Electronic service info ...

The customer, unfortunately. Pioneer isn't going to.

But a valid rant.

An electronic manual should actually be easier to traverse than a paper manual, because there are no restrictions on page size or color. A bus or rail can have a distinctive color that makes it easy to trace.

I assume this is in PDF format?

There are some limitations to page size that you can (easily) get into a PDF file. But, I have been able to coax my larger drawings into PDFs so that they can remain intact. Then, you are stuck with the fact that you are viewing the document through a "window" and can't (quickly/easily) see where you are in the grand scheme of things.

Try extracting the small pages, pasting them together and then reimporting them to (another?) pdf. If the manufacturers had compettent people doing their manuals for them... :<

But you also need tools that are *intended* for this sort of use! E.g., you "read" a schematic very differently than you read a book! You often want to (rapidly and easily) flip between several different places *on* a sheet and *between* sheets. So you could have the source of a signal and (one) of its loads, etc.

It seems like this is tedious, at best, using tools that are intended for "general purpose documents".

Ideally, you should be able to open several windows into the same document, resize them at will and maybe even *easily* bind them to "hotkeys".

So, if you have a large virtual desktop, you could spread those windows out across your desktop and just see the parts of the schematic that are of interest to you AT THIS MOMENT.

Or, if you have a small desktop, you could position your fingers on those "hot keys" so that you could easily flip between their corresponding windows without having to take your eyes off the screen (or shift your concentration away from the document)

Sorry, it wasn't intended as a slam on "individuals". Rather, the entire *process*.

Documentation is considered an afterthought in many firms. Years ago, I adopted the approach of writing the *manual* for any product that I designed *before* designing the product (!). This serves several purposes:

- it becomes a concrete "specification" that will serve to referee the products design (i.e., "What does the manual say the product *should* do in this case?")

- it ensures the manual that is ultimately available to the user *can* be very comprehensive (it is much easier to take stuff out of an existing document than it is to justify the time/expense of putting stuff *in*)

- it lets people "evaluate" a product before the product exists

- it forces the designers to *think* about how they are going to solve problems *before* they encounter them. If the manual starts to read like a kludge, it is a sure indication that the design is a kludge (and should be rethought)

Years (decades) ago, manuals were very detailed. And, products (especially the expensive ones) were designed to facilitate troubleshooting, etc.

Nowadays, everything is viewed as disposable. :<

I'm surprised they even *supported* the firmware upgrade! I think they count on consumers replacing kit every couple of years so why bother adding any cost if a new model will be out...

:<

When done right they are great. I can access them on my iphone, or do searches for component locations, etc. When they are nothing more than a scan to jpeg, they are a PITA.

Leonard

The man who created "Mathematica" did exactly that. It is a terrific idea, because it puts the focus on how the user interacts with the product, before any code is written.

Some products have become so complex that manufacturers have no choice to put the firmware in flash memory, so it can fixed if bugs or omissions are found.

If Sony, et al, didn't provide updates, at least some customers would complain. In this case, the BDP-S560 included freeze-frame and slow-motion features missing from my BDP-S550. So it probably wasn't too hard to update the earlier product.

My plasma TV and my digital SLRs (including the lenses!) use flash firmware. I'm hoping the TV will be upgradeable to 3D (but who knows?). In the case of the cameras, the manufacturers are correcting bugs and adding features. If they didn't do this, there'd be a lot of kvetching from customers -- and possibly class-action lawsuits.

In message , Arfa Daily writes

Datasheets, service manuals, ebooks, all bloody horrible. Nothing like having paper in your hands that you can open out on the bench, desk whatever and follow the information/schematic.

Ahh, no. Print the relevant pages out and join them up with sellotape to make a proper schematic. If they won't join then print them anyway and have at it with a set of highlighters or pencil crayons so you can see at a glance which sheet the lines go to.

No problem, it's a regular one here, I know plenty of people who hate electronic documentation, we used to go through toner and binding supplies like mad at our office. Some of it was even work related.

I totally agree with that approach. Waaay back when I was writing database applications for a living, I found that writing the user manual and designing the reports before starting the coding made life MUCH easier for me. It gave me the logical flow of the program, the user interface and most of the database design up front, where it's easiest to change and get customer approval with least impact on the project.

Automotive wiring diagrams confound me.

-- Boris

Especially when they're wrong. A few years back I was helping a neighbor troubleshoot a problem with his Volkswagen Golf. We simply couldn't figure out why the schematic appeared to be wrong, when it occurred to me that perhaps it /was/ wrong. We found the correct schematic under another model, and fixed the problem.

I think it results in a more robust product. It is a relatively well-contained (temporally) task so you can remember almost everything that you have written/defined even while you are putting on the finishing touches. So, inconsistencies are usually fresh in your mind: "Gee, I did something LIKE this someplace else but did it *differently*; why?"

The same sort of approach also applies to things that don't have "traditional" user-interfaces. E.g., creating an API that another programmer might have to "use" -- even though the END user never is aware of it.

Yes, understood. It makes sense from a manufacturing standpoint (since you can load the firmware "late" in the manufacturing process). I am just surprised that they were making this available to the "end user". (as it adds a maintenance cost)

Yes. But would *enough* complain that it would "hurt them"? My experience has been that most users don't even know how to fully utilize most of the things they own (i.e., the blinking 12:00 on the VCR syndrome) and those things see rapid turnover.

Not me. It's a rare day when I have a schematic. From my warped perspective, any schematic, in any form, is better than nothing.

Big schematic? No problem. Get a big HP DesignJet large format plotter. Hopefully, you have a wall big enough to hang the printed schematic. (I cheat. I have two architects, both with big plotters, near my office).

No argument. If you want to see how I feel an API should be documented, let me know and I'll send you something I wrote at Microsoft.

Other than posting the files on the Website, it costs Sony nothing. You download the ZIP file, expand it, then burn a CD with the content. Sony will give you the update on a CD, but I've never checked to see if they charge.

Modern Sony PDF's have "hot links" where you can click on a connector, for example, and it takes you to where that connector ends up. Click on a IC, and it takes you to it's circuit board location. Click on the picture of the IC in the circuit board view, and it takes you to that part in the parts list. Pretty cool.

The later versions of Adobe do seem to support multiple windows.

I prefer decent PDF's over paper anymore - I have a wide format monitor over to my left and it keeps paper roadmaps from getting in my way.

Mark Z.

I don't like ESMs but a laptop and good pair of reading glasses are helpful :)

One potentially good thing about .pdf files is that they can be text searchable. Very helpful when a service manual is a thousand pages in length.

On 10/26/2009 1:10 PM Dave M spake thus:

Plus, on a more elementary level, it increases the chance that what the manual says and how the program works (and, more importantly,