Images & Image Frames - Offline Wikipedia

[c1k...@gmail.com]

Hello, two (2) questions here from new poster. 

(1) EMPTY IMAGE FRAMES

I use AARD with full wikipedia exclusively offline, and the article displays always include large empty rectangles where the images would go.  I'd really prefer to not see these empty frames.  I tried the following file as a User Style file (it worked on a previous phone/early AARD version), but it now has no effect.  I am hoping someone has advice/suggestions for how to view offline Wikipedia files without the big empty image frames.

.thumb, a.image, .noresize {

    display: none;

}

(2) OFFLINE IMAGES

It's getting more and more common/inexpensive for Android users to have large micro-SD cards.  I would really love to use AARD2 with a full offline wikipedia including images (yes, 40GB or so).  I did a search here and it appears that back in 2015 Igor was thinking of implementing this but it wasn't his first priority.  Now 2-3 years have passed and I'm wondering if anyone knows whether such files might become available?

(I currently have full wikipedia on AARD2 (because it's a much better interface) but I *also* have full wikipedia on Kiwix just because from time to time I really need access to the offline images.  But with the increasing file sizes it's difficult to maintain this duplication).

Thank you for any info on either question!

[franc]

Am Freitag, 29. Dezember 2017 23:11:57 UTC+1 schrieb c1k...@gmail.com:

... I *also* have full wikipedia on Kiwix just because from time to time I really need access to the offline images.  But with the increasing file sizes it's difficult to maintain this duplication).

 But I don't understand, why don't you just stick with only kiwix?

There is offline pictures (very small size and quality though) with about 20 GB (years ago) the zim-file.

[franc]

A good way to test the styles is to use the aard-web. It is a java programm (jar) to run on a desktop computer (with Java installed).
You can with aard-web use your favorite browser (e.g. firefox and firebug etc) to test the style easily.
As I know the display is then identical to aard2 and a user style on the Android device.

[Markus Braun]

The kiwix dict is according to

http://www.kiwix.org/downloads/

52GB in size with pictures. 

The website does not mention a date for the data. Not sure how old it is.

My rough 'gestimate' for 320x240 pictures with for the German Wikipedia resulted in >128 GB data. No sound. No video. 

Hence the pics are pretty small or low resolution. 

Nevertheless a really nice approach of Kiwix. Did not find a possibility to create my own updated zim version. 

Storage wise I like the Aard approach with downloading the actually needed pictures only.

Kiwix has improved significantly in the last two years.

Still prefer Aard2 :)

On Dec 30, 2017 9:28 AM, "franc" <franc...@gmail.com> wrote:

...

[Frank Röhm]

Am 31. Dezember 2017 06:19:20 MEZ schrieb 'Markus Braun' via aarddict <aard...@googlegroups.com>:
>...

>Nevertheless a really nice approach of Kiwix. Did not find a
>possibility to
>create my own updated zim version.
>

I spent a lot of time with it in 2014 and did download the actual wiki as zim then.
You need the mwoffliner.js, see:
https://sourceforge.net/p/kiwix/other/ci/master/tree/mwoffliner/
To get it running you will need some more stuff. Can help you with it if need (as long as my knowledge of it still is correct, 3 years later) ...


>Still prefer Aard2 :)
>
Me too, that why I stopped kiwix stuff, after I found aard2.

[franc]

There is an old discussion about aard's wikipedia with images:
Wikipedia with pictures

[Markus Braun]

LOL

Still the same old story. And surprisingly still true. Despite the figures changed in the last years.

The sd cards got bigger - and Wikipedia as well :)

On Dec 31, 2017 2:20 PM, "franc" <franc...@gmail.com> wrote:

There is an old discussion about aard's wikipedia with images:
Wikipedia with pictures

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[Frank Röhm]

Am 31. Dezember 2017 22:55:14 MEZ schrieb 'Markus Braun' via aarddict <aard...@googlegroups.com>:
>LOL
>Still the same old story. And surprisingly still true. Despite the
>figures
>changed in the last years.
>
>The sd cards got bigger - and Wikipedia as well :)
>

I have a new phone with Android 7 and FAT32 only. I couldn't use a 50 gb file ;)

[c1k...@gmail.com]

This is all going somewhat off topic.

