Documentation "containers"

As far as I see, Foxit tries hard to catch up with Adobe in this regard. I remember Foxit bringing more critical bugs per month than Adobe.

Currently I'm evaluating Sumatra PDF.

Maybe I'm not able to get the right settings, but these always produced _much_ larger PDF documents than GhostWord

Hmm...

Oliver

Surely the "point" of PDF is that the user can decide how much scrolling he wants to do by choosing a "page size" zoom for himself.

Boy do I hate implementers who make this decision for me and then wont let me change it!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, from a Usenet POV, you are a total retard.

You ain't real bright, and your common sense and logic faculty is severely lacking. The reason for PDF is so that the PAGE IMAGE will look the same no matter what the user views it with. It has a specific, targeted purpose, you dopey f*ck.

THAT was the original idea.

NOTHING you come up with matches what they did things for, nor what things are done for now.

Then, your stupidity is culminated by the use of far too many exclamation points.

Not concerned with getting information *back* from people. Rather, showing them how to use and modify hardware and software that is described by the documents. As well as explaining how the stuff actually works, why certain design decisions were made, etc.

If the cost is only seen by the *developer* (no run-time costs), that's not a problem. Many of the tools I use have hefty pricetags.

I'll build another (disposable) machine and see what it looks like. The "tied to OS" aspect is a big downside, though.

I spoke with a neighbor who had a business doing this sort of thing. But, he claimed the "lessons" were more like something you would see on a 21st century "blackboard"/slideshow than in a 21st century "technical paper". I.e., "short on text".

Imagine a "paper" explaining different sorting algorithms (shell, quick, insertion, bubble, etc.) -- to someone who knows nothing about sorting or how prevalent it is. I.e., a slideshow with the typical dearth of printed commentary would hardly be effective. OTOH, a long, verbose description of each algorithm and analysis of pseudocode would swamp the reader in detail. However, add to that detail some simple animations showing how an unsorted list is examined by each algorithm and the incremental changes that each algorithm makes to the list and you can add lots of value to the presentation.

Or, imagine illustrating different amplifier topologies (A, AB, D, etc.). If you can *show* where power is being dissipated as a function of time, then the efficiencies of the various designs become more apparent than just computations on the page.

Or, how different control technologies (bang-bang, PID, SPC, etc.) interact with the plant. The roles of deadband, hysteresis, etc. Whether the control improves or worsens the process, etc.

Now, imagine the "reader" being able to go back and *interact* with each of the examples you've presented. I.e., put the items in the initial list in a particular "pathological" order prior to running a "sort"; driving the input to an amplifier to a particular *DC* point to study the "static" conditions in the circuit; altering the transport delay of the output (or sense) variable in the process; etc. "What if".

(What do these phonetic rules indicate the letter sequence "slitoeglsdfg" is likely to sound like? When is "ghoti" likely to be a fish??)

I.e., the document can answer questions that the reader poses instead of just those questions that the writer considered!

It is always best to avoid adobe products. Those people can't code. Seriously, they suck. Unfortunately, Adobe owns a few markets.

That hasn;t been my experience. I'd sooner give up gcc than, for example, FrameMaker! :<

Provided that you embed any uncommon or oddball fonts.

I essentially was referring to the basic and original design paradigm for pdf.

What it currently is makes for two views.

One, with all requisite embedding, which will appear exactly the same on every machine.

The second, without embeddings, ends up being a graphic backdrop with pasted areas, and can appear differently on different machines, as the pastes move around a bit.

It is weird that some of our guys design on a "D" sized 'sheet', which allows one to print on A, B or legal sized stock, and get a nice print job. Print on D if it really is a lot of info, but on the smaller stocks for things you would normally expect to be on such size sheets. It works out really well.

Authored correctly, which is a simple pre-requisite, and should be for anything, they follow the rule of their original design plan. This is the reason, BTW, our industry (electronics) embraced them. Presentations, manuals, test reports, drawings, etc. could all be distributed reliably and quickly with high confidence in repeatability.

Our government used to be that way too. Sad that I find myself laughing at that, when none of us should be.

Actually, I vaguely recall seeing something similar to PDF presentation within flash.

Likewise.

Robert

I wonder if SGML has been (or has needed to be) extended to support multimedia content? Of course i don't know of SGML readers either.

While HTML can be done monolithically it was not intended to be used that way.

?-)

Hmmm... I will have to look into that. I can't see how it would be "usable", though (lack of imagination on my part?)

Yup. I feel I'm not missing much (besides *ads* and stoopit cat tricks).

Though I dug out a pair of these:

Amusing little devices but the active cooler is just too damn loud! I'm hesitant to do anything about it as they run 2.4G processors and I don't want to *melt* one while evaluating how quiet I *might* be able to get the cooler. :<

Gotta wonder what the Marketing Directives were when designing these beasts! "Here's a 5 pound bag. Let's start at 12 pounds and work our way *up*!"

