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Comment by overgard

9 days ago

Interesting, but I'm kind of confused why you'd need lazy loads for a local file? Like, how big are these files expected to be? (Or is the lazy loading just to support lazy loading its already doing?)

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overgard

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skybrian  9 days ago

I believe the idea is that it's not local. It's a very large file on an HTTP server (required for range requests) and you don't want to download the whole thing over the network.

Of course, since it's on an HTTP server, it could easily handle doing multiple requests of different files, but sometimes that's inconvenient to manage on the server and a single file would be easier.

Maybe this is downstream of Gwern choosing to use MediaWiki for his website?

  • gwern  9 days ago

    Yes, network is assumed. If it's local, there's no problem, just use MHT or SingleFile!

    > Maybe this is downstream of Gwern choosing to use MediaWiki for his website?

    This has nothing at all to do with the choice of server. The benefit of being a single-file, with zero configuration or special software required by anyone who ever hosts or rehosts a Gwtar in the future, would be true regardless of what wiki software I run.

    (As it happens, Gwern.net has never used MediaWiki, or any standard dynamic CMS. It started as Gitit, and is now a very customized Hakyll static site with a lot of nginx options. I am surprised you thought that because Gwern.net looks nothing like any MediaWiki installation I have seen.)