Kiwix 0.9 User Guide

User Guide
A brief instruction includes information on the application's tools and commands ...
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• Navigation keys and buttons

Browsing Kiwix content is in a similar way on the Internet and you can go from a page (which could be a document or an article) to another page. By click on Home icon you'll take to the homepage's of your current ZIM file, e.g. if you've run the English Wikipedia ZIM file, you'll see the Wikipedia entry as its homepage. If you haven't installed any ZIM file yet, you'll see the Help page as the homepage and it means there is no content to display. In that case you should follow the instruction of this page in order to read the content.

Just like your web-browser, you can go to previous page you have visited by clicking on Back arrow icon and to forward page by clicking on Forward arrow icon in the toolbar. You can also use the New Tab page by clicking on Open a new tab icon inside the last tab you have opened (under the toolbar), or just use the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+T and (⌘-T on Mac). To close a tab, use the in the right side of each tab you want to close or keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+W and (⌘-W on Mac). You can open the links of a page in a new tab, by pressing Ctrl on your keyboard or right clicking on the link and choose "Open link in new Tab" then.

• Adjust the size of the text

The size of the text is specified by the content package you are using. Because it might not be ideal for your eyes and comfort, you can either increase or decrease the text size of the pages at any time. To do so, use the Magnify icon to increase and Reduce icon to decrease the size of the text. Those commands are also available in Display > Zoom on the menu bar and one more option named Original size is there which reset the text size of the page to its original size. You can also use the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl and + (⌘ and + on Mac) to zoom in, Ctrl and - (⌘ and - on Mac) to zoom out and Ctrl and 0 (⌘ and 0 on Mac) to reset the zoom tool.

In order to gain some extra space on a small display, you may wish to display Kiwix in full-screen mode, it will maximize the size of the Kiwix window and hide all other programs including your operating system. In order to do this, click on full-screen icon or use the keyboard shortcuts F11 (on Windows and Linux) and ⌘-Shift-F (on Mac).

• Printing and exporting documents

You can print the Kiwix pages or even export them and share. There are three options available:

1. To print a page you're viewing in Kiwix, click on Print icon in the toolbar or press Ctrl+P (⌘-P on Mac). This option is also available in File menu. You'll be able to preview the page and adjust basic printer and page settings, before printing. Make sure the computer connected to the printer is also turned on.
2. To export a page to PDF format, go to File > Print as PDF menu item or just press Ctrl+Shift+D (⌘-Shift-D on Mac). It will convert the page into a PDF file which can be used to print or read the document later. Note that the output has been prepared for printing and the internal links will be removed from the page.
3. To save the page as an HTML or text file, go to File > Save page as menu item or just press Ctrl+S (⌘-S on Mac). Although it's not appropriate for sharing, the HTML format will keep the same formatting and links of the page.

• Create Bookmarks and use them

You can use Kiwix bookmarks to easily save the pages you would like to revisit. Bookmarks are organised in sets which is a list (or group) of bookmarks that has been put together. You can easily import/export a complete set of bookmarks, which is saved as a regular file on your computer, and you may wish to share a list of pages then, e.g. with your students.

By clicking on Bookmarks icon in the toolbar you'll see the Bookmarks panel on the left side of the application. To create a new set, click on the Create new Bookmark Set icon and then choose a path on your computer and type a name. It will saved as a .XML file and each time you add or delete a bookmark to the set, this file will be updated. You can share this file with someone or somewhere else to import or backup. If you have a Bookmark file and want to import it to your Kiwix, click on Import Bookmark Set icon in top of th panel and then select the .XML file from your computer.

You can add the current page to your bookmark set by clicking on Mark this page icon or use the the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+D (⌘-D on Mac). It will add to the Bookmark list and you can also write some notes for it in the bottom of the panel, Bookmark notes. By selecting each item of the list, you will be navigated to that page, and you may want to remove that item by clicking on Unmark selected icon . You can switch between your opened sets (default one and those you imported) using the combo list of opened bookmark sets below the panel toolbar. Once you close Kiwix, all your sets will be closed and you will need to import them again at the next time.

• Edit tools

Use the find bar to locate a specific word or phrase on a webpage. To do so, click on the Find in text icon in the toolbar or choose Edit > Search in page from menu bar. You can also use the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+F (⌘-F on Mac) to quickly open the find bar. Kiwix automatically finds the page as you type, highlighting possible matches in green or see where all the matches are located on a page (in pink) by tapping on Highlight all button in the find bar. Switch between the search results using Next and Previous in the find bar and also choose Match case if you're going to have a case-sensitive search.

Kiwix also supports copy-pasting feature. In order to do that, select a part of the text using the mouse and then choose Edit > Copy or just press Ctrl+C (⌘-C on Mac) from your keyboard. You can also do a right click on the text and choose "Copy" to copy the text or "Search for" to search the text in the ZIM file. The you'll be able to paste that text in any other application you want. If you want the select the whole text of a page, choose Edit > Select all or press Ctrl+A (⌘-A on Mac) from your keyboard, and also by right clicking in everywhere of the page and choosing "Select all".

Search across all documents of the content packages.

Kiwix includes a powerful search engine to help you easily access the documents you are looking for.

To use the search engine, you must first enable it by creating the indexes. This steps may have already been done for you.

Check that the search engine is ready by clicking on the large search field located on the toolbar. If you can type text inside, your search engine is ready. If not, Kiwix will ask you whether to launch the index creation process or not. This step is very time consuming and depend on both the size of your content package and the speed of your computer.

Once ready, the search engine is very easy to use: type text into the search field and hit enter. A list of matching results will appear on the side-panel. Click on the documents' name to access them.

Alternatively, you can select document's title in the search field. The popup-list is auto-completed as-you-type. Those are suggestions based on the real names of existing documents. Using them is not a requirement.

• More options

There are some more features available in Kiwix. You can change the language of the application to the one you want by going to Display > Language in the menu bar and choosing your desired language there, and also the skin of Kiwix by going to Display > Skin. By choosing Display > Inverted colors or pressing Ctrl+I (⌘-I on Mac), the colors of the page will be inverted, e.g. the black text will be white and the white background will be black, this may go along with a log in the program.

Like the sidebar of Wikipedia, there is an option named Random article in the Tools menu, which shows a random article of the ZIM content. Another option of this menu is Purge history which clear the history of the pages you visited and so the Back/Forward buttons will be inactive since then.