Hi Douglas
On 01/01/2013 02:22 AM, Douglas Crosher wrote:
Has anyone considered a pure Javascript ZIM file reader and Wikipedia reader?
No, this is complicated to do... although this could be practical. I'm also not sure if we could achieve to get acceptable performances.
I have made a small start, writing some hack code to open a ZIM file and it gets to the point of needing to uncompress a cluster. A start has been made on the needed XZ decompress code but it's not done yet.
Great. Yes, xz decompression is the most complicated part.
If practical then this could provide a portable offline reader that could suit any device with a modern web browser, and provide a reader for Android tablets, and Firefox OS, etc. Perhaps even node.js servers.
Yes, this could be pretty disruptive IMO.
If someone has already tried this and found the performance to be too poor then please let me know?
Btw: has adding thumbnail image support to the ZIM file format been considered? This would be very handy for a ZIM file selector in a tablet or phone UI.
ZIM is able to store anything, also pictures. Most of the ZIM files are with thumbnails.
Best encouragements for the next steps on your js ZIM library... please keep us informed about your progresses.
Kind regards Emmanuel