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Groups > comp.mobile.android > #154358
| From | "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> |
|---|---|
| Newsgroups | comp.mobile.android, alt.os.linux, alt.comp.os.windows-10 |
| Subject | Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files |
| Date | 2026-07-06 12:24 +0200 |
| Message-ID | <nb1e25FpadoU3@mid.individual.net> (permalink) |
| References | (7 earlier) <navhfjFgthuU1@mid.individual.net> <112ed43$1cjg0$1@dont-email.me> <navuctFifh4U1@mid.individual.net> <112fd4t$ua0$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com> <nb1d07FpadoU1@mid.individual.net> |
Cross-posted to 3 groups.
On 2026-07-06 12:05, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> On 2026-07-06 07:06, Maria Sophia wrote:
>> Carlos E. R. wrote:
>> In summary, for certain kinds of references (such as highly cross-linked
>> highly imaged technical manuals and textbooks), a zip HTML is likely
>> ideal.
>
> Seeing that calibre imports the html directory as a zip file, it is
> possible that there is software out there that directly renders readable
> those ZIP files. Or even hardware.
I asked chatgpt.
Q: I have recently seen "books" transferred as a ZIP archive of a large
html tree. Calibre calls a browser to see a page at a time, AFAIK. I
wonder if there is software that displays that ZIP as a book directly,
better on a tablet.
Yes. What you've seen is often called an **HTMLZ** (HTML in a ZIP), or
simply a ZIP containing a static website. It's a nice format because it
preserves hyperlinks, CSS, images, and search indexes while compressing
very well.
The difficulty is that there isn't a universally adopted "book reader"
for zipped HTML trees analogous to EPUB readers.
Here are the main options:
* **Calibre**: as you note, it essentially extracts or serves the HTML
and uses an embedded browser. It isn't really a dedicated HTML book
renderer.
* **KOReader** (Android, Linux, Kobo, Kindle): probably the closest to
what you're looking for. It primarily supports EPUB, PDF, DjVu, etc.,
but it can also browse HTML files. However, it doesn't natively treat an
arbitrary ZIPped website as a single book.
* **Static website in a browser**: on Android or Linux you can simply
unzip the archive and open `index.html`. Browsers do a surprisingly good
job. Firefox on Android, for example, can open local HTML files (with a
bit of help from a file manager).
* **Mini HTTP server**: many people run
```bash
python3 -m http.server
```
in the extracted directory and browse to `http://localhost:8000/`.
This avoids issues some browsers have with `file://` URLs and JavaScript.
### Why EPUB became dominant
An EPUB is essentially:
```
book.epub
└── ZIP archive
├── XHTML files
├── CSS
├── images
├── metadata
└── navigation (table of contents)
```
So EPUB is really a standardized HTML tree in a ZIP with metadata.
Readers know how to paginate it, remember your position, annotate,
search, adjust fonts, etc. A raw ZIP of HTML lacks that standard structure.
### If your documentation is generated
For things like Rust docs, Python docs, man-page collections, or API
documentation, I would actually **keep them as HTML** rather than
converting to EPUB. Documentation relies on hyperlinks more than on
linear reading, and browsers excel at that.
### An interesting possibility
It wouldn't be hard to write a small application that:
* opens a ZIP without extracting it permanently,
* serves its contents through an embedded HTTP server,
* displays them in a WebView,
* remembers your position and reading history.
Modern ZIP libraries allow random access, so the pages needn't even be
unpacked to disk. I'm a little surprised there isn't a well-known
open-source app that does exactly this, because it would be ideal for
offline documentation on a tablet.
Out of curiosity, are you mainly thinking of **technical documentation**
(Rust, Python, Linux man pages, etc.), or of **books** distributed as
HTML? The best tool tends to differ between those two use cases.
Q: I was thinking of that rust documentation, but as an example of the
system.
I think the Rust documentation is actually an excellent example because
it's *not* a linear book in the EPUB sense. It's a small self-contained
website. That changes what the ideal reader looks like.
