AE PDF Manual Revision

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: Cribtop

Thanks for doing this, Alfred.

+1

[&o][&o][&o]

[Panjack]

ORIGINAL: Alfred
...Only the PDF Manual will be revised. There will be no hard copy printing of any revised manual....

Perhaps the copyright holders don't want a printed manual, but IF they were open to having it printed then services such as Amazon's CreateSpace offer a very easy way to get books printed from just a PDF. You upload a PDF along with cover art and CreateSpace does the rest. The books CreateSpace prints (on demand) are quite cheap and look just like, well, real books.

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: Reg


Hi Alfred,

A truely noble and magnanimous task you are taking on here. It will certainly be appreciated by the AE community. [&o]

In addition to actual errors/ommissions in the existing manual I assume you will be working through the What's New listings and incorporating those changes (over a thousand I believe) into the manual (ouch!!).

If you don't mind me asking what tools will you be using? It might help if people want to provide preformatted information to assist you.

Apollo11 is doing something similar with the War in the East Manual and I believe he is editing in MSWord and using Adobe InDesign to generate indexing in the final PDF.

If by "What's New listings" you mean the patch notes found in the consolidated Readme file, the answer is yes. In itself that will not amount to a 1000 changes but it will lead to many changes. Every change to gameplay will obviously be incorporated. Also the gist of the interface/pilot training addendums will need to be incorporated in the main body even though the addendums will remain as primary documents.

Significant over the years dev provided clarifications will be included. These are areas which generally at some point in time I have chipped in and as I said yesterday I will be looking at my historical posts. Some of the significant areas covered, without disclosing proprietary algorithms, will include:

• river crossings
• kamikaze
• on map logistic flows
• combat

and many more. I haven't yet determined how best to handle subject areas which have detailed player generated guides such Damian's Japanese economy, LoBaron's Air Co-ordination or my Ship Repair guide.

As to tools, this is where many of the technical issues come into play. From a long time ago I have extensive experience in writing up and formatting reports using MS Word for use by major law firms, television and radio stations, academics and the general public. But use of PDF documents is an area of zero prior experience.

I had originally a very faint hope of being able to get away with limited tools. That has already been shown to be a dead end and I will have to proceed to the next level of previously foreseen tools.

The current position is this.

a. I have Microsoft Office 2007. I think that should suffice and there ought to be no need to upgrade Office 2013. Use of Word is important as it allows for marking up document changes. Word ought to suffice for Table of Contents and Index changes; at least it can't be any more limited than the existing Index.
b. I am hoping that Paint will suffice for capturing any new screenshots but if not one of the free screen capture programs (often mentioned by witpqs et al) once downloaded ought to suffice.
c. I have saved a copy of the "WITP-Manual [Light" as a Microsoft Office Word document (.docx). No screenshots survived and whilst on the whole the original text formatting survived, the table formatting did not survive.
d. It seems the easiest solution to the formatting issues is to subscribe to one of the Adobe paid services. There are three which appear to be relevant.

(i) Adobe Export PDF. Annual cost is $AUD 23.88. This is a very basic service and does not appear to allow for tracking.
(ii) Adobe PDF Pack. Annual cost is $AUD 89.99. Adds tracking and seems to expand on retention of fonts, formats and layout capabilities.
(iii) Adobe Pro. Annual cost is $AUD 239.88. Incorporates Acrobat XI. Most extensive formatting and text editing capabilities, including editing images (a feature which may well prove to be invaluable subsequently) which the two cheaper products seem to lack.

Seems to me that I need to acquire Adobe Pro but before doing so I'll listen to any feedback from those experienced in editing PDF documents. Apollo is probably using in house software whereas I am restricted to using only personal use software. Personally paying $AUD 240 is OK but I would balk at outlaying $AUD 1000+ for this project.

Alfred

[witpqs]

Alfred,

You might have said and I missed it, but is there a source document available, or is the PDF file the only thing available to work with?

If a source document is available, then you might consider the free (you knew I would say that!) LibreOffice. LibreOffice Writer, and indeed all of the suite, provides built-in output to PDF. I have not bought a version of Word in a long, long time. I save everything in the appropriate Open Document Format, whether Open Document Spreadsheet (ODS), Open Document text (ODT), or whatever.

While I have not tested it yet, I looked in LibreOffice Writer for change tracking and it is present. Screen capture below. The screen capture is with Greenshot (full quality, some free programs throttle to less than 100%). I use Paint.net for editing (much faster/easier than MSPaint), although this screenshot is unedited.

If a source document is not available then I will look into ways to convert from PDF without paid programs.

[witpqs]

The help for those menu items.

