2 Jun
2005
2 Jun
'05
10:35 a.m.
Some of the attitudes here about PDF impress me as about the most ludditical
(is there such a word?) as I've seen in a long time.
Suppose you have a CompuPro memory card and no manual. The card is useless.
I give you the PDF file of the manual. You can look at the manual
on-screen, or you can print it and you HAVE the hard copy manual. In color,
where the original was in color, and with quality that may be
indistinguishable from (or in some cases actually better than) the original
manual when it was new.
Is that a benefit? Is it better than no manual at all? Is it, essentially,
as good as being able to call CompuPro (which no longer exists) and order a
new manual, FOR FREE, and have it delivered INSTANTLY?
So what if it's not "searchable". Get a clue: THE ORIGINAL PAPER MANUAL
WAS NOT "SEARCHABLE". But if you or anyone else wants it to be searchable
they are certain welcome to OCR the document, a capability which Acrobat
supports.
(Note that if it was EITHER made from it's source document (e.g. Word or
whatever) OR if it was "OCR'd" (which Acrobat itself can do), it WILL be
searchable.
The people who don't like PDFs either have not used Acrobat extensively or
don't understand the real nature of the prouduct. Acrobat allows you to
create an electronic document that can have as many features (or as few) as
the creator wants:
-Page images
-Searchable, exportable, "copyable" text
-Fonts and graphics
-Printable
-Fully "rearrangeable" (re-sequence, add, delete, replace pages)
-Table of Contents (as hyperlink)
-Index
-Movies, photos, sound and other multimedia objects
-Security control, passwords determining who can do what
And it and the documents it creates are multi-platform: PC, Apple, Linux,
Sun, IBM mainframe .... virtually every computer platform in existence.
It's one of the best and most wonderful tools that the PC world has ever
created. Sorry if it's proprietary, but sometimes quality tools are only
created by people who want to be paid for their work.
2 Jun
2 Jun
11:08 a.m.
On Thu, 2005-06-02 13:35:05 -0400, Barry Watzman <Watzman at neo.rr.com> wrote:
So what if it's not "searchable". Get a
clue: THE ORIGINAL PAPER MANUAL
WAS NOT "SEARCHABLE". But if you or anyone else wants it to be searchable
they are certain welcome to OCR the document, a capability which Acrobat
supports.
That's one of the main points. Somebody who scanned a document spent
some of his *own* time to ease things for other people. He'd give the
PDF around, but this data is only available to the people who get that
damn thing handed over. Having a nice set of scripts to automatically
also OCR the images (text quality doesn't matter--all most important
keywords will show up often enough so that *one* of them will most
probably me correct).
The people who don't like PDFs either have not
used Acrobat extensively or
don't understand the real nature of the prouduct. Acrobat allows you to
create an electronic document that can have as many features (or as few) as
the creator wants:
We're talking about PDF, not about Acrobat. I yet have to see Acrobat
running on vax-linux ...
-Page images
-Searchable, exportable, "copyable" text
Needs to be generated and handled somewhere.
-Fonts and graphics
-Printable
-Fully "rearrangeable" (re-sequence, add, delete, replace pages)
-Table of Contents (as hyperlink)
Needs to be created explicitely.
-Index
Dito.
-Movies, photos, sound and other multimedia objects
Those won't come out of my scanner :)
-Security control, passwords determining who can do
what
This is what I ban to hell.
And it and the documents it creates are
multi-platform: PC, Apple, Linux,
Sun, IBM mainframe .... virtually every computer platform in existence.
...but Acrobat isn't.
It's one of the best and most wonderful tools that
the PC world has ever
created. Sorry if it's proprietary, but sometimes quality tools are only
created by people who want to be paid for their work.
Maybe we'll get something even *better* for archiving old documents
and/or old *content* in general (right, think about disk images,
programs, ...)
It's not a tool problem, it's a conceptual thing that first needs some
clever concepts. If we always only try to fix little spots of it, we
won't ever get the big picture right.
MfG, JBG
--
Jan-Benedict Glaw jbglaw at lug-owl.de . +49-172-7608481 _ O _
"Eine Freie Meinung in einem Freien Kopf | Gegen Zensur | Gegen Krieg _ _ O
fuer einen Freien Staat voll Freier B?rger" | im Internet! | im Irak! O O O
ret = do_actions((curr | FREE_SPEECH) & ~(NEW_COPYRIGHT_LAW | DRM | TCPA));
11:28 a.m.
On Thu, 2005-06-02 at 13:35 -0400, Barry Watzman wrote:
Some of the attitudes here about PDF impress me as
about the most ludditical
(is there such a word?) as I've seen in a long time.
Suppose you have a CompuPro memory card and no manual. The card is useless.
I give you the PDF file of the manual. You can look at the manual
on-screen, or you can print it and you HAVE the hard copy manual. In color,
where the original was in color, and with quality that may be
indistinguishable from (or in some cases actually better than) the original
manual when it was new.
Hang on...
