command line fan fiction program?

[Tim Chase]

On March 22, 2017, Karen Lewellen wrote:
> The goal is to read the works off line, not on the site. i. e.
> download them.
> Compare with archive of our own.
> www.archiveofourown.org
> there one has the option to download, even in lynx for example via
> the full story choice, get the story int ext.

A couple options:

1) for individual stores, you should be able to use the "p"rint
option in lynx to print the formatted story to a local text file that
you can then read at your later convenience.

2) you can use wget to mirror a site, slurping down everything. Or a
subset since fanfiction.net seems to have a nice URL structure, so
you can limit your mirroring to just, say

https://www.fanfiction.net/tv/M-A-S-H/

without pulling in every other TV show as well as movies, games,
books, plays, etc.  The command might look something like

wget --mirror--adjust-extension --no-parent --convert-links https://www.fanfiction.net/tv/M-A-S-H/

You might also use a couple options to be nice to the host and not
slam them with a bajillion requests, so you might add

  --limit-rate=25k
  --random-wait

to wait a random interval between the downloads, and limit the
slurping to a slower rate.

Warning, this will slurp in *everything* under that URL (presuming
you use the "--no-parent"; if you don't it will mirror the entire
stinkin' site) possibly including comment pages.  So I'd experiment
with one of the smaller topics to get it working and see roughly how
much a small mirror takes.  If you have enough space and time, then
point it to a full archive.

Once you have them downloaded locally, you can use lynx to browse them
offline (and, to a degree, even navigate among them as I believe it
updates links or at least relative linking works)

-tim