[Alfred]

witpqs,
 
No, I haven't said anything about accessing the source document so you haven't missed it.[:)]
 
Didn't know anything about LibreOffice so thanks for the lead.  Paying a couple of hundred dollars is worthwhile if it results in easy interoperability with the official stakeholders.
 
As to the source document I had presumed that I would not be given access to it, at least not initially.  It is another of those technical issues.  Not having access to it is not fatal to the project and without going into details now, it is not inconceivable that things may subsequently alter.  At the moment I am proceeding on the basis of working without a NDA agreement which may well be a sine qua non for access.  I think it is only reasonable for the Powers to Be to wait to see what actually is generated first before they commit themselves too much to the project.
 
Alfred

[witpqs]

The compatibility will depend on what format the file is currently stored in. "There was a time" when Microsoft deliberately made their newer storage formats for Word and such have subtle incompatibilities with non-MS software. They swore off of that behavior a number of years ago. But note the skeptical quotation marks!

Given how old the current manual is, the doc is about guaranteed to be in a format that other software (such as LibreOffice) can read and write without problems. Because of Microsoft's better behavior, the same should be true of the newer MS formats if the document owner's insist on a newer Microsoft proprietary format. They should opt for an Open Document Format, as it is just that and they shouldn't lose anything in doing so.

It looks like there are multiple options for reading in PDF files; I'm looking for one that is a straight up import with retention of markup/layout. I'll get back to you.

[szmike]

When you wrote about limited editing, it was obvious you couldn't/wouldn't have access to source version editable file.
I would convert pdf to any office format just to retain the text for edits, then screenshots and tables are not that much of a problem if they won't survive. Formatting all together after edits shouldn't take too much time either. MS Office have included saving as pdf in 2010 version.

If you need any help editing/proofreading I'd be glad to help.

[littleike]

Hi Alfred

in the past i collected many informations from the forum to make a sort of self made “strategic manual”.
The final result was a pdf with about 200 pages.

I uploaded version one of this document in pdf format here

http://www.netwargamingitalia.net/forum ... queeze.28/


Obviously i have clearly understood that your work is only related to the standard manual update
so my document collection of forum question and answers maybe unuseful but maybe that in the middle of all the stuff you could find something of interest for your update.
( I have also the word version of the file if needed).


Thanks anyway for your effort.

[Reg]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

The compatibility will depend on what format the file is currently stored in. "There was a time" when Microsoft deliberately made their newer storage formats for Word and such have subtle incompatibilities with non-MS software. They swore off of that behavior a number of years ago. But note the skeptical quotation marks!

Given how old the current manual is, the doc is about guaranteed to be in a format that other software (such as LibreOffice) can read and write without problems. Because of Microsoft's better behavior, the same should be true of the newer MS formats if the document owner's insist on a newer Microsoft proprietary format. They should opt for an Open Document Format, as it is just that and they shouldn't lose anything in doing so.

It looks like there are multiple options for reading in PDF files; I'm looking for one that is a straight up import with retention of markup/layout. I'll get back to you.

I originally asked the question about tools as I suspected this might be the case.

You might like to look at this link: Semi OT: Seeking help with "indexing" of the updated PDF manual (for WitE - I am in charge for it)!

I have just uploaded the manual into Libre Office (thankfully no edit security) and as I suspected it imports it into Libre Draw not Writer. This is not the ideal tool for this task. ie text lines are individual entities not paragraphs which makes inserting text a real pain in the a#$$ (no automatic line overflow...). By the way, Acrobat writer works in exactly the same way.

You did better than me getting it into docx (XML format) though I seem to remember OpenOffice could do something like this.

What you really need is a copy of the original source file or run the current pdf manual through a MS Office converter to create an edititable source file (though document security can defeat that). PDF is not really an editable file format.

Once you have a good source file, Office 2007 will be just fine as an editor. Don't forget the humble screen print button of your computer - it works!! (Paste straight into Word and you can crop/edit/resize from there).

There are several freeware pdf print drivers such as CutePDF (www.cutepdf.com) which I use (though it installs other unwanted stuff) which will output a pdf document from any application which can print (including office 2007) but will not include niceities such as index links.

As per the link above, the tool of choice I believe is Adobe InDesign Suite but it is as expensive as all getout.... (and has a learning curve similar to WITP-AE [:(] )

However, there seems to be offerings out there where you can "rent" software for a limited time period at a monthly rate. This might be a better option that buying sophisticated (and expensive) software for a single task. Adobe Creative Cloud

Best of luck!!



To the rest of you guys, keep your suggestions coming - don't let us derail the thread.... [:)]

[Jorge_Stanbury]

Page 190
"Moving across a River hex side will also cause the crossing unit to initiate a shock attack unless the moving side has a presence of friendly units that are already in the hex that meet a threshold of strength when compared to the non-moving side."

