• Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg

    From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Sun Jul 5 13:29:26 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    On 2026-07-05 05:57, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Maria Sophia wrote:
    I finally forced Android 16 to behave like a real operating system again.
    I carved out a sane workflow inside an OS that keeps trying to turn into
    iOS, and I did it without surrendering my /0000 Unix /usr/local philosophy.

    SUMMARY (Linux users added because it was Linux to the rescue this time!)

    Windows and Linux can easily open HTML books stored in custom top-level hierarchies, even if the books contain tens of thousands of pages & jpegs.

    Unfortunately, Android 10 through 16 cannot open HTML book stored in custom top-level POSIX folders such as /storage/emulated/0/0000/books/book1/.

    I don't know what are "books" in this context.

    If you mean electronic books, for me they are epubs, and I handle them
    with Calibre.

    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79019

    I see html format is available, but I see no reason to use it, unless as
    an intermediary to transform to something else.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Dave Royal@3:633/10 to All on Sun Jul 5 14:48:24 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> Wrote in message:

    On 2026-07-05 05:57, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Maria Sophia wrote:
    I finally forced Android 16 to behave like a real operating system again. >>> I carved out a sane workflow inside an OS that keeps trying to turn into >>> iOS, and I did it without surrendering my /0000 Unix /usr/local philosophy. >>
    SUMMARY (Linux users added because it was Linux to the rescue this time!)

    Windows and Linux can easily open HTML books stored in custom top-level
    hierarchies, even if the books contain tens of thousands of pages & jpegs. >>
    Unfortunately, Android 10 through 16 cannot open HTML book stored in custom >> top-level POSIX folders such as /storage/emulated/0/0000/books/book1/.

    I don't know what are "books" in this context.

    If you mean electronic books, for me they are epubs, and I handle them
    with Calibre.

    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79019

    I see html format is available, but I see no reason to use it, unless as
    an intermediary to transform to something else.

    Quite a lot of technical documentation is published as an html
    'book'. This for example:
    https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

    Historically html is a dialect of sgml, which was designed for
    documentation
    --
    Remove numerics from my email address.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Sun Jul 5 19:10:11 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    On 2026-07-05 15:48, Dave Royal wrote:
    "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> Wrote in message:

    On 2026-07-05 05:57, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Maria Sophia wrote:
    I finally forced Android 16 to behave like a real operating system again. >>>> I carved out a sane workflow inside an OS that keeps trying to turn into >>>> iOS, and I did it without surrendering my /0000 Unix /usr/local philosophy.

    SUMMARY (Linux users added because it was Linux to the rescue this time!) >>>
    Windows and Linux can easily open HTML books stored in custom top-level
    hierarchies, even if the books contain tens of thousands of pages & jpegs. >>>
    Unfortunately, Android 10 through 16 cannot open HTML book stored in custom >>> top-level POSIX folders such as /storage/emulated/0/0000/books/book1/.

    I don't know what are "books" in this context.

    If you mean electronic books, for me they are epubs, and I handle them
    with Calibre.

    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79019

    I see html format is available, but I see no reason to use it, unless as
    an intermediary to transform to something else.

    Quite a lot of technical documentation is published as an html
    'book'. This for example:
    https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

    Historically html is a dialect of sgml, which was designed for
    documentation

    Ok...

    Heh, they charge 45$ for the epub version.

    No ZIP that I can see :-?

    I would have to download using wget, and this tool modifies the links so
    that they are correct for your local installation.

    I wonder if Calibre can convert that to epub.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Sun Jul 5 19:41:26 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    On 2026-07-05 18:38, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Andy Burns wrote:
    Maria Sophia wrote:

    ...

    Hi Andy,

    THANK YOU for confirming the diagnosis and agreeing with the workaround.

    Having always dealt with huge HTML references on the desktop, I was wholly unprepared for the shock that Android 10+ is no longer POSIX compliant.

    In terms of WebView, Android 10+ is apparently only POXIX compliant in
    a. /storage/emulated/0/Download/
    b. /storage/emulated/0/Documents/
    c. /storage/emulated/0/DCIM/
    d. /storage/emulated/0/Pictures/

    I "could" have solved the problem by putting the repair manual in one of those directories, but they're thoroughly polluted much like similar directories are on Windows, so my linux-learned rule is to use /usr/local instead (e.g., on Windows it's c:\data & on Android it's /0000 or /0001).


