I have tried this and it works pretty well. One thing you didn't mention is that because, as you said, it uses service workers, the server running kiwix-serve must support SSL. Otherwise kiwix-serve will not be able to serve up any zims produced by zimit. This is unfortunate as offline ssl certificates need to be self signed and that will cause browsers to complain.
On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 7:00 AM offline-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
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Today's Topics:
- New tool : Zimit (Stephane Coillet-Matillon)
Message: 1 Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2020 11:25:43 +0100 From: Stephane Coillet-Matillon stephane@kiwix.org To: Using Wikimedia projects and MediaWiki offline offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Offline-l] New tool : Zimit Message-ID: B78F3C15-8EDE-4A11-B887-BBE1682596F3@kiwix.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Hola,
Since I’m bearded and moderately overweight let me be the one to bring the first present for the holiday season and introduce Zimit, a pretty cool new tool that allows people to produce their own Zim files. Yes, you read that correctly.
- If you are the type that cannot wait to unwrap presents, you will find
it at https://youzim.it https://www.youzim.it/
- For everyone else:
The interface is pretty minimalist, and that’s part of the message:
- Insert target URL
- Insert email address so we can tell you when your zim is ready
- Download zim file
There is a limit at 1,000 items for each zim because (a) we don’t want to DDoS unsuspecting websites with requests; and (ii) also would not be able to afford the bill If it becomes as popular as we think it will be (we need to find an acceptable business model and pricing structure: any advice welcome). But since this is free software, you can obviously cut the middleman by copying, studying, modifying and redistributing the code that can be found here: https://github.com/openzim/zimit < https://github.com/openzim/zimit%3E
Because this relies on newly-implemented service workers, these new zim files will only work on Kiwix-android and Kiwix-serve at the moment, but this will obviously expand to other platforms in 2021.
This project was entirely funded by a Mozilla Open Source Support Award, thanks to them!
Cheers, Stephane
1) Powerful proof-of-concept !!!
2) However for offline / low-income communities there's a fatal flaw with ZIM files that require https (TLS/SSL) which generally require web server certificates that renew every 90-days-or-so using a service like https://letsencrypt.com -- by definition this is inherently / tragically not possible in offline / low-income communities. As Tim Moody alluded to below, and also at openzim/zimit#57 https://github.com/openzim/zimit/issues/57
3) Does anybody see any practical way forward, for us all to pull together here, towards giving offline / low-income communities a very pragmatic way forward?
On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 7:59 AM Tim Moody tim@timmoody.com wrote:
I have tried this and it works pretty well. One thing you didn't mention is that because, as you said, it uses service workers, the server running kiwix-serve must support SSL. Otherwise kiwix-serve will not be able to serve up any zims produced by zimit. This is unfortunate as offline ssl certificates need to be self signed and that will cause browsers to complain.
On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 7:00 AM offline-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
Send Offline-l mailing list submissions to offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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You can reach the person managing the list at offline-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Offline-l digest..."
Today's Topics:
- New tool : Zimit (Stephane Coillet-Matillon)
Message: 1 Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2020 11:25:43 +0100 From: Stephane Coillet-Matillon stephane@kiwix.org To: Using Wikimedia projects and MediaWiki offline offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Offline-l] New tool : Zimit Message-ID: B78F3C15-8EDE-4A11-B887-BBE1682596F3@kiwix.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Hola,
Since I’m bearded and moderately overweight let me be the one to bring the first present for the holiday season and introduce Zimit, a pretty cool new tool that allows people to produce their own Zim files. Yes, you read that correctly.
- If you are the type that cannot wait to unwrap presents, you will find
it at https://youzim.it https://www.youzim.it/
- For everyone else:
The interface is pretty minimalist, and that’s part of the message:
- Insert target URL
- Insert email address so we can tell you when your zim is ready
- Download zim file
There is a limit at 1,000 items for each zim because (a) we don’t want to DDoS unsuspecting websites with requests; and (ii) also would not be able to afford the bill If it becomes as popular as we think it will be (we need to find an acceptable business model and pricing structure: any advice welcome). But since this is free software, you can obviously cut the middleman by copying, studying, modifying and redistributing the code that can be found here: https://github.com/openzim/zimit < https://github.com/openzim/zimit%3E
Because this relies on newly-implemented service workers, these new zim files will only work on Kiwix-android and Kiwix-serve at the moment, but this will obviously expand to other platforms in 2021.
This project was entirely funded by a Mozilla Open Source Support Award, thanks to them!
Cheers, Stephane
Hi Adam
On 22.12.20 15:20, Adam Holt wrote:
- However for offline / low-income communities there's a fatal flaw
with ZIM files that require https (TLS/SSL) which generally require web server certificates that renew every 90-days-or-so using a service like https://letsencrypt.com -- by definition this is inherently / tragically not possible in offline / low-income communities. As Tim Moody alluded to below, and also at openzim/zimit#57 https://github.com/openzim/zimit/issues/57
It is possible to give access to these ZIM even with offline kiwix-serve. This will just be not user friendly as the user will have to go through the warning triggered by the browser because of the lack of CA certified certificate. This is the way we will follow for the moment in Kiwix-Hotspot to give access to these ZIM files. The experience will show us how the users can (not?) deal with this.
- Does anybody see any practical way forward, for us all to pull
together here, towards giving offline / low-income communities a very pragmatic way forward?
This is probably possible with an additional serious software engineering effort to replace the Service-Worker based wabac.js. This has been discussed here: https://github.com/openzim/warc2zim/issues/48.
If this kind of ZIM has a lot of success and we find a financing to that, this is not excluded we will work on this in the future, but not for the moment.
Regards Emmanuel