Thread: The great offline issue
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_Chris_ is offline _Chris_
2008-01-25 , 21:26
Posts: 3 | Thanked: 0 times | Joined on Jan 2008
#32
The great offline issue - finally solved!?!

Thanks to loki and his version of pyplucker (Forum Post, Repository) you can gather relevant news right on your device, whenever you are online, without the need for syncing.

(I assume here in this post you have heard of the excellent FBReader for Maemo, which displays ebooks. Coupled with a PC based web site converter like Sunrise (or others) you can convert arbitrary websites into "take away ebooks" on your device. But this has been a two step solution until now...)

After you installed pyPlucker from the above repository, open an X Terminal on your device. You should execute "plucker-setup" now, but some error message appears, which fails on missing rights on the directory ".plucker" and sometimes ".pluckerrc". After you granted those rights for everyone (search for "how to become root" in this forum), execute "plucker-setup" again. Now it works.

You could now invoke the plucker (the web site converter) by loki's command line (for more reference on the plucker check the Documentation). But I prefer to set up a "home.html" file, which acts as a default for plucker and contains all the news I'd like to update onroad.

A sample is already installed in .plucker, you just have to change it to the news you prefer. I print mine for reference:

Code:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Plucker Home Page</TITLE>
</HEAD>

<BODY>

<H1>_Chris_'s News on the go...</H1>

<P><A HREF="http://www.tagesschau.de/mobileTSpic/" MAXDEPTH=2>Tagesschau</A><P>

<A HREF="http://www.heise.de/pda/newsticker" MAXDEPTH=2>Heise Newsticker</A><P>

<A HREF="http://www.golem.de/pda/pdahome.html" MAXDEPTH=2 STAYONHOST>Golem News</A><P>
</BODY>
</HTML>
If you now set some additional defaults in the ".pluckerrc", than averything works smooth:


Code:
;;   0 - silent except for errors
;;   1 - progress status
;;   2 - debugging
;;
verbosity = 0

;;
;; Path to the plucker dir.
;;
;;pluckerdir =

;;
;; Document name
;;
doc_name = Chris's news on the go

;;
;; Filename for the document
;;
doc_file = ../MyDocs/.documents/ChrisNews

;;
;; Compression type 
;;
;;   doc  - use the DOC compression (works on all supported versions)
;;   zlib - use ZLib compression (doesn't work on 2.x devices)
;;
;; Zlib compression is typically much better than DOC compression.
;;
compression = zlib

;;
;; Bits per pixel for images (0 to means 'no images')
;;
bpp = 8

;;
;; Max width and height for the images. Alternative maximum width 
;; and height can also be specified. These values are used for 'big' 
;; versions of inlined images that had to be scaled down in size to 
;; obey the maxwidth and maxheight parameters.
;;
maxwidth      = 400
maxheight     = 240
;;alt_maxwidth  =
;;alt_maxheight =

;;
;; If an image is smaller or equal to the given limit (in bytes)
;; the image will not be compressed.
;;
image_compression_limit = 300

Voila, you are ready to start your first plucker by entering "plucker-build". On my WLAN-connection it takes roughly 3-5 minutes for the above 3 sites, which is ok for me in the morning. I tried once over the mobile (3G), but canceled after 10 minutes...

After it finished, there should be a document called "ChrisNews" (or what you have named it ) ready to open with FBReader or Plucker.

By the way: since out beloved tablets are not rockets, you should restrict the updates to the absolutely neccessary pages. It helps to add:

Code:
0:-:http://heise.ivwbox.de/.*
0:-:http://www.heise.de/ivw-bin/.*
0:-:http://tagessch.ivwbox.de/.*
0:-:http://golem.ivwbox.de/.*
to the end of the file "exclusionlist.txt" in the ".plucker" directory to avoid a lot of web-bug-links...


Ok folks,
happy news-harvesting on the go!

Cheers,
Chris

PS: anyone knows how to make a start menu entry for the shell command "plucker-build"? I would like to start it with a tap...