The wikipedia2text command allows a command line user on Debian to output the contents of a Wikipedia article to a text file on your hard drive.
Install this command this way:
jason@darkstar:~/Documents$ sudo apt-get install wikipedia2text |
Then convert an article this way.
jason@darkstar:~/Documents$ wikipedia2text Debian > Debian.txt |
I enter the name of the article I am looking for instead of the URL. This creates a very readable text file and this is a great way to save an article that the user may read with less or VIM.
Use this command to open a random page for reading.
jason@darkstar:~/Documents$ wikipedia2text -r | less |
And this is how to retrieve just the URL of the page.
jason@darkstar:~/Documents$ wikipedia2text -u UNIX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX |
Specify the language with the -l parameter thusly:
jason@darkstar:~/Documents$ wikipedia2text -l de -r |
This is therefore a very useful tool for a Linux user who wishes to save information from Wikipedia to their hard drive for later reference.