Flash is occasionally useful - there are a some sites that have interesting content or products which can't be navigated without it, or have video clips, animations, etc., which are worth seeing. I find the best compromise is to use Firefox or Chrome/Chromium with "flashblock". That way any flash element is just a box with a "play" icon in it - I only see the flashes that I choose to see. Along with "adblock plus", it makes web browsing vastly more pleasant.

Why not simply download VirtualBox and make virtual machines for testing? It's free, far faster, lets you do snapshots, clones, and restores easily, and saves you finding space for a new screen and keyboard.

keyboard.

I use NoScript in Firefox which is a little more general. Thus i get to know just how many ill done sites cannot survive without scripts (it is a LOT). I couple that with Ghostery (blocks trackers) and on some = computers TACO. I am also terribly anal about limiting cookies, none survive the session.

?-)

I've always been disappointed with emulations. There's always

With a small box of *real* hardware, I can install a driver for a device that I want to test and *know* that any "problems" are the fault of the actual driver -- not an emulation environment that's not quite up to par, a configuration parameter that needs to be tweaked, etc. Part of the appeal of these little machines is the abundance of I/O's: 4xUSB, 2xEthernet, TVout, SPDIF, VGA, S-Video, 2xFW, 2xPS2, PCMCIA, serial, parallel, line in/out, headphone/mic. And, I can carry it to wherever I *need* it (instead of carrying whatever *else* to some particular machine!)

Don't have to *add* a screen/keyboard. Just plug into one of the existing screens/keyboards. I think we have 14 or 15 monitors (not counting digital capable TV's) currently deployed around the house -- most with A/B/C/D switches so "supporting" a hand-sized PC just entails leaving a video cable plugged into one of the unused inputs on the monitor.

I think a "basic" OS installation is probably small enough to fit a compressed image on a DVD so I should be able to make a self-restoring DVD (and use it for *both* of these devices). So, if I ever "suspect" the system is wonky, I can restore a complete image in less than 10 minutes and start over!

Agreed. However, I wish NoScript would let you configure which "script domains" to allow on a per-site basis. I am reluctant to enable particular domains unilaterally so end up having to experiment on a site-by-site basis: does this site *really* need googleapis? I'm pretty sure it *doesn't* need facebook... etc.

Sad to see how much is now done *in* scripts that needn't be. Sort of like they've forgotten how to ride a bicycle because they've been spoiled with driving *cars* all this time...

Well, obviously it's up to you. For some things, such as drivers or demanding graphics, you need to work with a real machine and not a virtual machine (except usb drivers - these almost always work fine in a virtual machine, at least with a Linux host). But other than that you are wasting time and money. Virtual machines these days are solid systems, not some sort of experimental toy. My understanding is that you wanted to test different installations, different combinations of document readers, different settings, etc., without risking your main working machine - that is a perfect task for virtual machines.

I just bought a book-on-CD that is a single .pdf file containing text, graphics, and several short videos. The book is "Woodworker's Guide to Sketchup 7" by Bob Lang (

Bob claims his book can only be fully enjoyed with Adobe Reader, but it seems to work fine in Foxit Reader, for me.

No: "... so I can use them + sneakernet for those few things that I might want to evaluate *without* compromising a "real" computer."

Windows is a silly OS when it comes to installing software. First, it requires more privilege than it *should*. Second, it entwines itself in far too many system objects (libraries, registry, special places in the file system, etc.). Third, it hides damn near all of the modifications that it has made to the system. Fourth, it is rarely *completely* reversible. Fifth, the sum of these give you no assurances that it hasn't *broken* something that was working previously.

E.g., I want to test a "display calibrator" (photocell on a USB) and I have no idea if that will break something -- possibly completely unrelated to its *presumed* functionality. And, if I then decide NOT to use the device, I have no way of ensuring that it is removed from my system completely -- and, can't "accidentally" be reinstalled (accidentally double click on something and you have no way of knowing what the executable has *done* BEFORE it asks you if you want to continue, etc.)

A small, "capable" hardware box that I can quickly restore to a known configuration (*offline* DVD's don't "accidentally" get overwritten) is one way to ensure that I always have a known configuration that I can quickly return to.

I have ~10 or 12 virtual machines running on the SunPCi2. I use them so INfrequently that I have to leave myself detailed notes about what each is configured to support, any special usage caveats, etc. I.e., there is a real cost to maintaining them.

Machines are so cheap that it is almost silly (IMO) to emulate one when you could have a *real* one that actually works *while* the would-be emulation host is (entirely) used for something else. Physical space is the only downside. Hence the appeal of these little buggers... (8 of them side by side would take up less space than one of my monitors!)