Offline KeenWiki

This is where you can post your Commander Keen related stories, artwork, or other stuff that is related to Commander Keen but otherwise doesn't belong in another forum.
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Nisaba
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Offline KeenWiki

Post by Nisaba »

Hello @Malvineous,
hello everybody,

I'm looking for an offline solution like Kiwix which enables you to have the whole KeenWiki at hand wherever you go! On a boat, in the middle of nowhere or in Jail...

For those who didn't know: Kiwix is an offline reader for web content. It's software intended to make Wikipedia available without using the internet, but it is potentially suitable for all HTML content. Kiwix supports the ZIM format, a highly compressed open format with additional meta-data.

So here is my question @Malvineous:
If you could, please share a static fork of the Wiki. HTML data would be fine. of course having an offline KeenWiki in the ZIM format would be brilliant. unfortunately the MediaWiki Collection Extension feature was removed. But as the KeenWiki is a deployment project, you may ask the Kiwix team to create a ZIM file for you. To do that you need to prepare the following information:
  • Text file with the list of article titles (one title per line, with underscores, UTF8)
  • The URL of the wiki you want to snapshot
  • Prepare a welcome page for the ZIM file (on the wiki, and share with the Kiwix Team the title of that page)
  • ZIM file metadata:
    • Title
    • Description (only a few words)
    • 48x48 PNG log

Useful links/further reading:
out now (link) : Image
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Malvineous
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Re: Offline KeenWiki

Post by Malvineous »

I did share a full backup of the KeenWiki back in 2013 so it is probably time to give that an update. That backup was of the database (so includes version history) but to view it locally you'd need a MediaWiki install (e.g. running through Docker.)

People have scraped the HTML from the KeenWiki before but unfortunately it puts a huge load on the server so I'm not so keen on that method.

Probably the best thing would be to use an updated backup, restore it locally into a MediaWiki instance on your own PC, then use one of the tools in the link you posted to build a ZIM file from that.

If you're able to get the MediaWiki MySQL stack running on a local install of Docker then let me know and I'll see what I can do to get updated KeenWiki data into it.
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Levellass
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Re: Offline KeenWiki

Post by Levellass »

I have all the patch wiki stored as MHT files, should the worst occur and te entire internet collapse. It's surprisingly compact, 76Mb or so.
What you really need, not what you think you ought to want.
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Nisaba
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Re: Offline KeenWiki

Post by Nisaba »

thanks for the reply.
it might take some time until I find the time to take care of things myself. till then, please tell me: how much disk space does the KeenWiki at it's current state take? I'm not speaking about hosted tools and mods but only the pure HTML section + images.
out now (link) : Image
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Malvineous
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Re: Offline KeenWiki

Post by Malvineous »

Not sure about the HTML as it's not stored as HTML, but the MySQL database containing all the text content and page revision history is 212 MB. The images are 3.2 GB. The tools and mods are 786 MB.
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