It should be stated that the threshold is ~30% of the non-moving side AV

[blueatoll]

I sent a PM to Alfred. I've got 25 years experience in the publishing industry and the professional tools at my disposal to get the manual in and out of pdf e-book easily. Please do not use Paint to capture screen captures. Please use Snag-it or an actual screen capture tool. Paint will give you crappy captures with highly rastered images. I'd also recommend Paint.Net to resize and touch up screenshots.

I'm happy to help coordinate the actual production and technical construction of the documents.

[geofflambert]

ORIGINAL: Alfred

Don't get carried away.  I said there are certain technical issues to overcome.  And I keep repeating we are retaining the basic structure.

One great advantage I have is that I can look up my own posts as they usually already incorporate dev answers unearthed during the research.  There ought to not be too many subject areas I haven't posted on in the past.  Plus the hidden contribution from the devs.

Alfred

I would thank you greatly [&o] except for one technical reason: I barely read any of the original manual. [8|][:D] Do they archive threads and posts further back than they seem to in this forum?

[Alfred]

A professional PDF writer has informed me that they will convert the e-book to a Word document this weekend.  I have asked them to send it to me as it undoubtedly will be a far superior working document than the one I am currently working on.  Revising chapters 1-3 has already highlighted some of the technical problems which might be overcome with an improved working document.
 
As to archived threads and posts.  All are accessible in a forum search.
 
Alfred

[bartrat]

Please remove in the revised PDF the mention of a tutorial.

[witpqs]

Going to read your linked thread in a second, meanwhile some comments.

ORIGINAL: Reg

ORIGINAL: witpqs

The compatibility will depend on what format the file is currently stored in. "There was a time" when Microsoft deliberately made their newer storage formats for Word and such have subtle incompatibilities with non-MS software. They swore off of that behavior a number of years ago. But note the skeptical quotation marks!

Given how old the current manual is, the doc is about guaranteed to be in a format that other software (such as LibreOffice) can read and write without problems. Because of Microsoft's better behavior, the same should be true of the newer MS formats if the document owner's insist on a newer Microsoft proprietary format. They should opt for an Open Document Format, as it is just that and they shouldn't lose anything in doing so.

It looks like there are multiple options for reading in PDF files; I'm looking for one that is a straight up import with retention of markup/layout. I'll get back to you.

I originally asked the question about tools as I suspected this might be the case.

You might like to look at this link: Semi OT: Seeking help with "indexing" of the updated PDF manual (for WitE - I am in charge for it)!

I have just uploaded the manual into Libre Office (thankfully no edit security) and as I suspected it imports it into Libre Draw not Writer. This is not the ideal tool for this task. ie text lines are individual entities not paragraphs which makes inserting text a real pain in the a#$$ (no automatic line overflow...). By the way, Acrobat writer works in exactly the same way.
I tested that and it loads it into either Draw or the slide maker program (forget the name at this instant). Not practical for the project as pagination is needed.

You did better than me getting it into docx (XML format) though I seem to remember OpenOffice could do something like this.
Not sure what you mean, I didn't get any PDF into XML? Maybe someone else's post?

What you really need is a copy of the original source file or run the current pdf manual through a MS Office converter to create an edititable source file (though document security can defeat that). PDF is not really an editable file format.

Once you have a good source file, Office 2007 will be just fine as an editor. Don't forget the humble screen print button of your computer - it works!! (Paste straight into Word and you can crop/edit/resize from there).
The problem with editing in MS Word (any version) is that it costs money for whomever has it. Using an open document format has the advantages of 1) more modern markup and 2) using any editor that properly support the open document standards.

There are several freeware pdf print drivers such as CutePDF (www.cutepdf.com) which I use (though it installs other unwanted stuff) which will output a pdf document from any application which can print (including office 2007) but will not include niceities such as index links.
This stuff is not necessary anymore as most or all modern stuff has built-in output to PDF. Heck, even when I print from an application there is a Windows driver there - built-in to the operating system IIRC - that will make a PDF instead. If you've got an older OS with older apps then those drivers are a great help.

As per the link above, the tool of choice I believe is Adobe InDesign Suite but it is as expensive as all getout.... (and has a learning curve similar to WITP-AE [:(] )

However, there seems to be offerings out there where you can "rent" software for a limited time period at a monthly rate. This might be a better option that buying sophisticated (and expensive) software for a single task. Adobe Creative Cloud

Best of luck!!

To the rest of you guys, keep your suggestions coming - don't let us derail the thread.... [:)]

I've found several tools that will convert PDF to Word format, which then can easily and accurately be read into LibreOffice (or most anything else) and saved as an open document text file. Many are online free conversions, but I suspect something that runs locally is more desirable here. I'm just still looking to see if I can find one that goes directly to open document format. Then of course comes testing things out.