Facts: Recent ZIM files for Wikipedia including images exist.  Kiwix for Android can read/display such files, even when broken into 4GB chunks for FAT32 cards.

Question: Is Igor Tkach still involved with / developing AARD?  The only hope of having offline images for AARD is if Igor updates the app either to read ZIM files, or to accept SLOB files+images.  (I believe SLOB compress smaller than the equivalent ZIM)

AARD has better search because it ignores spaces & punctuation (although a facility for full-text search would be even better).  

But I'm not sure if this advantage still outweighs the Kiwix ability to display offline images.

[Frank Röhm]

Am 1. Januar 2018 10:10:43 MEZ schrieb c1k...@gmail.com:
>This is all going somewhat off topic.
>
>Facts: Recent ZIM files for Wikipedia including images exist. Kiwix
>for
>Android can read/display such files, even when broken into 4GB chunks
>for
>FAT32 cards.
>

>*Question*: Is *Igor Tkach* still involved with / developing AARD? The

>
>only hope of having offline images for AARD is if Igor updates the app

>either to read ZIM files ...

That would be a great new feature!

[itkach]

On Friday, December 29, 2017 at 5:11:57 PM UTC-5, c1k...@gmail.com wrote:

Hello, two (2) questions here from new poster. 

(1) EMPTY IMAGE FRAMES

I use AARD with full wikipedia exclusively offline, and the article displays always include large empty rectangles where the images would go.  I'd really prefer to not see these empty frames.  I tried the following file as a User Style file (it worked on a previous phone/early AARD version), but it now has no effect.  I am hoping someone has advice/suggestions for how to view offline Wikipedia files without the big empty image frames.

.thumb, a.image, .noresize {

    display: none;

}

Nothing changed in the application in this regard, and, as far as I can tell from a quick look, in Wikipedia markup. I just tried it and your style works as expected, hiding image placeholders. 

Are you sure your user style file was picked up? Loading user style file is a bit finicky, depending on which external program is used to select the file it may or may not work. Make sure your style file name shows up in User Styles section and settings after you add it and that you actually have this user style selected for the specific dictionary you are using ("Style..." in article menu). 

[itkach]

On Monday, January 1, 2018 at 4:10:43 AM UTC-5, c1k...@gmail.com wrote:

This is all going somewhat off topic.

Facts: Recent ZIM files for Wikipedia including images exist.  Kiwix for Android can read/display such files, even when broken into 4GB chunks for FAT32 cards.

Question: Is Igor Tkach still involved with / developing AARD? 

I am around and I tweak and update the app from time to time, for example when something breaks with major Android releases or somebody contributes new user interface translation. I am not actively working on it at the moment though: mainly because it is more or less completed, and also because I have other things to do. Now, of course software is never really "completed", so when I say it I mean that it does pretty much everything I envisioned it should do and that adding new hypothetical features adds relatively little to the usefulness of the application. Another thing to note is that one of the purposes of Aard 2 project is rather selfish - to serve me as a platform for learning and experimenting with certain technologies, and that purpose has been served, at least for now, as I am working on other things.

 

Part of staying useful and relevant for an application like this is having interesting and up-to-date content, and community (Markus, Franc, Артем and many others) is doing an excellent job of this on their own, thank you!

The only hope of having offline images for AARD is if Igor updates the app either to read ZIM files, or to accept SLOB files+images. 

.slob files already can include images (or any content type) and aard2-android and aard2-web already can display them! So the work that needs to be done to have offline images is in the .slob making department, not in the format itself and not in viewer apps. https://github.com/itkach/mwscrape would need to be updated to also download images, and https://github.com/itkach/mwscrape2slob would need to be updated to include those images. Or, images may even be collected into a separate .slob file - the app already has the ability to load resources from a separate .slob file. I don't mean to trivialize the task, it requires skill, time and some resources (processing and networking), but there's nothing too crazy about it, and I am definitely not the only person in the universe that could make it happen. 

