obml-parser

lob/master/obml.md (I left about Opera about a decade ago.)

e suitable for small screens. A page is compressed, then delivered to the phone in a markup language called Opera Binary Markup Language (OBML), which Opera Mini can interpret. According to Opera Software, the data compression makes transfer time about two to three times faster, and the pre-processing improves the display of web pages not designed for small screens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini Interestingly I found that someone has written a script to convert OBML to HTML. Their intended use-case for the script is to make pages saved with Opera Mini viewable in other browsers. But to me the main interest is that I would like some day to make something similar to Opera Mini on my own, and the README of the conversion script has some technical details about OBML. > because OBML files are the output of Opera's HTML rendering engine, many elements are pixel-positioned according to the original device's screen size and font metrics. Because many J2ME devices had custom fonts (optimized for low-res screens), it's possible that your computer will show the same text as too-tall or too-wide, and lines may overlap. > […] > OBML does not have <a href=...>, i.e. you cannot actually have text that is also a link. Instead the engine outputs text and links as two separate layers – first it places the actual text at position (X,Y), then overlays it with "link" rectangles at position (X,Y,W,H). > […] > OBML does not have styled widgets the way HTML would. The style is actually pre-rendered, and those pretty 3D effects are made out of pixel-positioned lines and rectangles. Even button gradients are pre-rendered and drawn as a series of 1-pixel thin lines. https://github.com/grawity/obml-parser

en converted to a pixel position screen size specific file [1]. In my opinion it was an elegant solution considering the limitations of early phone internet. Truly a fascinating piece of software. [1] https://github.com/grawity/obml-parser