Comment by tamnd
1 day ago
Submitting this to Hacker News is the right place! Thanks for your idea. I will consider implementing that :)
Also, in my mind, I already have a script/program to convert HTML to Markdown, so it could actually store everything on disk as a folder of Markdown files, and then commit them to a Git repo.
I'd like to request something between what GP suggested and what your program is doing currently - basically I still want a single binary, but instead of embedding a full browser in it, I would like the binary to be just a self-extracting archive that calls the user's default browser, maybe in a new window/frame.
Basically I'm looking for something like the old-school .chm files on Windows, where you could pack a bunch of HTML documents into a single archive and open it without needing to embed a full browser engine.
This would have the advantage of keeping the file sizes really small. And you don't have to worry about the browser engine become outdated and potentially becoming an attack vector.
I instantly searched for chm on the comments and yours was the only one :o
You are not alone
For the younger generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Compiled_HTML_Help
I really miss the old .chm files, they used to be quite thorough, like the ones that came with MSDN / VS 6.0. In modern times, AutoHotkey continued that tradition, absolutely love their comprehensive .chm. But in the Linux/modern world, outside of the man pages, you need to go to the web everytime to lookup stuff and I hate that.
I think the zim flow was perfect for offline use. I know I will be making use of it as soon as I can figure out how to pass chrome the cookies so I can be signed into the site. Didn't see it in the page, but I didn't look closely yet.
Not yet supporting cookies, since I created this tool for shadowing public websites first. I will add options to pass cookies later. It will pass them to the underlying Chrome/Chromium process, so it should not be hard to do.
Not to load you up with too many ideas, but a markdown folder sounds a lot like obsidian, which has a plugin system now.
Epub would also be a great target.
I would use the shit out of this. I'm a heavy user of Logseq (OG, the md file-based version). Would LOVE to save my favorite web resources this way.