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SLoT

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SLSnapshot
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Sensei's Library On Tour
    Keywords: Software

Sensei's Library on Tour (SLoT) is a little Java tool, that converts a wiki dump into a set of HTML pages that can be easily converted for reading on a handheld computer or e-book reader.

This page deals with this tool and is maintained by Hans Wiezorke.

Feel free to add comment wherever you see fit.


History

One way to get SL onto a handheld, is to convert the SLSnapshot into a format for one of the many document readers out there. The problem with this approach is, that all the diagrams have to be scaled down, in order to fit onto a small screen. My first attempt to crunch the SLSnapshot with ISiloX resulted in a 40MB document, that only had badly scaled black and white diagrams.

The obvious solution for this is to rebuild the diagrams from their original ascii source and assemble them by putting together several small icons. The original idea for this approach came from AshleyF, who started PocketSL. Since many handheld computers do not come with a web browser, that can interpret JavaScript, I saw the need for a plain HTML version and thus wrote SLoT.

SLoT generates quite a lot of html (currently 62MB), but this html can be compressed very efficiently by web clipping applications. I use ISilo/ISiloX for compressing and viewing and the resulting document is 16MB. By filtering, you can cut this down to a few kB. Small subsets can even be viewed on older 2MB Palms.

Here's what you need:

SLoT
Arno kindly made it available here: [ext] SLoT v0.50 (65KB)
SL dump
A [ext] database dump (5MB) of the SL Wiki database.

You do not need the SLSnaphot for this.

The readme file in the SLoT package contains all instructions needed.

SLoT features:

  • Layout and navigation optimized for small screens
  • A filtering mechanism, so you do not need to load the entire library
  • A table of contents, that lists all pages
  • Paths
  • You can replace the tiny gifs, that make up the diagrams, with your own. If you make a nice set, please let me know.
  • Works best on a high-resolution colour displays, but works fine on older black and white screens.

Future plans:

  • Cleaning up the code (not really an example of good programming practice right now).
  • Structuring the Table of contents. Right now there is one list of 6700 pages, that is not very user friendly. At least it's sorted. :-)
  • Multi level item lists.
  • Diagrams with coordinates.
  • A version with ascii diagrams, that is easier to use on older 2MB Palms.
  • Add a link to the diagrams, that displays SGF, that can be pasted into an SGF browser like PilotGOne.

This is how the SLoT output can be used with ISilo/ISiloX. ISilo is a document browser for Palm and Pocket PC.

  1. Get iSilo (a document browser for handhelds) at [ext] http://www.isilo.com.
  2. Get ISiloX (a document converter for isilo format) at [ext] http://www.isiloX.com.
  3. Install iSilo on the handheld and iSiloX on my desktop.
  4. To convert an HTML document with iSilox, add it to your current project, enter the parameters (see below) and convert it. After that you should see the final iSilo document in your Install window in Palm Desktop. It is important to check the size and specify, that you want to install on the memory card, lest you exceed the amount of available RAM.
  5. Sync your Palm, this can take a while.
  6. Enjoy SLoT :-)

These Parameters worked for me:

  • I chose html/toc.html as source document.
  • Links: max depth 1, all three checkboxes unchecked.
  • Images: no resizing, no improve contrast, no compression, 16-Bit
  • Tables: include all table formatting.
  • Color: ignore all bg color specified on body, keep text color
  • Document: rigid, no default, home page 1

Discussion

MarkD: Hans: I have an old 8 MB Palm Vx. Is it possible to use a subset of the SL snapshot with real diagrams? I won't need all the personal homepages and discussions on my Palm, just the strategy and Shapes pages for example.
Maybe it's possible to import the SL database dump into a desktop database like MS Access, generate a subset of needed pages and convert them with your program?

HansWiezorke Hi Mark, actually I had the same idea. :-) My program supports a page list (a simple textfile) that can be used to specify, which pages you want. So a small subset to work on a Vx with diagrams is no problem. An automatic filter is not so easy, since not all pages have their category set correctly.

MarkD That's true...and this is the reason why I keep setting and changing the categories for new pages all the time :)


MarkD: Nice work Hans, just tried it on my new Zire 71. Works great and looks very nice :)
There seems to be a small bug: if you run the program on a linux box, all generated files have names like "html\abcd.html".
Does anyone know how often the wiki dump is updated?

HansWiezorke: Thanks. The \ is a bug, that works fine on Windows :). Easy fix: replace "html\\" with "html/" in Slot.java (line 63) and in myWiki/WikiWriter.java (line 47). then recompile Slot.java by typing:

 javac Slot.java

This will be fixed in the next version.

No Idea, how often the dump is updated, but I guess, it will be the same interval as the SLSnapshot.

MarkD: Hmm time to call for a new snapshot, once every 2 months is not really enough.
Thanks for the bugfix, figured that out myself tonight. Oh and: Nice new homepage for SLoT :)

HansWiezorke: Well, you can always mail Arno with a request for a new snapshot. Maybe discuss this on the SLSnapshot page.




This is a copy of the living page "Sensei's Library On Tour" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2003 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.