Grants:IEG/Telnet

Many people own computers capable of reading an electronic encyclopedia, but cannot access Wikipedia due to high system requirements of the World Wide Web

To create an interactive text interface (nCurses flavor) with adjustable layouts for 40 and 80 column display as well as variable column of virtual terminals. Optional trackball support for easier navigation of hyper-text links. Optionally a Free Software PBX can provide on-line content through the PSTN.

Increase access from a WWW browser and Internet to any computer with a MODEM

We intend to exhibit this a vintage computer festivals, Linux User Groups, and other meetups. We also intend to contact publications include Ars Technica and 2600.

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Do you think this project should be selected for an Individual Engagement Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project below! (Other constructive feedback is welcome on the discussion page).

• This is an interesting project. Hargup (talk) 17:56, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
• I look forward to the day when those of else without access to the internet can simply dial into 1-800-GET-WIKI. Bawolff (talk) 21:22, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

  In the US it could actually be 1-800-WIK-IPEDIA (since the last digits are ignored) Dispenser (talk) 23:59, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

• There is already a few nCruses / text based browser that let one browse wikipedia from a terminal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Text-based_web_browsers . So I am not sure how useful a telnet client would be any useful. Antoine "hashar" Musso (talk) 20:58, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

  We're planning on based it on a text browser to ease development, but current web interface sucks on them. Dispenser (talk) 23:59, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

  • I was very happy to use w3m to edit Wikipedia and it was pretty usable. The only big problem I've had was the lack of non-colored "?" missing link indicator (former "highlightbroken" preference). This feature got effectively killed by moving it to CSS very long time ago, and finally removed it in phab:T29619. So, for me - a text-browser friendly skin would be enough!  « Saper  // talk  »  08:31, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

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