    Why not /storage/emulated/0/Documents/Books ?

    I have {external card}/Movies to store movies in my new tablet and it
    works fine with VLC. I also have {external card}/eBooks, but I need yet
    a reader (Calibre is not available that I can find).

    I just installed "Librera" from F-droid. It doesn't see the books in
    that folder, even though it asked for permission to see all files. It sees:

    /storage/emulated/0/Android
    /storage/emulated/0/Download
    /storage/emulated/0/Librera

    However, if I browse to:

    /storage/emulated/0/eBooks using cX file exprorer, and tap on a book, it offers me to upload to "Play Libros" (maybe Play Books?) or use "Librera
    FD", and the later works.

    It seems that browsing and opening with CX, apps inherits the permission
    in runtime to open that file.



    I don't like storing a multithousand file thing in a card that is
    possibly FAT or eFAT. Too many writes to the FAT area.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Dave Royal@3:633/10 to All on Sun Jul 5 21:00:03 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> Wrote in message:

    On 2026-07-05 15:48, Dave Royal wrote:
    "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> Wrote in message:

    On 2026-07-05 05:57, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Maria Sophia wrote:
    I finally forced Android 16 to behave like a real operating system again. >>>>> I carved out a sane workflow inside an OS that keeps trying to turn into >>>>> iOS, and I did it without surrendering my /0000 Unix /usr/local philosophy.

    SUMMARY (Linux users added because it was Linux to the rescue this time!) >>>>
    Windows and Linux can easily open HTML books stored in custom top-level >>>> hierarchies, even if the books contain tens of thousands of pages & jpegs. >>>>
    Unfortunately, Android 10 through 16 cannot open HTML book stored in custom
    top-level POSIX folders such as /storage/emulated/0/0000/books/book1/.

    I don't know what are "books" in this context.

    If you mean electronic books, for me they are epubs, and I handle them
    with Calibre.

    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79019

    I see html format is available, but I see no reason to use it, unless as >>> an intermediary to transform to something else.

    Quite a lot of technical documentation is published as an html
    'book'. This for example:
    https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

    Historically html is a dialect of sgml, which was designed for
    documentation

    Ok...

    Heh, they charge 45$ for the epub version.

    No ZIP that I can see :-?

    I would have to download using wget, and this tool modifies the links so that they are correct for your local installation.

    The links are normally relative to the document root, so no need
    to modify them.

    In the days when software was released on CD such html documentation was common. But any browser could read local http files then.

    I wonder if Calibre can convert that to epub.

    If so I suppose you'd have to specify the medium size - eg A4. An
    html file is liquid - it fills any window or page size.

    --
    Remove numerics from my email address.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Sun Jul 5 22:50:37 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    On 2026-07-05 22:00, Dave Royal wrote:
    "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> Wrote in message:

    On 2026-07-05 15:48, Dave Royal wrote:
    "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> Wrote in message:

    On 2026-07-05 05:57, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Maria Sophia wrote:
    I finally forced Android 16 to behave like a real operating system again.
    I carved out a sane workflow inside an OS that keeps trying to turn into >>>>>> iOS, and I did it without surrendering my /0000 Unix /usr/local philosophy.

    SUMMARY (Linux users added because it was Linux to the rescue this time!) >>>>>
    Windows and Linux can easily open HTML books stored in custom top-level >>>>> hierarchies, even if the books contain tens of thousands of pages & jpegs.

    Unfortunately, Android 10 through 16 cannot open HTML book stored in custom
    top-level POSIX folders such as /storage/emulated/0/0000/books/book1/. >>>>
    I don't know what are "books" in this context.

    If you mean electronic books, for me they are epubs, and I handle them >>>> with Calibre.

    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79019

    I see html format is available, but I see no reason to use it, unless as >>>> an intermediary to transform to something else.

    Quite a lot of technical documentation is published as an html
    'book'. This for example:
    https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

    Historically html is a dialect of sgml, which was designed for
    documentation

    Ok...

    Heh, they charge 45$ for the epub version.

    No ZIP that I can see :-?

