Offline Wikipedia on Kobo (Guide) - Page 7

m-p{3} · 04-13-2021, 09:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pioneer129

Hi, has anyone tried this offline Wikipedia lately,if its still working or not?

I have a Kobo Glo HD (fw 4.26.16704) with a 256GB MicroSD card (UHS-3 High Endurance) and trying to access a split-ZIM (wikipedia_en_all_maxi_2021-03.zim, split into 2GB pieces) doesn't work natively. I'll have to read the topic on how to host a local webserver and make it available through the web browser without a WiFi connection.

CosmicRay · 10-20-2022, 10:19 AM

Hi folks, I have a new Kobo Libra 2 on 4.34.20097. I have tried to install two smallish ZIM files on it - the ones from https://download.kiwix.org/zim/stack...ll_2022-05.zim and https://download.kiwix.org/zim/zimit...ll_2022-06.zim -- and both are broken.

The stackexchange one, when opened, just gives me a blank screen and nothing else. There is never any content.

The Low Tech Magazine just gives me a spinner and that's it. Nothing else there either, just endless spinning in the upper left corner.

I also tried https://download.kiwix.org/zim/wikip...xi_2022-09.zim and it was the same as the ebooks.stackexchange: just a blank screen and nothing does anything.

Any ideas?

compurandom · 10-20-2022, 07:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CosmicRay

Hi folks, I have a new Kobo Libra 2 on 4.34.20097. I have tried to install two smallish ZIM files on it

Kobo broke the zim reader quite a while ago. There's also no way to search them anymore if I recall correctly.

CosmicRay · 10-20-2022, 07:52 PM

Well that's disappointing! (But thanks for the info.) It was one of the reasons I bought the Kobo. Is there any third-party reader that still supports ZIMs?

Quoth · 10-21-2022, 05:34 AM

Or is there a way to convert a ZIM to an epub?

compurandom · 10-21-2022, 07:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quoth

Or is there a way to convert a ZIM to an epub?

Not quite the same, but the wikireader calibre plugin will take article and wiki book URLs or wikipedia article titles and collect them into an epub.

Quoth · 10-21-2022, 12:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by compurandom

Not quite the same, but the wikireader calibre plugin will take article and wiki book URLs or wikipedia article titles and collect them into an epub.

I do that with copy & paste multiple sites/ pages on a subject into LO Writer, fix styles, do extra Save As docx and import to Calibre. That way I can excise the nonsense, fix formatting, tables and images etc. But it needs working Internet.
My understanding is that the zim files are snapshots of wikipedia that work off line. I did use wget to archive some entire websites in the past that were about to be deleted.

CosmicRay · 10-21-2022, 08:31 PM

I started looking into this. I downloaded the Kiwix ebooks.stackexchange zim and unpacked it with zimdump. I noticed that the top-level page was empty except for a meta refresh pointing to a different URL. Hmmmm.

I took a zim I had generated myself, which was not like that, and... progress! It opened, and displayed the first page OK at least.

However, none of the internal links worked. The external links seemed to work right (with it offering to open them in a browser).

Perhaps there is a way of generating a ZIM that will yet work on this.

I also looked into ZIM to epub conversion. I found one on Github that was last updated 10 years ago and it crashed miserably, so I think that's out. I also looked at tools that might possibly be able to convert a whole tree of HTML/image files to ePub, but struck out there too.

CosmicRay · 10-21-2022, 08:52 PM

I also found this https://github.com/koreader/koreader/pull/9534 that is proposing a plugin go koreader that could convert a ZIM to a Sqlite database that could be read within koreader.

Owl_ · 10-22-2022, 06:47 AM

Wikipedia offline may be doable, I must see if the kobo hardware bears it.
I have a old version of wikipedia (2014) of relatively small size. With the present firmwares I can chunk it in 15-20 kobodictionaries of 500 mb each one

compurandom · 10-22-2022, 09:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Owl_

Wikipedia offline may be doable, I must see if the kobo hardware bears it.
I have a old version of wikipedia (2014) of relatively small size. With the present firmwares I can chunk it in 15-20 kobodictionaries of 500 mb each one

I would think the zim reader on the kobo is open source?
Maybe someone could find the old code and fix it? Even when it worked, it had a lot of bugs, including not correctly handle sharded zims.

The limit on the kobo for zims was the vfat maximum file size, which I think is 2-4G or something. The full wikipedia text only zim was like 15G. Probably slightly bigger now. (I have it in a different format similar to zim on my phone now in about 4-5 pieces.)

m-p{3} · 12-22-2022, 10:54 AM

As far as I know, you could split the ZIM file into 2GB chunks

https://web.archive.org/web/20170809...x.org/wiki/FAQ

Quote:

USB flash drives and memory cards are often formatted using the FAT32 filesystem which can't store files bigger than 4GB. Kiwix is able to deal with 2GB splitted ZIM files. The splitted ZIM files must be named xxx.zimaa, xxx.zimab, xxx.zimac, etc.