Basically my position regarding offline images is the same as before: it's an interesting feature, the ground work for it had been laid out,  but it is not interesting/useful enough for me to put in the effort, although it may change in the future. To put it short - maybe one day, or maybe somebody else will do it before that :)

> ...if Igor updates the app ... to read ZIM files...

That is not going to happen, for sure. slob format and Aard 2 viewer applications are designed to work together. Trying to support multiple formats would result in dramatic complexity increase, varying levels of compatibility and feature completeness for different formats and, inevitably, sub par overall user experience as trade-offs will have to be made in search of the least common denominator for all supported formats. 

AARD has better search because it ignores spaces & punctuation (although a facility for full-text search would be even better).  

But I'm not sure if this advantage still outweighs the Kiwix ability to display offline images.

Idea of having a single, awesome application that does all things for all people in all the right ways is very attractive, no doubt about it :). I'm not sure how feasible it is though. There are different needs, use cases and circumstances, and hoping to please everybody while maintaining a sane code base sounds rather unrealistic. On the other hand, using both Aard 2 and Kiwix, and possibly also a bunch of other dictionaries all at the same time is well within the realm of possibility :) If you are thinking about offline images then you are considering 128Gb-256Gb phones and SD cards, and that can fit the data for all these applications.

On Monday, January 1, 2018 at 7:56:28 AM UTC, franc wrote:

Am 31. Dezember 2017 22:55:14 MEZ schrieb 'Markus Braun' via aarddict <aard...@googlegroups.com>:
>LOL
>Still the same old story. And surprisingly still true. Despite the
>figures
>changed in the last years.
>
>The sd cards got bigger - and Wikipedia as well :)
>

I have a new phone with Android 7 and FAT32 only. I couldn't use a 50 gb file ;)

Which phone that is, just curious? 

 

[Frank Röhm]

Am 1. Januar 2018 21:36:22 MEZ schrieb itkach <itk...@gmail.com>:
> ...

> Which phone that is, just curious?
>

Cubot Note Plus. Cheap China phone (116.- Euro). But faster than my former SGS4.

Thanks for the explanation by the way!

[Markus Braun]

Frank,

how do you survive with 3GB memory?

 

On my S5 it is hard to stay within 16GB main memory. I guess you may tranfer all data to the external SD with Foldersync ? 

[Markus Braun]

I could not find any creation dates for the ZIM files. What is the date for German Wikipedia and for English Wikipedia? 

How often are they updated?

Are the 4 GB chunks a seperate download or do you need to do it on your own with additional software?

--

[Frank Röhm]

Am 2. Januar 2018 01:28:02 MEZ schrieb 'Markus Braun' via aarddict <aard...@googlegroups.com>:
>Frank,
>
>how do you survive with 3GB memory?
>

On my new phone I have 32 gigabyte of internal memory!
3 gigabyte would be far too less.
I have 3GB of RAM though :)

>On my S5 it is hard to stay within 16GB main memory.

On my former SGS4 that was 16 gb too.

>I guess you may
>tranfer all data to the external SD with Foldersync ?
>

On the SGS4 I used that too. It's ok but now much better :)

[Frank Röhm]

Am 2. Januar 2018 01:32:31 MEZ schrieb 'Markus Braun' via aarddict <aard...@googlegroups.com>:
>I could not find any creation dates for the ZIM files. What is the date
>for
>German Wikipedia and for English Wikipedia?
>How often are they updated?
>

At the time when I was using kiwix this was exactly the problem and why I started to do the zim creation myself. There was no regular update and only a little older version of German wiki. I don't know this being better today but doubt it.
The wiki download (with mwoffliner) was far more difficult than with aard (mwscrape) and I remember when I deleted all the stuff it took half a day because there were millions (!) of sub directories, which was a problem for my system too (got errors when trying to backup a system image).