    I would have to download using wget, and this tool modifies the links so
    that they are correct for your local installation.

    The links are normally relative to the document root, so no need
    to modify them.

    In the days when software was released on CD such html documentation was common. But any browser could read local http files then.


    Yes, I know. But calling that "book" confused me.


    I wonder if Calibre can convert that to epub.

    If so I suppose you'd have to specify the medium size - eg A4. An
    html file is liquid - it fills any window or page size.

    Epub is also liquid. PDF is not.


    I did a quick test. I downloaded that "book":

    wget --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisites --no-parent -nH https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/book/

    Then told Calibre to import it, then to convert to epub, which it did.

    cer@Laicolasse:~/Documents/Calibre Library/Unknown/The Rust Programming Language - The Rust Programming Language (80)> l
    total 5512
    drwxr-xr-x 2 cer users 155 Jul 5 22:38 ./
    drwxr-xr-x 5 cer users 150 Jul 5 22:36 ../
    -rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 1114 Jul 5 22:39 metadata.opf
    -rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 3025227 Jul 5 22:38 The Rust Programming Language - The Rust P - Unknown.epub
    -rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 2610606 Jul 5 22:36 The Rust Programming Language - The Rust P - Unknown.zip
    cer@Laicolasse:~/Documents/Calibre Library/Unknown/The Rust Programming Language - The Rust Programming Language (80)>


    Of course, it is up for someone interested in whatever book to actually tailor the conversion to his convenience. In my test, it seems to stop at chapter 3 for some reason. Surely someone has done this before and there is documentation somewhere.

    Calibre is also capable of viewing the ZIP file directly, but it calls firefox to do the actual viewing.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Sun Jul 5 23:11:18 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    On 2026-07-05 20:54, Maria Sophia wrote:
    But, on Android 10+, the mothership decided to ditch POSIX paths in part.

    Given all that, I understand why you suggested that I jut put my data in /storage/emulated/0/Documents/Books, but the reason I do not use that (and hopefully I never will) comes directly from my decades of Unix system administration. On every Unix I have ever worked with, whether that's
    SunOS, Solaris, Ultrix, DEC, VAX, AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, BSD, and even IBM mainframe Unix subsystems, we always kept a strict separation between
    a. system-managed directories
    b. user-managed directories

    I have my ways in Linux, but when I use a different OS, like Android, I
    adapt to its ways. I don't try to enforce my older habits ;-)

    I did a test, downloading that rust book to my tablet, into

    /storage/emulated/0/Documents/rust/book

    and then tried to point firefox to it. Did not work. Then I navigated to
    the "index" in CX, and tapped on it. It asked what to use, I said FFx,
    and it happily opened the "book".

    It is pointing to http://127.0.0.1:26108/sdcard/0/storage/6130-3634/Documents/book/index.html

    I guess CX created automatically a web server on the fly, which is a
    neat trick. Nice app.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Dave Royal@3:633/10 to All on Mon Jul 6 07:58:21 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> Wrote in message:

    On 2026-07-05 22:00, Dave Royal wrote:
    In the days when software was released on CD such html documentation was common. But any browser could read local http files then.

    Yes, I know. But calling that "book" confused me.

    I wouldn't call it a book either. The rust manual, to which had a
    bookmark (!) on this tablet, was the first example I thought of.
    It was just fortuitous that it had 'book' in the url. I see this
    in the source:
    <!-- Book generated using mdBook -->

    Epub is also liquid.

    I had forgotten. A few years back I converted a 'tunebook' - a mix of musical scores and text - into mobi format for display on a kindle. You want the score to occupy the whole page width, as big as possible. I wasn't sure how mobi resized the images, hence my comment in https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=171470#4147314
    "I wonder if the mobi has converted the compressed SVGs to some
    other image format, each at several sizes for different
    Kindles?"
    --
    Remove numerics from my email address.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Mon Jul 6 12:05:59 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    On 2026-07-06 07:06, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Carlos E. R. wrote:
    Calibre is also capable of viewing the ZIP file directly,
    but it calls firefox to do the actual viewing.

    Hi Carlos,

    I fed my 500MB zip file into Calibre and told it to convert it to an EPUB, which took a few hours on my 2009 Windows 10 PC, but it worked beautifully.

