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C7 printable guide ?

NN634464997270610390UL
As I don't have 2 screens, I would find convenient to have a paper copy of the user guide.
But the PDF file is hard to read : small fonts, lots of blank spaces, and I don't find any index.
BTW, it was already the case with C6.
What is the remedy ?
Is there any book available or in project ?

"To nobody, except those who will take pleasure here" (Franz Schubert, 1797-1828)
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Comments

4 comments

Date Votes
  • Peter Meyer
    Hi all!

    Oh yes, I support the idea of a printable guide...

    The PDF file is really a joke. I think it is just the summary of the online help.

    CU

    Peter
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  • Dave241
    +1 for a FULL pdf manual.

    I can't believe there isn't one already available?
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  • SFA
    OK, I'll bite on this.

    There is a tendency in the 21st century to assume that most people wil, one way or another, have on-line access to the internet and therefore pretty much any information they need.

    There is an increasinig rate of assumption on the part of the consumers accessing such information that it will feature links to other reference and help topics (internal to the document or external to, say, video based tutorials.)

    They expect the document to be up to date (important for a fast moving product not to be left in an old state) and portable off line for temporary use whilst travelling (So PDF format is an option here.)

    There is not too much use for an index when dealing with complex terminology - most indexes are not entirely helpful and if working in a multi-language marketplace add quite a lot to the effort required to produce the document. Indeed all documentation requires a fair amount of effort - perhaps more for proof reading than anything else - with every change. It's the sort of thing one wants to do only once, not on a frequent basis especially when the product it documents is the subject of relatively regular changes, updates and additions with all the inter-relationships they tend to introduce.

    For much the same reason making the on-line help and PDF document the same makes a lot of sense. They should be the same, just presented in a slightly different technology assuming both are complete. In any event the product/release needs to be somewhat constrained or mature (as with, say, a Camera which likely will never see more than 1 or 2 often minor or error correcting firmware releases - so far there are not too many examples of major changes to camera firmware on a regualr basis) before creating an historical "frozen in time" document.

    Personally, as a traditionalist and having in the past created software product USer Guide from nothing (and later had the task of maintaining them as the application becomae ever more complex) I have come to appreciate that indexes are not always as useful as we like to think they are and that full searchability (within a single document or across several documents - the PDF reader offers both methods) is much more useful.

    You can scale the pages to a font size of your choice or even have the document read to you by the PDF reader program. If you have a smart phone or tablet you will most likely be able to download the pdf to it instead of relying on cluttering up your monitor - although to be honest I find it less problematic to switch back and forth to different screens on a single monitor 99% of the time.

    In conclusion I have to say that having an online up to date and fully searchable document (or a recent local copy of it when travelling with the possibility of no internet connection) is an excellent idea. This is especially true when travelling - great so have access to all relevant user guides and technical docuements without having to carry the weight in paper of a library around.

    And I don't really miss an index either - in fact few people seem to provide them these days if they are going along the electronic route. (Also there is nothing more annoying than an index that is not hot linked within the document - but setting that up when creating an maintaining the document can be a notable overhead and so is a stage often skipped.)

    My thoughts, for what they are worth. I anticipate a few critical responses but that should be fine for helping to identify what would and would not work for people in the future.


    Grant Perkins
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  • NN125462
    I have to support SFA in this.

    The OPs main requirement was to get a version of the User Guide that could be viewed and searched separately from the one on the PC. One option is clearly to print it. However, for not much more than the price either of paper + ink if you printed it yourself - or the cost of a commercialy printed one, you can get a 7 inch Chinese Android tablet for around £85 or less. This amazon US link gives just one example which is much less than it would be in the UK: http://www.amazon.com/Chromo-Inc%C2%AE- ... nch+tablet

    You can use either Adobe Reader or Kindle to read PDFs on such an Android device and not only do you have the portability but you also have the PDF search capability and the ability to go off to other internet links.

    So I think it fulfils the OPs primary requirement and with added bonus of not having to waste some more trees (and expensive ink) in the process.

    Neil
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