Re: Bug#167921: ITP: httrack -- offline browser : copy websites to your computer
> On Tue, 2002-11-05 at 14:04, Xavier Roche wrote:
> > Description : offline browser : copy websites to your computer
> How does this compare to wget, which can already do everything mentioned
> in both the short and long descriptions, as well as URL rewriting?
[Sorry for the bad english :) ]
First I would say that I am not the best person to answer to this
question, as I am also the author of this software (It is simpler to
package its own software, for the first package) - therefore I will let it
to you to decide whether this software is useful or not.
After many users requests, and because there wasn't any package yet on
Debian platforms (packages were made for Mandrake and BSD by other
maintainers) I finally decided to support the package myself for Debian,
which is my main linux development platform. I had been thinking of
becoming a Debian maintainer for some time, and so this was a good
occasion.
Basic functions are the same as wget (http, https, ftp, v6 support), for
the features and differences, here are the main key features of httrack:
- html, svg, javascripting, java and css support built-in (even if many
cases will not work, especially when handling functions or expressions ;
and svg needs to be tested more thoroughly) ; basic flash support (not yet
included by default, as the necessary module sources have a "bad" license
from Macromedia, and I could not reach any arrangement with them yet)
- common cache for updates and retries on all posix environments and
windows
- a library, for specialized usage (with wrappers and examples, not very
hard to use)
- tons of options (some of them are not very useful for normal people,
that's right - see 'httrack -help') which allow to use the engine for very
various purposes (network stress tests, broken links detection for
websites, external linking listing, search features...)
httrack is maybe more popular on Win32 platforms, due to its GUI (but
Stéphane Chapeau also developped a QT interface for Linux, so this should
help a bit). It also has a built-in helper in commandline for folks who
don't want to read the documentation (type in 'httrack', and follow the
questions - generally no additional options to give) and a fuzzy vt100
progress animation :-)
It is also used by web archiving/preservation projects (Library of
Congress/Web Preservation project, National Library of Australia/Pandora
project, ...), and its library can be used for linguistic analysis and
intelligent agents.
So I really think the "user target" is quite different ; httrack is maybe
heavier and some may consider it as a bit bloated, but anyway features
were always implemented after real needs and user (repeated) requests.
Depending on your needs and preferences, you may then use one or the
other, or both..
I'm opened to any remarks/questions/suggestion, so don't hesitate!
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