    Wow. My laptop took a few seconds, but it was just a 2.5 MiB zip.


    The resulting EPUB file was 400MB so it took a while for Calibre to load it the first time (due to all the caching that Calibre does on first loading).


    I have never seen an epub that big. In my case, the book that I tested
    with can be purchased in epub format. Possibly the epub is available on
    the emule network or such (for testing, of course).

    When I looked at the file inside of Thorium, I got an appreciation for why HTML is an excellent medium, as there were tens of thousands of connected pages and images, where an EPUB can handle it, but it's slow as all hell.

    Since the EPUB itself was 400MB, I didn't even bother copying to Android.
    If it's slow on Windows, it's likely gonna be even slower on Android.

    The HTML is, by way of contrast, is virtually instant when clicking about.

    When I tried to convert the EPUB to a PDF, Calibre failed (with what seemed like memory errors) after about an hour or two, so I gave up on the PDF.

    I don't like PDF for books, because it doesn't flow the text. It is
    fixed size. You need a display that matches the design size and
    resolution (or better).


    Looking into my c:\app\editor\epub directory, these seem to be most common cross platform EPUB readers, where I've sorted by large file handling.
    thorium
    most stable & fastest for huge image-heavy epubs like textbooks
    calibre
    most powerful for conversion & repair of image-heavy epubs
    redium desktop
    sibling of thorium but less polished than thorium
    okular
    KDE document viewer with medium-level EPUB support via plugins
    hamster
    best for small epubs
    lucidor
    best for very small epubs
    fbreader
    suitable for smaller epubs
    adobe digital editions
    not suitable as the epub engine is old and fragile
    sumatra pdf
    fast for small epubs

    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.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Mon Jul 6 12:12:36 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    On 2026-07-06 08:58, Dave Royal wrote:
    "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> Wrote in message:

    On 2026-07-05 22:00, Dave Royal wrote:
    In the days when software was released on CD such html documentation was common. But any browser could read local http files then.

    Yes, I know. But calling that "book" confused me.

    I wouldn't call it a book either. The rust manual, to which had a
    bookmark (!) on this tablet, was the first example I thought of.
    It was just fortuitous that it had 'book' in the url. I see this
    in the source:
    <!-- Book generated using mdBook -->

    Epub is also liquid.

    I had forgotten. A few years back I converted a 'tunebook' - a mix of musical scores and text - into mobi format for display on a kindle. You want the score to occupy the whole page width, as big as possible. I wasn't sure how mobi resized the images, hence my comment in https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=171470#4147314
    "I wonder if the mobi has converted the compressed SVGs to some
    other image format, each at several sizes for different
    Kindles?"

    The kindle doesn't use epub format. They are two competing markets with different software.

    The images I have seen on epubs are bitmaps, so hardly "zoomable". I
    mean, if the image has more pixels than my ebook device, the image
    results hard to read or view.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Mon Jul 6 12:24:05 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    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
    ÀÄÄ ZIP archive
    ÃÄÄ XHTML files
    ÃÄÄ CSS
    ÃÄÄ images
    ÃÄÄ metadata
    ÀÄÄ 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
    ÃÄÄ index.html
    ÃÄÄ ch01.html
    ÃÄÄ css/
    ÃÄÄ fonts/
    ÃÄÄ images/
    ÃÄÄ search-index.js
    ÀÄÄ ...
    ```

    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??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Mon Jul 6 19:50:46 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    On 2026-07-06 18:28, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Carlos E. R. wrote:
    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.

    ...

    I agree that, for technical documentation, HTML is often better than EPUB because it's designed for hyperlinks, search and non-linear navigation.

    It would be nice if someone writes a simple app that opens a ZIP, serves it internally and displays it like a book-because it would solve all of this .

    In my Android 16 case, and also in the case of Andy & Carlos on Android,
    the real problem was SAF doesn't allow relative URLs in custom folders.

    So any solution that works on Android, has to take SAF limitations into account, where I looked up how to view these thigns on iOS & it's similar.