On GNU/Linux and with the console: split --bytes=2000M my_big_file.zim my_big_file.zim

noobyme · 04-05-2023, 11:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CosmicRay

Hi folks, I have a new Kobo Libra 2 on 4.34.20097. I have tried to install two smallish ZIM files on it - the ones from https://download.kiwix.org/zim/stack...ll_2022-05.zim and https://download.kiwix.org/zim/zimit...ll_2022-06.zim -- and both are broken.

The stackexchange one, when opened, just gives me a blank screen and nothing else. There is never any content.

The Low Tech Magazine just gives me a spinner and that's it. Nothing else there either, just endless spinning in the upper left corner.

I also tried https://download.kiwix.org/zim/wikip...xi_2022-09.zim and it was the same as the ebooks.stackexchange: just a blank screen and nothing does anything.

Any ideas?

I have kobo nia. I upgraded sd card to 128gb. I loaded zim files, small ones and big. The big one didn't show up at all and the small ones don't read:just blank pages. What gives?? Firmware 4.35.20400

compurandom · 04-06-2023, 07:31 AM

zim has been broken for a very long time.

Kobo removed the search box from the GUI (making it useless), and even when that worked, it couldn't handle split files.

noobyme · 04-07-2023, 03:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by compurandom

zim has been broken for a very long time.

Kobo removed the search box from the GUI (making it useless), and even when that worked, it couldn't handle split files.

Darn. How complex do you think adding zim support would be? If it existed in previous versions... The code already exists...

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10-20-2022, 10:19 AM	#92
CosmicRay Junior Member Posts: 7 Karma: 2070 Join Date: Apr 2009 Device: Kindle 2	Hi folks, I have a new Kobo Libra 2 on 4.34.20097. I have tried to install two smallish ZIM files on it - the ones from https://download.kiwix.org/zim/stack...ll_2022-05.zim and https://download.kiwix.org/zim/zimit...ll_2022-06.zim -- and both are broken. The stackexchange one, when opened, just gives me a blank screen and nothing else. There is never any content. The Low Tech Magazine just gives me a spinner and that's it. Nothing else there either, just endless spinning in the upper left corner. I also tried https://download.kiwix.org/zim/wikip...xi_2022-09.zim and it was the same as the ebooks.stackexchange: just a blank screen and nothing does anything. Any ideas?

10-20-2022, 07:52 PM	#94
CosmicRay Junior Member Posts: 7 Karma: 2070 Join Date: Apr 2009 Device: Kindle 2	Well that's disappointing! (But thanks for the info.) It was one of the reasons I bought the Kobo. Is there any third-party reader that still supports ZIMs?

10-21-2022, 05:34 AM	#95
Quoth the rook, bossing Never. Posts: 11,166 Karma: 85874891 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Ireland Device: All 4 Kinds: epub eink, Kindle, android eink, NxtPaper11	Or is there a way to convert a ZIM to an epub?

10-21-2022, 08:31 PM	#98
CosmicRay Junior Member Posts: 7 Karma: 2070 Join Date: Apr 2009 Device: Kindle 2	I started looking into this. I downloaded the Kiwix ebooks.stackexchange zim and unpacked it with zimdump. I noticed that the top-level page was empty except for a meta refresh pointing to a different URL. Hmmmm. I took a zim I had generated myself, which was not like that, and... progress! It opened, and displayed the first page OK at least. However, none of the internal links worked. The external links seemed to work right (with it offering to open them in a browser). Perhaps there is a way of generating a ZIM that will yet work on this. I also looked into ZIM to epub conversion. I found one on Github that was last updated 10 years ago and it crashed miserably, so I think that's out. I also looked at tools that might possibly be able to convert a whole tree of HTML/image files to ePub, but struck out there too.

10-21-2022, 08:52 PM	#99
CosmicRay Junior Member Posts: 7 Karma: 2070 Join Date: Apr 2009 Device: Kindle 2	I also found this https://github.com/koreader/koreader/pull/9534 that is proposing a plugin go koreader that could convert a ZIM to a Sqlite database that could be read within koreader.

10-22-2022, 06:47 AM	#100
Owl_ Enthusiastic reader Posts: 423 Karma: 3860889 Join Date: Mar 2017 Location: Italy Device: Kindle paperwhite3, Kobo aura one, kobo touch 2.0, Kobo Clara HD,Poke2	Wikipedia offline may be doable, I must see if the kobo hardware bears it. I have a old version of wikipedia (2014) of relatively small size. With the present firmwares I can chunk it in 15-20 kobodictionaries of 500 mb each one

04-06-2023, 07:31 AM	#104
compurandom Guru Posts: 919 Karma: 417282 Join Date: Jun 2015 Device: kobo aura h2o, kobo forma	zim has been broken for a very long time. Kobo removed the search box from the GUI (making it useless), and even when that worked, it couldn't handle split files.

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