For text, or a mixture of text and images, it's probably very good (and
I expect stands up reasonably well against other markup formats such as
RTF, Postscript, Word doc, HTML etc.).
For wrapping up a bunch of images, where's the benefit?
So what if it's not "searchable". Get a
clue: THE ORIGINAL PAPER MANUAL
WAS NOT "SEARCHABLE".
Of course. But it seems a natural thing to want once the original is in
some electronic form. Needless to say, I don't recall anyone ever saying
that they don't appreciate the fantastic efforts of those who do scan
and make documentation available (your message gave the impression of
the opposite, at least to me)
(Note that if it was EITHER made from it's source
document (e.g. Word or
whatever) OR if it was "OCR'd" (which Acrobat itself can do), it WILL be
searchable.
I don't think anyone's suggested otherwise have they?
Currently documentation archives seem to be 95% image scans, or image
scans wrapped up in PDF files. There's very little plain text content
(and even fewer cases where any construct has been put together
containing text as text and diagrams etc. as images)
I don't doubt that the search tools are very good for OCRed text, but
then *maybe* they're just as good or better for other formats too?
Sorry if it's proprietary, but sometimes quality
tools are only created by people who
want to be paid for their work.
If it's proprietary then the less use it is for a long-term archival
format though, surely? Same goes for complexity; increased complexity of
the format makes it harder to extract the data without the relevant
tool, which of course might be difficult to find in years to come...
cheers
Jules
12:52 p.m.
The people who don't like PDFs either have not
used Acrobat
extensively or don't understand the real nature of the prouduct.
We're talking about PDFs, not Acrobat and not PDF+Acrobat. Or at least
*I* am.
No, I have not used Acrobat extensively, and that little only long ago
at a past workplace - and it was an unpleasant experience. I never
will as it is closed source - nothing I don't have source to goes on my
machines.
Acrobat allows [...]
Those are reasons to use Acrobat, maybe. They are not reasons to use
PDFs, unless you think of PDF as an Acrobat-only format. You can't
have it both ways.
It's one of the best and most wonderful tools that
the PC world has
ever created. Sorry if it's proprietary, but sometimes quality tools
are only created by people who want to be paid for their work.
And your point is...?
You appear to be saying "PDF is fine because there is good proprietary
software to work with PDF files". Some of us are not willing to go
with proprietary formats. PDF tries to be open, but it's not very; as
you point out, the only good software for working with it is
proprietary - and even they can't seem to get it right; I've lost count
of the number of PDFs I've picked up that ghostscript calls out for
violating Adobe's specs - and when it prints the creator, it turns out
to have been an Adobe program.
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
3:49 p.m.
Some of the attitudes here about PDF impress me as about the most ludditical
(is there such a word?) as I've seen in a long time.
I dislike the PDF format, probably always will. For a long time I
couldn't read it at all, in fact none of my machines can now. My parents
have an old Mac that than display most PDF files (if I can get them onto
the machine, which is non-trivial), or I look in the local internet cafe,
which is not convenient either
Suppose you have a CompuPro memory card and no manual. The card is useless.
I give you the PDF file of the manual. You can look at the manual
on-screen, or you can print it and you HAVE the hard copy manual. In color,
Well, it takes me 5 minutes per page to print it (most of the time is
transfering the bitmap to the printer over localtalk). For any reasonable
manual, it'll probably take at least a day to print it.
And in that time I could probably have worked out how to use a memory
card. It can't be that complicated. I have the S100 pinout to hand. I
have pinouts of all common ICs to hand. I could trace out enough of the
schematic in a day to know how to set the addressing jumpers, etc.
where the original was in color, and with quality that
may be
Assuming you have a colour printer...
indistinguishable from (or in some cases actually
better than) the original
manual when it was new.
Is that a benefit? Is it better than no manual at all? Is it, essentially,
as good as being able to call CompuPro (which no longer exists) and order a
new manual, FOR FREE, and have it delivered INSTANTLY?
It's not free (download time, paper, tone). It's certainly not instant.
So what if it's not "searchable". Get a clue: THE ORIGINAL PAPER MANUAL
WAS NOT "SEARCHABLE". But if you or anyone else wants it to be searchable
I find it a lot quicker to flip through a paper manual and spot the
schematics, listings, link-setting tables, etc than to look at anything
on-screen. It takes a good few seconds for a page to display on any
computer that I've ever used. I can flip through a manual a lot quicker
than that.
The people who don't like PDFs either have not
used Acrobat extensively or
don't understand the real nature of the prouduct. Acrobat allows you to
create an electronic document that can have as many features (or as few) as
the creator wants:
Most of which are not directly applicable to a container of scanned
imaged. Or at least can't be automatically created for such a set of
scanned images.
And it and the documents it creates are
multi-platform: PC, Apple, Linux,
Sun, IBM mainframe .... virtually every computer platform in existence.
Just not any of the 200-or-so machines that I own. Period.
-tony
5:07 p.m.
From: "Tony Duell" <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2005 5:49 PM
<snip>
Some of the
attitudes here about PDF impress me as about the most
ludditical
(is there such a word?) as I've seen in a long time.