    On Android, we found that running a tiny web server worked.
    But on Android 10+, we could also have tried what Carlos used:
    a. An older version of CX file Manager has a built-in web server

    It is a current tablet with Android 16 and a current version of CX,
    installed via Google Play, version 2.7.6. I tried an html tree, not htmlz.

    b. So does X-plore File Manager
    c. And I'm told MiXplorer has excellent HTML-Z handling features

    Interestingly, iOS seems to handle relative links *better* than Android. What's *different* about iOS is that iOS doesn't use SAF. Yipee!

    An HTMLZ (a ZIP full of HTML with relative paths) will work on an iPad.
    a. iPadOS does not break relative links the way Android 10+ does.
    b. iPadOS does support relative paths inside an HTMLZ
    c. iPadOS gives the browser real filesystem paths, not SAF streams.
    d. So the browser sees the directory structure normally.
    This means the 500MB shop manual will behave like a normal offline website. Safari will load the entire manual correctly.

    Even so, we can still use the server method on iOS as we did on Android.
    All of thse can run the same "python3 -m http.server" we used on Android.
    a. iSH (Linux emulator)
    b. Pythonista
    c. Kodex
    Once we start the HTTP server in $DOCUMENT_ROOT, then we point a browser to
    <http://localhost:8000/>

    So, had I tried my iPads first, prior to Android, it would have worked. (Although it's an Apple disaster trying to get a large file onto the iPad.)

    In summary, on Android 10+ the SAF mechanism destroys POSIX paths outside
    of the four public directories for web browser, so in order to put huge complex HTML-Z documentation on Android 16 outside of the four public directories, we had to employ a local server (or convert to EPUB/PDF).

    Overall, I'm glad I ran into this problem because I learned about SAF and
    how it screws up POSIX file paths in custom folders when browsing HTML.

    And, I learned from testing Calibre for Carlos that EPUBs have a fantastic search mechanism for extremely complex data structures (as good as PDF).

    And I learned that for huge, image-heavy, cross-linked manuals, HTML in a browser is the fastest method, so there's a place for HTMLZ after all.


    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Mon Jul 6 19:56:33 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    On 2026-07-06 17:36, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Carlos E. R. wrote:
    I fed my 500MB zip file into Calibre and told it to convert it to an EPUB, >>> which took a few hours on my 2009 Windows 10 PC, but it worked beautifully. >>
    Wow. My laptop took a few seconds, but it was just a 2.5 MiB zip.

    My desktop is from 2009. It's still working well, but this stressed it. :)

    The resulting EPUB file was 400MB so it took a while for Calibre to load it >>> the first time (due to all the caching that Calibre does on first loading). >>
    I have never seen an epub that big. In my case, the book that I tested
    with can be purchased in epub format. Possibly the epub is available on
    the emule network or such (for testing, of course).

    My experience had been the same as yours. EPUBs are generally quite small. This one has tens of thousands of separate images yet very little text.

    When I looked at the file inside of Thorium, I got an appreciation for why >>> HTML is an excellent medium, as there were tens of thousands of connected >>> pages and images, where an EPUB can handle it, but it's slow as all hell. >>>
    Since the EPUB itself was 400MB, I didn't even bother copying to Android. >>> If it's slow on Windows, it's likely gonna be even slower on Android.

    The HTML is, by way of contrast, is virtually instant when clicking about. >>>
    When I tried to convert the EPUB to a PDF, Calibre failed (with what seemed >>> like memory errors) after about an hour or two, so I gave up on the PDF.

    I don't like PDF for books, because it doesn't flow the text. It is
    fixed size. You need a display that matches the design size and
    resolution (or better).

    I agree that PDF isn't all that great for books in that, for me, my eyes aren't so great and a PDF makes you sit and stare at it to read it.

    Maybe it would be easier to read in an ebook device, using epaper which doesn't shine.


    I prefer to convert the (text) PDF to audio using cross platform balabolka freeware which then turns any (text) PDF into an audio book.

    It's not as good as a human reader for some books, e.g., when I converted Einstein's 1916 (updated in 1922) book on relativity, calculations are
    messed up when spoken by balabolka's conversion utilities.

    But now I'm one of the few non-physicists who understand gravity as a
    result, since I was in a compression/decompression chamber for a month.

    As an aside, almost nobody understands gravity. One in a million I'd bet.
    And even as I understand it to that level, there's still much I don't know.

