WikipediaFS
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WikipediaFS is a virtual filesystem which allows users to view and edit Wikipedia (or any Mediawiki-based site) articles as if they were real files on a local disk drive. It is not affiliated in any way with the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a third-party project created and developed primarily by Mathieu Blondel on SourceForge.net.
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 GET HTTP request, writing to a POST HTTP request.)
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[edit] 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 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.
[edit] 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.