The very worst case is that the text is obtained with some degree of markup, and then a manual clean up effort is the last step in the conversion process.

[Yaab]

ad bartrat:
I second this emotion.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Going to read your linked thread in a second, meanwhile some comments.

ORIGINAL: Reg

ORIGINAL: witpqs

The compatibility will depend on what format the file is currently stored in. "There was a time" when Microsoft deliberately made their newer storage formats for Word and such have subtle incompatibilities with non-MS software. They swore off of that behavior a number of years ago. But note the skeptical quotation marks!

Given how old the current manual is, the doc is about guaranteed to be in a format that other software (such as LibreOffice) can read and write without problems. Because of Microsoft's better behavior, the same should be true of the newer MS formats if the document owner's insist on a newer Microsoft proprietary format. They should opt for an Open Document Format, as it is just that and they shouldn't lose anything in doing so.

It looks like there are multiple options for reading in PDF files; I'm looking for one that is a straight up import with retention of markup/layout. I'll get back to you.

I originally asked the question about tools as I suspected this might be the case.

You might like to look at this link: Semi OT: Seeking help with "indexing" of the updated PDF manual (for WitE - I am in charge for it)!

I have just uploaded the manual into Libre Office (thankfully no edit security) and as I suspected it imports it into Libre Draw not Writer. This is not the ideal tool for this task. ie text lines are individual entities not paragraphs which makes inserting text a real pain in the a#$$ (no automatic line overflow...). By the way, Acrobat writer works in exactly the same way.
I tested that and it loads it into either Draw or the slide maker program (forget the name at this instant). Not practical for the project as pagination is needed.

You did better than me getting it into docx (XML format) though I seem to remember OpenOffice could do something like this.
Not sure what you mean, I didn't get any PDF into XML? Maybe someone else's post?

What you really need is a copy of the original source file or run the current pdf manual through a MS Office converter to create an edititable source file (though document security can defeat that). PDF is not really an editable file format.

Once you have a good source file, Office 2007 will be just fine as an editor. Don't forget the humble screen print button of your computer - it works!! (Paste straight into Word and you can crop/edit/resize from there).
The problem with editing in MS Word (any version) is that it costs money for whomever has it. Using an open document format has the advantages of 1) more modern markup and 2) using any editor that properly support the open document standards.

There are several freeware pdf print drivers such as CutePDF (www.cutepdf.com) which I use (though it installs other unwanted stuff) which will output a pdf document from any application which can print (including office 2007) but will not include niceities such as index links.
This stuff is not necessary anymore as most or all modern stuff has built-in output to PDF. Heck, even when I print from an application there is a Windows driver there - built-in to the operating system IIRC - that will make a PDF instead. If you've got an older OS with older apps then those drivers are a great help.

As per the link above, the tool of choice I believe is Adobe InDesign Suite but it is as expensive as all getout.... (and has a learning curve similar to WITP-AE [:(] )

However, there seems to be offerings out there where you can "rent" software for a limited time period at a monthly rate. This might be a better option that buying sophisticated (and expensive) software for a single task. Adobe Creative Cloud

Best of luck!!

To the rest of you guys, keep your suggestions coming - don't let us derail the thread.... [:)]

I've found several tools that will convert PDF to Word format, which then can easily and accurately be read into LibreOffice (or most anything else) and saved as an open document text file. Many are online free conversions, but I suspect something that runs locally is more desirable here. I'm just still looking to see if I can find one that goes directly to open document format. Then of course comes testing things out.

The very worst case is that the text is obtained with some degree of markup, and then a manual clean up effort is the last step in the conversion process.

I wrote this reply before flipping the page and seeing the good news that the conversion process is covered! [:)]

[blueatoll]

RE - Adobe Indesign for creating the book:

I cannot imagine anyone putting together a 100+ page manual in InDesign unless they were clinically insane. It's not meant for book production and is cumbersome for anything over about 10 pages to use. Plus I know of no way to auto-generate an Index in InDesign. Save your money and do not get a subscription to Adobe Creative Suite Cloud. It's a year commitment, they save the files in a cloud-specific format that is difficult to export to desktop versions (flattening) and is not the tool to use here. As you mentioned, the learning curve is pretty steep as well.

If I had to guess, and I haven't cracked open the source code for the document yet, I'd say that this manual was originally published in either Frame or possibly Madcap Flare. Both are professional publishing tools. I'd be surprised if someone used Word to do this. Word also dislikes long manuals and book construction across files is cumbersome and replete with error. The other reasonable alternative is that this document was put together in Word and then transformed using WebWorks Publisher.

I'll know more after this weekend.

[MBF]

At the risk of sounding noobish - would Google Drive be appropriate for portions of this project and limiting who can see/share/edit etc ?