    Looking into my c:\app\editor\epub directory, these seem to be most common >>> cross platform EPUB readers, where I've sorted by large file handling.
    thorium
    most stable & fastest for huge image-heavy epubs like textbooks
    calibre
    most powerful for conversion & repair of image-heavy epubs
    redium desktop
    sibling of thorium but less polished than thorium
    okular
    KDE document viewer with medium-level EPUB support via plugins
    hamster
    best for small epubs
    lucidor
    best for very small epubs
    fbreader
    suitable for smaller epubs
    adobe digital editions
    not suitable as the epub engine is old and fragile
    sumatra pdf
    fast for small epubs

    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 agree that Calibre had no problem importing the single 500MB zip file.
    It just took a long time, but Calibre didn't even blink on the contents.

    It's just that my circa 2009 PC runs slowly when it's time to crunch it.

    I've learned there's a good reason highly cross-linked documents filled
    with images and almost no text are supplied in a zip file HTML format.

    It's amazing how fast HTML is compared to the EPUB, although the epub has
    the distinct advantage of a fantastic search mechanism that shocked me.

    With EPUB, when you search, you get every instance but every line of every instance (much like you'd get with a (text) PDF, so that was really nice.

    Yes, my kobo reader does search easily, I noticed.


    So if you need to search a huge 500MB HTML document containing tens of thousands of files, converting it to a 400MB EPUB allows that fantastic search, but if you need to actually navigate it, an HTML server wins out.


    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Alan@3:633/10 to All on Tue Jul 7 11:11:20 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    On 2026-07-05 10:37, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
    In comp.mobile.android,alt.os.linux,alt.comp.os.windows-10 "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-05 15:48, Dave Royal wrote:
    "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> Wrote in message:

    On 2026-07-05 05:57, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Maria Sophia wrote:
    I finally forced Android 16 to behave like a real operating system again.
    I carved out a sane workflow inside an OS that keeps trying to turn into >>>>>> iOS, and I did it without surrendering my /0000 Unix /usr/local philosophy.

    SUMMARY (Linux users added because it was Linux to the rescue this time!) >>>>>
    Windows and Linux can easily open HTML books stored in custom top-level >>>>> hierarchies, even if the books contain tens of thousands of pages & jpegs.

    Unfortunately, Android 10 through 16 cannot open HTML book stored in custom
    top-level POSIX folders such as /storage/emulated/0/0000/books/book1/. >>>>
    I don't know what are "books" in this context.

    If you mean electronic books, for me they are epubs, and I handle them >>>> with Calibre.

    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79019

    I see html format is available, but I see no reason to use it, unless as >>>> an intermediary to transform to something else.

    Quite a lot of technical documentation is published as an html
    'book'. This for example:
    https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

    Historically html is a dialect of sgml, which was designed for
    documentation

    Ok...

    Heh, they charge 45$ for the epub version.

    No ZIP that I can see :-?

    I would have to download using wget, and this tool modifies the links so
    that they are correct for your local installation.

    I wonder if Calibre can convert that to epub.

    As I posted about in (rec.autos.tech) last month:
    Subject: Free Vehicle Service Manuals
    Date: 11 Jun 2026
    Message-ID: <6a2a43e6@news.ausics.net>

    I've been using Operation CHARM for some time (https://charm.li/),
    which covers vehicles (USA & Canada models) from 1982 to 2013. Now I
    see there's a new site, LEMON, with service manuals for vehicles
    from 1960 to 2025:

    https://lemon-manuals.la/


    Now THAT is a useful resource!

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Nuno Silva@3:633/10 to All on Wed Jul 8 10:39:36 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    On 2026-07-05, Carlos E. R. wrote:

    On 2026-07-05 05:57, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Maria Sophia wrote:
    I finally forced Android 16 to behave like a real operating system again. >>> I carved out a sane workflow inside an OS that keeps trying to turn into >>> iOS, and I did it without surrendering my /0000 Unix /usr/local philosophy. >>
    SUMMARY (Linux users added because it was Linux to the rescue this time!)

    Windows and Linux can easily open HTML books stored in custom top-level
    hierarchies, even if the books contain tens of thousands of pages & jpegs. >>
    Unfortunately, Android 10 through 16 cannot open HTML book stored in custom >> top-level POSIX folders such as /storage/emulated/0/0000/books/book1/.

