Help as PDF - The good and the bad

[aurumdigitus]

It is very gratifying to see that the Help is now available as a pdf on the Support page. When coming to xyplorer this was not the case and there was discussion about what form Help should take.

So kudos go for providing the pdf. That said, it is lamentable that it does not have a Table of Contents. One would greatly augment its ease of use!

[j_c_hallgren]

That said, it is lamentable that it does not have a Table of Contents. One would greatly augment its ease of use!

Based on what grief Don apparently went through to convert the file to PDF, I suspect that he's not fully done with it yet...at least that would be be my guess...in that customizing the PDF 'fork' for things such as this requires extra work that is unique to it.

[aurumdigitus]

Agreed! When the issue of what form Help should take was up for discussion, the debate while not incendiary was - well - passionate.

To me the pdf is very useful as to ease of markup and commenting. And if necessary selected pages are printed without difficulty.

[admin]

I agree a TOC would be nice. But I don't have the time for the necessary handwork. If you feel like doing it, you are very welcome: the help source files are already there for download: http://www.xyplorer.com/download/XYHelp ... 081126.zip

However, whenever the help TOC changes the work has to be updated. So this would be a commitment!

[aurumdigitus]

Okay. Thanks for the link. After looking the situation over I'll go meditate in the Zen Garden.

[admin]

Okay. Thanks for the link. After looking the situation over I'll go meditate in the Zen Garden.

In the meantime graham has offered his help (and I accepted). He found a way to produce a good looking PDF with TOC and even without those stupid footnotes. You will see it with the next official release.

[aurumdigitus]

That will indeed get the year off to a most auspicious beginning Please extend my appreciation for his effort.

[admin]

Okay, here's the great new and up-to-date XYplorer PDF help with TOC, made by graham!

[serendipity]

Wow!! great job Graham. Looks quite good to me, especially with the bookmarks and nice professional look. May I ask what program you used to do this? Was it by any chance on linux?

[jacky]

Yep, very nice work! Well done, graham.

[aurumdigitus]

A veritable masterwork Thanks for all the time this must have taken. Users yet unborn will benefit from it.

[j_c_hallgren]

Okay, here's the great new and up-to-date XYplorer PDF help with TOC, made by graham!

graham, we all thank you! Looks great as far as I could see!

Don, suggest on XY web page that you also put vers nbr that it was based on there, instead of just "current version", unless graham plans to keep it always updated.

[graham]

Thanks but I feel very guilty as this was just a few minutes work on my part.

Method - rtf file cleaned manually to remove footnotes in word 2007 (unfortunately MS do not have a good auto remove method for this); then use word to auto create the TOC and then word has a 'save as' feature to pdf format which also creates the bookmarks from the TOC.

to JC - the next version will be cleaner and if, when next updated, Don tells me what he wants as a page header then this can cover version and better page numbering.

[j_c_hallgren]

to JC - the next version will be cleaner and if, when next updated, Don tells me what he wants as a page header then this can cover version and better page numbering.

Oh, ok! I think you're talking about having vers in the PDF itself, like on title page, which would allow user to know if it's current or not, and that makes sense, but I was referring to desc of it on web site so that people would know what vers it was based on.