This is dope. Thanks.
Show HN: Transform any web page into a document
31–40 of 77 posts
Re: Show HN: Transform any web page into a document
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please can you tell which browser are you using, this should happen only if you disabled javascript or try to change the parameter type of the export. If that's neither your case we will trow one of our programmer to the tiger:)
Alright, I'm dumb. It was my JavaScript blocker. It works once I disabled it. Nice service. Only advice I can give is to tweak the typography a bit for the PDF output: I'd restrict the measure (line lengths) to around sixty characters, and boost the leading (space between lines) to about 1.5 times the line-height. Personally, I'd make the body text a bit smaller too, but the bigger text might be preferred by some.
Great to hear, we will better communicate on the error to ask for people to enable javascript.
For the pdf output, we will look into it as it is a complex issue if you have for example mixed content non latin character with latin character. Thanks for the feedback.
Re: Show HN: Transform any web page into a document
#33When i tried it with itself i got "We couldn't find any text for creating the document. Please send us the problematic link : https://documentcyborg.com/ via our contactus form." other wise nice tool, thx
We will let our parser work on our website. We understand the point.
Re: Show HN: Transform any web page into a document
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
For zip file it is not just to save bandwidth, it is also to save disk space as we don't know yet how many user will use it, we preferred to be cautious but in the future you are right we can give straight the file once we know how much disk space will be needed to sustain it. For the returned document name, this is up to discussion if a lot of user ask for it we will change it. Thanks for using the apps and for your…
As a user, if I ask for a DOC I want a DOC. If your service gives me a zip, it's not what I asked for. As a programmer, this is quite simple to solve as others have said how (store gzipped and serve with correct headers).
Understood, we will change that.
Re: Show HN: Transform any web page into a document
#35Nice UI and nicely formatted output. Why does it return .zip that needs to be unpacked? To save bandwidth your could just use gzip 'Content-Encoding' end return the format requested by the user, which would be unpacked by the browser. Returned file name is [documentcyborg.com].zip, it would be nicer if the domain of the requested document was used instead.
For zip file it is not just to save bandwidth, it is also to save disk space as we don't know yet how many user will use it, we preferred to be cautious but in the future you are right we can give straight the file once we know how much disk space will be needed to sustain it. For the returned document name, this is up to discussion if a lot of user ask for it we will change it. Thanks for using the apps and for your…
I do conversions like this as part of an app, and I never save to disk - I create the file in memory, and return it directly to the HTTP response as a file download. What stack are you running that makes you save to disk? (Because that also would be a deal-breaker for using this on confidential documents, if you ever allow uploads)
Re: Show HN: Transform any web page into a document
#36This is dope. Thanks.
Thanks
Re: Show HN: Transform any web page into a document
#37Ironic, they have a twitter icon in the top right, yet getting a pdf of a twitter account doesn't even work.
Re: Show HN: Transform any web page into a document
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please can you tell which browser are you using, this should happen only if you disabled javascript or try to change the parameter type of the export. If that's neither your case we will trow one of our programmer to the tiger:)
Alright, I'm dumb. It was my JavaScript blocker. It works once I disabled it. Nice service. Only advice I can give is to tweak the typography a bit for the PDF output: I'd restrict the measure (line lengths) to around sixty characters, and boost the leading (space between lines) to about 1.5 times the line-height. Personally, I'd make the body text a bit smaller too, but the bigger text might be preferred by some.
No, you're not dumb, that was a terrible error message.
Re: Show HN: Transform any web page into a document
#391) the zipped download has always the same name, becomes quickly confusing if you're grabbing several pages. Maybe adding a timestamp or, better, a title snippet could help. 2) found html tags and incorrect whitespace when exporting to TXT this page: https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-learning I want to try this tool with pages that Instapaper fails to grab.
1) Understood, for the moment we have not yet decied which way we go but for sure we will stop giving only [documentcyborg.com].zip file 2) We found some bug in the export to rtf and txt (its getting fix), the other export are working correctly. For the Instataper pages that fail if you could send us some domain name you wish : hn at documentcyborg.com and we will test the parser against it to make sure it works.
Food for thought:
1. Externally-provided content is dangerous. You might use a hash of the domain name, but I'd avoid files named after the sources.
2. Metadata such as a date would be useful.
3. Despite 1, a highly-sanitised hostname could be informative. An iconv to 8-bit ASCII [-a-zA-Z0-9_], and not allowing the first character to be '-' might be a start. Put a length limit on that as well.
Re: Show HN: Transform any web page into a document
#40Is there anything this does (I've not looked at it) that a 'curl | pandoc' pipe wouldn't?