    I don't know what are "books" in this context.

    If you mean electronic books, for me they are epubs, and I handle them
    with Calibre.

    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79019

    I see html format is available, but I see no reason to use it, unless
    as an intermediary to transform to something else.

    (Wasn't epub a Zip archive of a HTML book?)

    (Ok, Wikipedia says XHTML?)

    --
    Nuno Silva

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Chris@3:633/10 to All on Wed Jul 8 17:44:45 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    Dave Royal <dave@dave123royal.com> wrote:
    "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> Wrote in message:

    On 2026-07-05 05:57, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Maria Sophia wrote:
    I finally forced Android 16 to behave like a real operating system again. >>>> I carved out a sane workflow inside an OS that keeps trying to turn into >>>> iOS, and I did it without surrendering my /0000 Unix /usr/local philosophy.

    SUMMARY (Linux users added because it was Linux to the rescue this time!) >>>
    Windows and Linux can easily open HTML books stored in custom top-level
    hierarchies, even if the books contain tens of thousands of pages & jpegs. >>>
    Unfortunately, Android 10 through 16 cannot open HTML book stored in custom >>> top-level POSIX folders such as /storage/emulated/0/0000/books/book1/.

    I don't know what are "books" in this context.

    If you mean electronic books, for me they are epubs, and I handle them
    with Calibre.

    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79019

    I see html format is available, but I see no reason to use it, unless as
    an intermediary to transform to something else.

    Quite a lot of technical documentation is published as an html
    'book'. This for example:
    https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

    Historically html is a dialect of sgml, which was designed for
    documentation

    It may be published as html, but nowadays most documentation is *written*
    in Markdown or similar dialect. With Markdown it's very easy to export into different formats like html, docx or pdf. There's no need save the book in html.


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Chris@3:633/10 to All on Wed Jul 8 17:51:34 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-05 15:48, Dave Royal wrote:
    "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> Wrote in message:

    On 2026-07-05 05:57, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Maria Sophia wrote:
    I finally forced Android 16 to behave like a real operating system again. >>>>> I carved out a sane workflow inside an OS that keeps trying to turn into >>>>> iOS, and I did it without surrendering my /0000 Unix /usr/local philosophy.

    SUMMARY (Linux users added because it was Linux to the rescue this time!) >>>>
    Windows and Linux can easily open HTML books stored in custom top-level >>>> hierarchies, even if the books contain tens of thousands of pages & jpegs. >>>>
    Unfortunately, Android 10 through 16 cannot open HTML book stored in custom
    top-level POSIX folders such as /storage/emulated/0/0000/books/book1/.

    I don't know what are "books" in this context.

    If you mean electronic books, for me they are epubs, and I handle them
    with Calibre.

    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79019

    I see html format is available, but I see no reason to use it, unless as >>> an intermediary to transform to something else.

    Quite a lot of technical documentation is published as an html
    'book'. This for example:
    https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

    Historically html is a dialect of sgml, which was designed for
    documentation

    Ok...

    Heh, they charge 45$ for the epub version.

    No ZIP that I can see :-?

    I would have to download using wget, and this tool modifies the links so that they are correct for your local installation.

    I wonder if Calibre can convert that to epub.

    No need. If you go to the github you can download the source and build it
    in whatever format you want.


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Wed Jul 8 21:49:12 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    On 2026-07-08 19:51, Chris wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-05 15:48, Dave Royal wrote:
    "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> Wrote in message:

    On 2026-07-05 05:57, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Maria Sophia wrote:
    I finally forced Android 16 to behave like a real operating system again.
    I carved out a sane workflow inside an OS that keeps trying to turn into >>>>>> iOS, and I did it without surrendering my /0000 Unix /usr/local philosophy.

    SUMMARY (Linux users added because it was Linux to the rescue this time!) >>>>>
    Windows and Linux can easily open HTML books stored in custom top-level >>>>> hierarchies, even if the books contain tens of thousands of pages & jpegs.

    Unfortunately, Android 10 through 16 cannot open HTML book stored in custom
    top-level POSIX folders such as /storage/emulated/0/0000/books/book1/. >>>>
    I don't know what are "books" in this context.