If I were designing an offline documentation system today, I'd package
it as:
```
rust-book.zip
├── index.html
├── ch01.html
├── css/
├── fonts/
├── images/
├── search-index.js
└── ...
```
and the "reader" would simply:
* mount or read the ZIP directly;
* expose it through an internal HTTP server (or a custom URL scheme);
* render it in a browser component (WebView, Qt WebEngine, etc.);
* remember the last page, bookmarks, and maybe annotations.
No conversion to EPUB would be necessary.
The nice thing is that all the navigation, CSS, search, and JavaScript
already exist. You'd just be providing a pleasant container around them.
### Existing software gets close
There are a few projects in the same spirit:
* **Zeal** (Linux/Windows) and **Dash** (macOS) store documentation in
compressed docsets. Internally, these are HTML trees plus an index
database. They're aimed at API documentation rather than books.
* **DevDocs Offline** projects cache the HTML documentation for offline use.
* Browser-based **Progressive Web Apps** can cache entire documentation
sites for offline use, although support varies.
The common theme is that they're all essentially shipping HTML, not
inventing a new document format.
### Why browsers aren't terrible readers anymore
Twenty years ago, HTML was a poor "book" format because pages were
static and browsers had little support for reading workflows. Nowadays
browsers have:
* full-text search,
* history,
* zoom,
* dark mode,
* responsive layout,
* good typography,
* JavaScript-based navigation.
For technical documentation, that's often *better* than an EPUB reader,
because the documentation was authored as a website in the first place.
### A feature I'd still like to see
One thing I haven't seen is a generic **"ZIP book reader"**: point it at
any ZIP containing an `index.html`, and it treats it like a book. It
would need only a handful of features:
* open ZIP without extracting it;
* detect the entry page (`index.html`);
* keep reading position;
* bookmarks;
* optional full-text search (using an embedded index if present).
That would cover not only the Rust Book, but also many documentation
bundles, offline manuals, and even archived wikis. It's a surprisingly
simple concept, yet I don't know of a mainstream application dedicated
to it.
--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.
ES🇪🇸, EU🇪🇺;
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How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-04 18:40 -0400
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-04 21:17 -0400
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-04 21:48 -0400
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-04 22:51 -0400
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-04 23:57 -0400
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-04 23:13 -0600
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> - 2026-07-08 10:10 +0100
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-08 10:32 -0400
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-07-05 13:29 +0200
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Dave Royal <dave@dave123royal.com> - 2026-07-05 14:48 +0100
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-05 10:06 -0600
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-07-05 19:10 +0200
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> - 2026-07-05 17:37 +0000
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Alan <nuh-uh@nope.com> - 2026-07-07 11:11 -0700
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Dave Royal <dave@dave123royal.com> - 2026-07-05 21:00 +0100
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-07-05 22:50 +0200
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-05 23:06 -0600
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-07-06 12:05 +0200
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-07-06 12:24 +0200
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-06 10:28 -0600
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-07-06 19:50 +0200
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-06 09:36 -0600
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-07-06 19:56 +0200
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-08 11:14 -0400
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Dave Royal <dave@dave123royal.com> - 2026-07-06 07:58 +0100
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-07-06 12:12 +0200
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-05 15:12 -0600
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> - 2026-07-08 10:39 +0100
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> - 2026-07-08 10:37 +0100
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Arno Welzel <usenet@arnowelzel.de> - 2026-07-06 17:53 +0200
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-06 10:47 -0600
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> - 2026-07-08 10:57 +0100
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2026-07-05 08:35 +0100
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-05 10:38 -0600
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2026-07-05 18:22 +0100
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-05 12:16 -0600
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-07-05 19:41 +0200
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-05 12:54 -0600
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-07-05 23:11 +0200
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-05 15:23 -0600
Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files Arno Welzel <usenet@arnowelzel.de> - 2026-07-06 17:48 +0200
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