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Downloading Stories for Offline Reading

Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 9:23 pm
by integula (imported)
Is it possible to download a copy of the stories in the fiction archive? Wikipedia's option to download the entire encyclopedia comes to mind, of course since they're only html text files it wouldn't be anywhere near as big.

Re: Downloading Stories for Offline Reading

Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2012 1:15 pm
by fhunter
I tried to write a quick script for linux, for downloading a story by url, but looks like I can not get past the auth stage.

I am too interested in this (mostly for downloading some of the longer stories to the e-reader device).

PS. You can always use ctrl-s in the browser...

Re: Downloading Stories for Offline Reading

Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2012 5:04 pm
by Paolo
Make yourself a folder on some drive or media on your PC.

Go to the story you want.

Go to the upper left of your browser, where it says FILE, EDIT, VIEW, HISTORY, and all that other stuff.

Hit FILE, and go down to SAVE PAGE AS

Save it in the folder you want.

Go to the folder, and open the PHP file in your browser.

Story is saved to your computer for offline use.

Re: Downloading Stories for Offline Reading

Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2012 6:19 pm
by JesusA (imported)
Make yourself a fold
Paolo wrote: Thu Jun 14, 2012 5:04 pm on some drive or media on your PC.

Go to the story you want.

Go to the upper left of your browser, where it says FILE, EDIT, VIEW, HISTORY, and all that other stuff.

Hit FILE, and go down to SAVE PAGE AS

Save it in the folder you want.

Go to the folder, and open the PHP file in your browser.

Story is saved to your computer for offline use.

All this work with a PC. On a Macintosh....

Hit <Control - P> (Print)

Go to the bottom of the screen that opens and select <Save as PDF>

You're done! The story (or whatever else you're trying to save) is now on your desktop as a PDF file.

Re: Downloading Stories for Offline Reading

Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2012 7:17 pm
by Paolo
You're asking too much for a PC to do.

Re: Downloading Stories for Offline Reading

Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 12:02 am
by StefanIsMe (imported)
Paolo, you use the same method I do, File / Save As / save as web archive (.mht) OR save as simple .txt file, another even easier to view option (for pure text pages).

I am constantly amazed at how often I'm asked, or see questions on forums, where people do the most convoluted, bizarre things to save web pages.

Last week somebody recommended the following for saving a story on Nifty; Highlight all the text, copy it, open a Word file, paste the data in, then save the new Word file.

I always wonder when I see that... "What about "File / Save As?".

Re: Downloading Stories for Offline Reading

Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2012 8:02 am
by talula
Install cute pdf writer then print the story to it.

Re: Downloading Stories for Offline Reading

Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2012 12:20 pm
by Prudence (imported)
JesusA (imported) wrote: Thu Jun 14, 2012 6:19 pm All this work with a PC. On a Macintosh....

Hit <Control - P> (Print)

Go to the bottom of the screen that opens and select <Save as PDF>

You're done! The story (or whatever else you're trying to save) is now on your desktop as a PDF file.

You can "Save as PDF" on a PC if you install a "Print to PDF" program, such as: CutePDF, FoxIt PDF Creator, PrimoPDF, or Adobe Acrobat (not to be confused with Adobe Reader/Acrobat Reader).

Once you install one of these, Print as you usually would (File-->Print, click Print Icon, Ctrl-P, or whatever). Choose the "PDF Printer" as your printer. The computer will come up with a Window asking for the Filename (just like Save As PDF does on a Mac).

CutePDF is free, but it is a little more difficult for non-techies to set up (you have to download other free/opensource programs to get CutePDF working).

FoxIt and Primo are easy to set up and fairly cheap (each under $20 last time I checked).

Adobe Acrobat is expensive-as-hell, but it allows you to edit PDFs as well as create them.