    If you mean electronic books, for me they are epubs, and I handle them >>>> with Calibre.

    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79019

    I see html format is available, but I see no reason to use it, unless as >>>> an intermediary to transform to something else.

    Quite a lot of technical documentation is published as an html
    'book'. This for example:
    https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

    Historically html is a dialect of sgml, which was designed for
    documentation

    Ok...

    Heh, they charge 45$ for the epub version.

    No ZIP that I can see :-?

    I would have to download using wget, and this tool modifies the links so
    that they are correct for your local installation.

    I wonder if Calibre can convert that to epub.

    No need. If you go to the github you can download the source and build it
    in whatever format you want.


    Ah. Right. Did not occur to me, but in the past I had little luck with
    doc building.


    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Dave Royal@3:633/10 to All on Thu Jul 9 06:09:32 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> Wrote in message:

    Dave Royal <dave@dave123royal.com> wrote:
    "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> Wrote in message:

    On 2026-07-05 05:57, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Maria Sophia wrote:
    I finally forced Android 16 to behave like a real operating system again. >>>>> I carved out a sane workflow inside an OS that keeps trying to turn into >>>>> iOS, and I did it without surrendering my /0000 Unix /usr/local philosophy.

    SUMMARY (Linux users added because it was Linux to the rescue this time!) >>>>
    Windows and Linux can easily open HTML books stored in custom top-level >>>> hierarchies, even if the books contain tens of thousands of pages & jpegs. >>>>
    Unfortunately, Android 10 through 16 cannot open HTML book stored in custom
    top-level POSIX folders such as /storage/emulated/0/0000/books/book1/.

    I don't know what are "books" in this context.

    If you mean electronic books, for me they are epubs, and I handle them
    with Calibre.

    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79019

    I see html format is available, but I see no reason to use it, unless as >>> an intermediary to transform to something else.

    Quite a lot of technical documentation is published as an html
    'book'. This for example:
    https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

    Historically html is a dialect of sgml, which was designed for
    documentation

    It may be published as html, but nowadays most documentation is *written*
    in Markdown or similar dialect. With Markdown it's very easy to export into different formats like html, docx or pdf. There's no need save the book in html.

    Indeed. That rust doc is written in markdown with svg images. They
    use mdbook to convert that to html. mdbook may be able to produce
    epubs - if not there's probably a converter.
    --
    Remove numerics from my email address.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Chris@3:633/10 to All on Thu Jul 9 07:05:02 2026
    Subject: Re: How to copy & read a huge zipped book with thousands of html & jpeg files

    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-08 19:51, Chris wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-05 15:48, Dave Royal wrote:
    "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> Wrote in message:

    On 2026-07-05 05:57, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Maria Sophia wrote:
    I finally forced Android 16 to behave like a real operating system again.
    I carved out a sane workflow inside an OS that keeps trying to turn into
    iOS, and I did it without surrendering my /0000 Unix /usr/local philosophy.

    SUMMARY (Linux users added because it was Linux to the rescue this time!)

    Windows and Linux can easily open HTML books stored in custom top-level >>>>>> hierarchies, even if the books contain tens of thousands of pages & jpegs.

    Unfortunately, Android 10 through 16 cannot open HTML book stored in custom
    top-level POSIX folders such as /storage/emulated/0/0000/books/book1/. >>>>>
    I don't know what are "books" in this context.

    If you mean electronic books, for me they are epubs, and I handle them >>>>> with Calibre.

    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79019

    I see html format is available, but I see no reason to use it, unless as >>>>> an intermediary to transform to something else.

    Quite a lot of technical documentation is published as an html
    'book'. This for example:
    https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

    Historically html is a dialect of sgml, which was designed for
    documentation

    Ok...

    Heh, they charge 45$ for the epub version.

    No ZIP that I can see :-?

    I would have to download using wget, and this tool modifies the links so >>> that they are correct for your local installation.

    I wonder if Calibre can convert that to epub.

    No need. If you go to the github you can download the source and build it
    in whatever format you want.


    Ah. Right. Did not occur to me, but in the past I had little luck with
    doc building.

    It is getting easier, especially with the likes of pandoc. This rust manual does require a few dependencies, however.


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)