[tlug] HTML app packager?

[Charles Muller <acmuller@example.com>]

For a few years now, I've had a couple of freely searchable CJK-English
dictionaries running off my web site (www.acmuller.net): one that
focuses on historical Chinese glyphs and compounds, and another that
focuses on CJK-based Buddhist terminology. Both of these work off an XML
file data set, using a combination of Perl and XSLT, built (free of
charge!) by Michael Beddow.

Recently, I've been getting more and more requests to provide a locally
downloadable version of these dictionaries for people in places where
internet access is still either too expensive, slow, or unreliable to
take proper advantage of my web setup. Since the prospect of trying to
build something that would duplicate the present XML setup for local
users is far too complicated, I thought I might instead be able to
generate a set of HTML output files, compile/index them, and package
them with some sort of search function.

This is not something that I would have the skills to be able to build
on my own. But several years ago, when I was still working exclusively
on Windows, Microsoft was handing out a nifty little kit called HTML
Helper (or something like that), which allowed me to do exactly what I
have just described above.

Obviously, I don't want to build anything that would be
Windoze-specific. Namazu fills a lot of the requirements for
this task, but I don't think it would be possible to give it to end
users as a self-contained unit, since they would have to do a lot of
setup on their own.

So, my question is: has anyone come across a platform-independent
application that would help me do this (I've been searching around for a
while, and haven't turned up anything)? Or perhaps some other
suggestions as to how I might try to approach this problem?

Thanks,

Chuck

---------------------------
Charles Muller  

Toyo Gakuen University
Faculty of Humanities  
1660 Hiregasaki, Nagareyama-shi
Chiba 270-0161 JAPAN

Web Site: Resources for East Asian Language and Thought
http://www.acmuller.net
<acmuller@example.com>