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| Author | Accessing Wikipedia (Read 25321 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Syntho
64 MB  Posts: 103 System 7 Newcomer! 
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on: January 05, 2022, 04:55
The only way I know of to access Wikipedia from System 7 is to use Theoldnet website. Has anyone worked out a solution for viewing wikipedia some other way? It would be perfect if it could be accessed offline somehow. |
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023
Reply #1 on: January 05, 2022, 20:35
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Oh, I need to point this thread to @fogwraith ;-) I've been trying to convince him to create a non-encrypted read-only Netscape 4 compatible version of Wikipedia with me. Somewhere I even coded up a prototype page. fogwraith went as far as downloading the actual data and decompressing the crazy huge archives. Maybe if he sees there's some demand, he'll want to do it too. Anyone else interested?
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #2 on: January 05, 2022, 22:38
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There is a text only version of Wikipedia for offline readers. But I know of no reader for System 7.
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Syntho
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64 MB Posts: 103 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #3 on: January 08, 2022, 18:54
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Yeah, that offline version of wikipedia on System 7 would be just incredible. Some issues I foresee are 1) converting/displaying images (some are svg format I think) and 2) size. Storing the entire wikipedia offline would be 150GB (about 50GB without images). Some of us have network attached servers that could store that and serve up the pages, but most probably don't have either a NAS or a SCSI hard drive that can hold that much info. Hmm... I think offline would be infinitely better than having to connect to the net, but it seems like it would be much easier for programmers to whip up a web version.
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #4 on: January 08, 2022, 19:34
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Not sure about the size but I think fogwraith downloaded the whole package and if I remember correctly, it was way more than 150 GB. Took quite some time unpacking on his M1 Mac. What I'd love to see is a web version accessible via a HTML 3.2 front-end (e.g. Netscape 4 compatible) optimized for speed on low end systems. So rather no images, videos or whatever bogs down systems. Just good ol' text information. That would keep it reasonable in size too. Also throwing out all versioning, or edit comments and such. Just the plain info. The thing remaining is how to update that content without much manual work in the future.
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Syntho
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64 MB Posts: 103 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #5 on: January 08, 2022, 22:05
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See what fogwraith has to say. Having a copy of wikipedia on my System 7 machine is probably my number one wish, seeing as wikipedia is my most-used website.
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #6 on: January 09, 2022, 01:36
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This site, which is probably not going to be useful on a System 7 browser. Provides details on how to download Wikipedia to use it locally. <https://www.investintech.com/resources/blog/archives/4198-view-download-wikipedia-offline.html> It says it is a database file being downloaded, so perhaps it could be somehow imported into FileMaker?
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #7 on: January 10, 2022, 13:28
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I'm not sure how feasible it is to store the whole wiki database on a System 7 Mac. That's a lot of disk space and then there's the question of how to keep it accessible. As wove suggested, FileMaker could probably be used to build some kind of index but that sounds like a real project. My wish would be to see a lightweight version of Wiki on a reliable source (e.g. the Macintosh Garden) where I could access it where needed, but the storage part is on a strong server. By the way, I found the draft I had coded up to test what a page could look like - 640x480 and HTML 3.2 for max. backwards compatibility. Keep in mind this was just quickly patched up one afternoon to convince @fogwraith to do it ;-)
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #8 on: January 17, 2022, 00:10
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Borki and Birky? 
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Knezzen
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Administrator 512 MB Posts: 608 Village idiot
Reply #9 on: January 29, 2022, 14:52
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There's the Sherlock/WannaBe plugin I made to search Wikipedia as well. Quite low on resources and fast. Give it a try. Might do what you want. Offline storage of everything on Wikipedia seems a bit over the top, but who am I to judge.
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #10 on: February 04, 2022, 10:13
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One other alternative we haven't mentioned yet is using Gopherpedia via a gopher client. Gets you text-only versions of the entries, but it's very fast.
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Knezzen
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Administrator 512 MB Posts: 608 Village idiot
Reply #11 on: February 04, 2022, 19:15
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Indeed and Gopher sure is the future! 
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