The author dismisses WARC, but I don't see why. To me, Gwtar seems more complicated than a WARC, while being less flexible and while also being yet another new format thrown onto the pile.

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obscurette 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

WARC is mentioned with very specific reason not being good enough: "WARCs/WACZs achieve static and efficient, but not single (because while the WARC is a single file, it relies on a complex software installation like WebRecorder/Replay Webpage to display)."

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simonw 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't think you can provide a URL to a WARC that can be clicked to view its content directly in your browser.

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zetanor 4 hours ago | parent [-]

At the very least, WARC could have been used as the container ("tar") format after the preamble of Gwtar. But even there, given that this format doesn't work without a web server (unlike SingleFile, mentioned in the article), I feel like there's a lot to gain by separating the "viewer" (Gwtar's javascript) from the content, such that the viewer can be updated over time without changing the archives.

I certainly could be missing something (I've thought about this problem for all of a few minutes here), but surely you could host "warcviewer.html" and "warcviewer.js" next to "mycoolwarc.warc" "mycoolwrc.cdx" with little to no loss of convenience, and call it a day?

	▲	gwern 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You could potentially use WARC instead of Tar as the appended container, sure, but that's a lot of complexity, WARC doesn't serialize the rendered page (so what is the greater 'fidelity' actually getting you?) and SingleFile doesn't support WARC, and I don't see a specific advantage that a Gwtar using WARC would have. The page rendered what it rendered. And if you choose to require separate files and break single-file, then you have many options. > surely you could host "warcviewer.html" and "warcviewer.js" next to "mycoolwarc.warc" "mycoolwrc.cdx" I'm not familiar with warcviewer.js and Googling isn't showing it. Are you thinking of https://github.com/webrecorder/wabac.js ?