I dislike the PDF format, probably always will. For a long time I
couldn't read it at all, in fact none of my machines can now. My parents
have an old Mac that than display most PDF files (if I can get them onto
the machine, which is non-trivial), or I look in the local internet cafe,
which is not convenient either
Suppose you have a CompuPro memory card and no manual. The card is
useless.
I give you the PDF file of the manual. You can look at the manual
on-screen, or you can print it and you HAVE the hard copy manual. In
color,
Well, it takes me 5 minutes per page to print it (most of the time is
transfering the bitmap to the printer over localtalk). For any reasonable
manual, it'll probably take at least a day to print it.
And in that time I could probably have worked out how to use a memory
card. It can't be that complicated. I have the S100 pinout to hand. I
have pinouts of all common ICs to hand. I could trace out enough of the
schematic in a day to know how to set the addressing jumpers, etc.
-tony
I have plenty of S100 memory boards that would take more than a day to
figure out without a manual. Many boards use programmable logic devices
where you can't tell what they do by looking at them. I have several
MacroTech RAM cards that would take days to figure out but only take minutes
with a manual (they have around 30 jumpers spread around the boards).
The point to a PDF document is that for almost everyone with a computer on
this planet they can view the document on the screen.
PDF's being posted by people like myself is not meant to please everyone, I
am happy knowing I help some.
We should make a list of what users are unable to view PDF's, starting with
Tony how many others have no practical method of viewing a PDF or a friend
with a compatible system?
Randy
www.s100-manuals.com
3 Jun
3 Jun
4:42 a.m.
We should make a list of what users are unable to view
PDF's, starting with
Tony how many others have no practical method of viewing a PDF or a friend
with a compatible system?
Presumably at some point the question needs to be one of what
alternatives there are out there, what their pros and cons are, and how
many people don't like format x / don't care / think format x is a good
idea. In the context of what the data is and what it's being used for.
Otherwise it gets to the situation as with Word docs - seems like
everyone throws Word docs around because that's what everyone else does,
not because it's the right tool for the job at hand.
I've yet to see a good defence of PDF files, but that doesn't mean that
people haven't made a careful choice to use PDF over anything else and
for perfectly good reasons.
I'm happy converting downloaded PDF files to seperate image files for my
own use; and of course I very much appreciate the efforts of those who
put these things together :) But there is a question of whether
conversion to PDF throws important data away, or whether Adobe might
suddenly change the tools, or whether they'll carry on getting ever more
bloated, or whether PDF's going to be a viable format in ten years
time...
(I notice that Word is moving to an XML-based format, which is likely a
good thing - it's going to make it possible to easily search and convert
at least)
cheers
Jules
4:04 p.m.
I have plenty of S100 memory boards that would take
more than a day to
figure out without a manual. Many boards use programmable logic devices
To be brutal, you have no idea how long it would take me to work it out.
Not having worked on an S100 system for some years, the first one would
take me a fair time (becuase I'd be forever looking up the pinouts, etc),
the second one would go a lot quicker...
where you can't tell what they do by looking at
them. I have several
MacroTech RAM cards that would take days to figure out but only take minutes
with a manual (they have around 30 jumpers spread around the boards).
But if that manual takes a couple of days to print out, it may not be
worth it. particularly if that manual _doesn't_ contain real technical
info like schematics. If I worked out the details for myself, I would end
up with full schematics.
The point to a PDF document is that for almost everyone with a computer on
this planet they can view the document on the screen.
PDF's being posted by people like myself is not meant to please everyone, I
am happy knowing I help some.
True enough, and I am sorry if my message came over as a flame aimed at
those who spend a lot of their time sharing manuals. I _am_ very grateful
for bitsavers and similar sites, I do make use of them.
Practically, I have 4 choices :
1) Get somebody else to provide a machine to download/print the manual.
Either in an internet cafe, or by asking a friend to burn it onto a
CD-ROM in exchange for me doing some repairs for them.
2) Obtain the manual some other way, e.g. by buying a paper original
3) Finding some way to download/print it myself. Unlikely to be practical
(if only becuase of the download time, and because I am nowhere near a
good enough programmer to write pdf viewer/printer), but you never know
4) Manage without the manual and figure out the info for myself.
Which I do depends on the manual, the product, how much I already know
about it, etc.
-tony
3:15 a.m.
> Suppose you have a CompuPro memory card and no
manual. The card is
> useless.
I would greatly disagree. S-100 Static memory boards are about as simple
as you can get. I'm not saying that all Compupro memory boards are
identical to generic static memory boards (the Compupro ones tend to
have a few extra parts to do full IEEE-696), but the similarities are
98% and the differences are 2%.
Now, start talking about dynamic RAM S-100 boards, or Compupro M-Drive
boards, and then it's not quite so crystal clear :-).
Tim.
7094
days inactive
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ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cctalk＠randy482.com -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
jbglaw＠lug-owl.de -
julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk -
mouse＠Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA -
shoppa_classiccmp＠trailing-edge.com -
Watzman＠neo.rr.com