Tech Magazines going electronic.

To them it's just another form of paper. They're media/graphic arts/ print geeks and they want their beautiful layouts fixed so nobody can screw with them. (And the reader is stuck reading the ads, too).

Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)

But, Robert, Acrobat reader has had hyperlinks for several versions, now. And with the hot new 7.0, it'll even call home without asking your permission, or even telling you it's doing it!. At least with a modern browser (not, of course, M$ style), you can prohibit html doing that.

John Perry

I don't like the tricks you can do in HTML with external references. And perhaps other things.

I don't want that "flexibility" in a document I view. And I don't want to keep dropping down to the source to find out what clever dicks are doing.

Robert

I have a hypothesis about this decline in content. Last week I came into possesion of a large stack of engineering papers from the 60's. Within the stack were a number of engineering reports written by a then well known engineering consultancy. They worked out a very complex problem on paper in a very few pages using geometry and calculus. This was a 3D problem that would be very difficult to solve in FEA. I rather doubt that many Machine Design or Design News readers would even want to tackle one of these reports. Yet this was how things were done and many engineers and designers in the 60's would have little trouble understanding them. 3D graphics and user friendly FEA have isolated practitioners from needing to understand how they are getting the answers they are getting. Magazine writers cater to this new crowd of engineering wanabes with articles on features and user interfaces rather than looking at the meatier issues of CAD, FEA or engineering in general.

I ran across a prime example the other day in a question posted on Eng-Tips. Somebody wanted to know how their canned FEA package really knew a cylinder was going to buckle. Good question, but should this guy really be using the software to design things till he understands the answer? Red is bad and blue is good, right?

The long and short is that the engineering rags have to be careful not to overwhelm their readers with technical content just like the CAD and FEA software vendors are careful to isolate their users from the reality of what they are doing. We are all becoming like soccer moms driving 3 ton SUVs while completely oblivious to the implications of controlling such a large vehicle and smug in the assurance that whatever they do with it they will survive unhurt.

Kman wrote:

A very poor choice, unless you have the exact browser software type and revision it was written for. How many people want to keep every version of every browser at hand when you only need a couple revs of PDF?

Any decent firewall will stop it from "calling home".

I would agree that Acrobat reader gets worse with every new version.

I both create and view PDF files with no Adobe software. I use ghostscript to create them and xpdf to view them. I only use PDF for schematics. You can't beat it for that. For instance

There seems to be a version of xpdf for M$ Windows:

Darrell Harmon

Agree,

And the number, quality and diversity in topics have declined dramatically over the years in magazines such as Machine Design and Design News. Long time ago, the magazine Editors concentrated more on useful design content, new technologies (detailed) than on advertisements. I started saving interesting and informative magazine articles back in the late 70's and onward. It is very obvious to those of us who have been around awhile that the majority of these magazines have transformed into nothing more than advertisement journals. I don't know how others use these magazines, but I barely notice the advertisements and go straight to articles of interest if you can find one.

Kman

Couple of revs eh? Use standard, well defined, HTML. Strangely, I manage to write HTML that runs on all known browsers. But then, it's not loaded with Flash, movies or sound. Just pics and text.

A couple of revs of PDF ?

Yeah it's gone downhill ! Adobe should be shot.

Graham

Oh wow !

Wtf does it need to do that for anyway ? Just more dumb cutesy features.

Graham

I read in sci.electronics.design that Pooh Bear wrote (in ) about 'Tech Magazines going electronic.', on Sun, 25 Sep 2005:

Acrobat 6 calls home, too, for updates. Updating doesn't seem to work all that well, but on balance I'd rather have the updates than the security holes or the crashes.

Well, the solution to that is simple. Burn at the stake anyone who designs for only a couple of browsers, rather than using simple standards compliant HTML.

I agree. But I like being able to hold one source accountable for such behavior instead of anyone that's doing the HTML. I can (mostly) believe all I'm going to get in PDFs is URL's and calling home to Adobe. Either of which I can block by closing my firewall when I read the Doc. I'm more suspicious of general HTML tricks. And the people who can create them.

Robert

There is a small (less than 1MEG) fast free PDF reader alternative that IT friends recommend. I haven't played with it much yet.

Robert

Very fast, neat, I'll play with it as well

martin

The HTML "Standards" keep creeping, so you have to keep modifying the HTML page to keep them current.

That's fine, if you are only going to look at your own work.

That's interesting, Ken. We re polar opposites. I barely notice the articles in many of my engineering magazines and focus on the ads!

On the other hand, I really do enjoy a good article. When I can find one, that is.

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"