, there are plenty of nice applications on mobile phone like iPhones or Android based phones that allow to access distant servers while on the move. My question is:

Would it be acceptable to have an iPhone application downloadable from the AppStore, able to connect with Rodovid?

In the area where I live, in Switzerland, there are plenty of people I know without remembering their names and their family links. Moreover, a few local historians have built family trees on paper, show in books, but without the possibility to further adapt them. I think that Rodovid is already an answer to those problems but a mobile application would allow to get the information on people directly in their presence and, in case of lack of data, to provide the data directly to the server, maybe with a picture of the person.

As I'm currently working in a computing school there may be the possibility to propose a diploma project going in that way but I would first need to know the point of view of the Rodovid creators and other administrators...

Feel free to contact me to continue the discussion and comment my post.

Best Regards,

Alexandre Cotting 12:44, 9 September 2010 (EEST)

Hello Alexandre!

It's a good idea, but depends on wiki-engine. As i know Wikipedia still no have direct mobile access only via some third site with .mobi domain. I'll ask Baya.

Second question - to make all 3 (or maybe 4?) localizations quite useful for new users from your country. At this time only French Rodovid is well-developed, thanks to 4 french admins - they makes a huge contribution. But Italian and Deutsch versions are still primitive:( If you want to help - we can discuss it. --Igor 13:09, 9 September 2010 (EEST)

Wikipedia has m.wikipedia.org. ~ putnik 11:25, 10 September 2010 (EEST)

Oh! Is it new project? --Igor 12:20, 10 September 2010 (EEST)

Hi everybody.

Sorry, I didn't red this page until now. Working on Rodovid in a diploma would be a greatfull Idea... for Rodovid users ;-) In fact, I'm using my I-Phone to make some standardized and simple maintenance actions. That's all. Reading trees is really difficult... I'll try to help if I can.

I guess this mobile version causes some problems with engine rights... No?

But now, I think that Rodovid needs more simple improvements. Some bots would be very usefull. I'm trying to work on this, nowadays, but it seems to complex for my little brain.

Maybe we could try to share experiments?

Another question: Alexandre, do you speak french?

Oh! Thanks for the compliment to french admins. But Igor: Ukrainien localization is not so bad :-)) --Christophe Tesson - ^talk. 11:13, 14 September 2010 (EEST)

Hi, I'll try to answer to all.

Igor, there are a few applications on iPhone to access Wikipedia (Simplepedia, WikiTap or just... Wikipedia), adding more features than just accessing it through m.wikipedia.org in Safari

Christophe, my idea of the diploma project would be to let the student define, after analyzing Rodovid usage, some user interface to access the trees and modify them in an easy and convenient way, following the well know spirit of Apple concerning usability. But my question is now to discover if there is an API that this student could use to access Rodovid engine?

Igor and Christophe, yes, I speak french but just a little german and italian. I may be interested to play an administrator role for Switzerland french speaking part but I would need first to know more details about that work. Do you have a page that explains it? How much time both of you spend each week on that job? Alexandre Cotting 14:53, 14 September 2010 (EEST)

You need to talk with User:Baya. API present as i know.

Time. A lot of, but I watch on 2 localizations, on of them - 1st place by number of users and records + antispam + developing new templates + geoportal for .uk... If you want be as administrator - ask Christophe and if they agree - i'll add you to candidates list. --Igor 14:59, 14 September 2010 (EEST)

Hi Alexandre, I just got an access to my mail, so I can now answer. To the purpose. Of course it will be convinient for mobile users and good for the community. So I will be glad to help you and try to answer any of your questions. At the beginning lets move this conversation onto the separate page. Secondly, mediawiki has an internal API and it is enabled on Rodovid. If you require something else lets continue discussion about it. Again, I'll be glad to help you. --Baya 19:04, 14 September 2010 (EEST)

Would you like to manage the creation of this new page yourself or will I try it? I'm not aware of any rule for doing that...

I found this link to the Wikipedia API [1]. Is this the one you are referring to? Alexandre Cotting 11:41, 15 September 2010 (EEST)

1. Yes, you need to talk with Baya... I'm not sure to understand what is an API !
2. Hours and hours and hours...
3. Why not a new admin? I don't know if admin rights will help you in your work, I will ask to other french admins! I don't know why they should desagree... Could you write a 5 lines text to explain why you want admin rights? I guess you don't only want to patrol in user's contributions! Anyway thanks a lot... --Christophe Tesson - ^talk. 19:37, 14 September 2010 (EEST)

1. Here is a definition of API [2]. Programmers usually use APIs to build an application (an iPhone application in my case) that can easily communicate with another.
2. Do you have a link to a page listing the roles of a Rodovid admin?
3. I don't really want admin rights for the moment. It's just that I'm using Rodovid and that I read that some new admin would be welcome. Now I need to make me an idea of what "Rodovid admin" means before to tell if it's of interest for me and if I could bring something to Rodovid by doing it. Alexandre Cotting 11:36, 15 September 2010 (EEST)

I wrote some links on your french discussion page to help pages about admins. It's more a maintenance job than something else.

I've created the Rodovid Mobile Access page. Feel free to use it. --Christophe Tesson - ^talk. 21:51, 15 September 2010 (EEST)

[edit] API

• I haven't worked with mediawiki API myself, but have seen it in MW code, also I have enabled MW API at RD. I have never had tasks which require API at RD, so I did not look for its details description. Imho, it can be found directly at http://mediawiki.org . Unfortunately, RD uses old version of MW, so here, some features can be absent, but at the beginning you can start with current RD MW API. --Baya 10:09, 16 September 2010 (EEST)