The Wanderer's Guide to Earth
Introduction
The Wanderer's Guide to Earth is a Wikitravel web downloader and offline browser currently in beta release.
The Wanderer's Guide to Earth (WGTE), Copyright 2008-2009 Joshua Kyle, is licensed under the terms of the Gnu Public License version 3. 
Reason for project
This project came about as an effort to make the very handy Wikitravel travel database available offline.
Since database dumps of the Wikitravel database are not available, a direct method was needed to gather the data. Hence the need for a special program to scrape the wiki and download the database.
This type of program has been proposed on the Wikitravel project's web site. See Wikitravel:Offline_Reader_Expedition
Free Software
This program is Free Software and that means that you may use it or incorporate it into your own projects or products without charge, you can give it away to others, and that you can even modify the program (or pay others to do it for you) to customize it or add the features you want.
If you do make any changes, or have any ideas on how this software can be made better, i would appreciate the feedback so that i may continue to improve this program.
Important Notice
This is beta software. It comes with comes with no warranty or obligation of any kind, implied or otherwise for any particular purpose to the extend permitted under applicable law.
Beta release features
Comes pre-assembled and ready to go with an up to date version of the entire Wikitravel database.
Provides a UI (User Interface) where users can search and display Wikitravel articles offline.
Allows for user driven updates. No need to rely on new copies of database from here, you can make them yourselves.
Written in cross platform compatible Java. Can be run on a wide variety of operating systems.
Download
Download the latest version from WGTE page on Google code
Direct download link WGTE-1.1.0.7z - 162 MB download
View readme online in text format WGTE README
Unzip the file using 7zip, available for free here 7zip
Versions released
Release Notes/ Changelog is detailed in the README
Version 1.1.0
Released on: 09/04/09
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Version 1.0.1
Released on: 23/03/09
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Version 1.0.0
Released on: 23/03/09
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System requirements
You need Java version 1.6.0 or greater.
Due to the large number of files involved, (>15,000), if you want to run your own updates and download the Wikitravel database, stable (non-wireless) high speed Internet is required as it and it takes from 6-8 hours depending on your connection speed.
I'm not sure of specific hardware requirements, but as this program does nothing too taxing, almost anything should run it. It works fine on an eeepc (701) running Windows XP.
How to Install
Complete instructions detailed in the WGTE README
Known Issues/Limitations
The update process takes a long, time covers the entire database, and is linear.
The search function is not idiot proof. It can be messed up by a combination of backspaces and other key combinations. Hit the clear-all button the reset the search bar if it starts to act screwy.
Some of the articles listed in the database have no content in them. This is due to the fact that the name of the article exists but there is no content on Wikitravel.
Wish list/Desired Features
Muiltitabbed User Interface. To be able to have multiple tabs open at once to allow the viewing of multiple documents simultaneously.
Multithreaded download capabilities, allowing for faster downloads.
A more robust database system with advanced searching capabilities.
The ability to break the search function and the database down into regional areas, with such tags as Continents and Countries. Example: Search for articles only in France or in South America.
Ability to download all the pictures along with the articles.
Time stamping of the last revision made to the article
I think that some of these things can be accomplished by writing a Wiki bot and querying the Wiki API (see: Wikipedia:Creating_a_bot and Wikipedia:Creating_a_bot#APIs_for_bots)
Donate
All the software on this web site is free with no monetary obligation. However, if you wish to support free and open source software and/or you want to encourage a particular project's ongoing devolopment, I greatly appreciate your donations.
More information about donations can be found here.
P.S. The name of this project is a play on the title of Douglas Adam's series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.