[R-390] Y2K Reprinting

Sat Jun 23 09:39:58 EDT 2007

As far as I know, Al Tirevold remains "project manager" if there is one.

Explained in my previous post -- If the final work is desktop-published 
in Acrobat, the input for text should be RTF as it is a standard.  The 
work can be done in Word, but needs to be repeatedly saved-as and opened 
as RTF.  If elements are brought in as Word format, there are too many 
odd settings that may cause problems -- e.g. things that are controlled 
by the Word templates.  They are often not consistent between 
users/computers.  Fonts also vary.

I'm not sure what happens when using a pdf print driver that generates 
pdf files.  I've only used those to email invoices and other one page 
documents, and thus far, I've seen no problems, but I would suspect that 
the output has to be treated as final -- non-editable.

There is no need to edit pdf except by the one person -- and there 
should only be one person -- doing any Acrobat authoring work.

BUT ALL OF THIS IS BASICALLY, A NON-ISSUE ... at least as far as the Y2K 
manual is concerned.

At this stage, there is no further need for an "editing interchange" 
medium.  The only one who has new text input is Perry S.  My 
understanding from his description of what he was doing way back was 
mostly typographical refinements -- clearing up widows and orphans, 
improving the parts list by repeating the component values where the 
original says "same as C-XXX", etc.  In addition, I believe he also 
developed a new rendition of W. Li's Pearls of Wisdom.  The only other 
new input I know of are the 12 or so photos we re-created that should 
just need to be dropped in to replace the old B&W holdovers.

Doubtul that anything is at such an early stage as it needs to be passed 
around.  Once things get past a certain point, if there are any errors 
or glitches found by volunteer proofing squads, it's best to communicate 
them separately to the primary guy.  Otherwise, the bucket brigade gets 
screwed up.  For example, if I send you my work which is already 
paginated and formated and you find two or three typos, correct them in 
place and email the document back to me -- Well the good news is that 
the errors have been corrected, the bad news is that the formatting is 
messed up in 40 or more places.

Actually, the currently distributed version of the Y2K manual is a 
fairly mature product.  It would make more sense to edit in place for 
any formatting fine tuning and to drop in any highly reworked text, such 
as the parts list.  The new section is totally separate and can be 
finished as a separate document as the manual is rather large already.

So, Mark, the questions you ask are good ones, and they were handled 
when it all applied -- better part of seven years ago.  98% of the Y2K 
is done and gone, revised and circulated again a couple of years later.  
Some prefer the first one which was 2/3'rds smaller, with the same 
content and a few OCR typos. 

We had a form of organization which I've described several times 
before.  Here it is again.  It's history:  I did the initial OCR'ing and 
scanning of images into documents by chapter.  I circulated each section 
to an individual for help with the proofing.  Got them back either with 
separate notes or edits in place -- separate notes were safer.  
Forwarded them to Al.  Also organized taking of new photos -- a number 
of list members contributed.  Those went to Pete Wokoun for recreating 
the callouts -- part number notations.  Pete meanwhile worked from a 
copy of the Navlex and other sources and recreated all the drawings from 
scratch.   forgot what software he used, but he outputted each graphic, 
whether drawings or photos, in a standard, agreed-upon format -- not 
sure what those were at this point.  But it was all well coordinated and 
was finished in six months or less.  All the drawings and schematics 
were totally completed with the exception of the big gear train 
diagram.  That's too much to bother with and the original is sharp 
enough.  By way of an improvement is that already fine work by Scott 
Seickel which is posted on a website.  While we got his permission to 
include it in the Y2K, it makes more sense to keep it separate and make 
sure it's preserved on additional web sites.

Again though, to get to the starting point of the way forward, you'd 
need a time machine to go back about 7 years.  (Maybe if an R-390 is set 
to -7,000 and fed 600 VAC until the 6082's glow red and explode? ;-)

At this late date, most of the interested folks have computer and hard 
copies of the Y2K.  Actually, it would be more efficient to simply re-do 
the changed pages -- those with new color photos separately (about 12 
pgs) - as a separate file, similar to the mil revisions.  If desired, 
the parts list could be compiled separately -- maybe just using a print 
driver type pdf generator.  (Perry's parts list might come unglued if he 
worked in Word in Word format and then things "re-flow" in the Acrobat 
authoring software without benefit of the Word template.)  Well, that's 
an alternative to re-authoring the whole thing.

As far as the main body of the text is concerned, I'm not sure how many 
readers are concerned with widows and orphans -- of the typographical 
kind.  If desired, it would be safer and less time-consuming for Al to 
work from highlighted printouts of Perry's stuff and do in-place edits. 

After all that -- it's not an issue -- done deal a long time ago.  The 
wheel was already invented, just need to top up the psi's a pound or 
two.  There is no newly discovered content.  Just fine tuning.

Hope this helps ...

Barry

Mark Huss wrote:
> So what do we want to use for editing interchange. ?
>
> What I got so far;
> No Word.
> No RTF
> NO TIFF!!!
>
> I agree that PDF should be the final format, but not everyone can edit 
> PDF. Personally, I would use Microsoft Word (hate it but use it) or 
> Sun OpenOffice (like it a LOT better than Word, and it generates PDF, 
> but cannot import it) as the working interchange format because most 
> processors can convert (though sometimes not well) that. SVG sounds 
> great, but I do not currently have anything that edits or outputs that 
> format. That PDF995 sounds good, but I did not see anything in the 
> description that it handles SVG.
>
> Sounds like the way forward is to have the Program Manager decide on 
> an interchange format for text and graphics. Assign sections that need 
> updating to various people that have the tools to interchange in the 
> selected formats. And the Program Manager assigns it to someone with 
> Adobe so they can pull in the edited sections, format them, and output 
> the shared files.
>
> So who is the Program Manager?
>
>
> Tom Norris wrote:
>> Many of the manual reprints way back when were fairly poor as well. 
>> The last good manuals I've seen were from the mid seventies, after 
>> than they apparently no longer printed them as they no longer had 
>> nice presentable halftone pics inthem -- but grainy things that 
>> looked photocopied and text that was half crooked. None of that was 
>> helped by some of the early scanners with fairly lower resolution.
>>
>> I remember KA4RKT scanned an R390A manual back in the 90's in pdf 
>> format and did a pretty good job, though, given what was available. 
>> He'd have used the Navy manual if he'd had access.
>>
>> No TIFF, please. Or Word, for that matter as not all folks may have 
>> it. Heck, I didn't on my Mac until this past year.
>>
>> 73
>>
>> Tom NU4G
>> ex KA4RKT
>>
>> On Jun 22, 2007, at 12:30 PM, Barry Hauser wrote:
>>> .
>>>
>>> When a few of us started off the Y2K back around the turn of the 
>>> century (always wanted to write that ;-), I OCR-ed the entire '86 
>>> Navlex manual to start it off. The Navlex manual was apparently 
>>> created in some wordprocessing software and set up as a single 
>>> column and the text was fairly crisp so it OCR'ed relatively well. 
>>> (Yes, many edits were needed.) I included the original B&W line 
>>> drawings and photos, mostly as place-holders for Pete Wokoun and Al 
>>> Tirevold to work with. Pete recreated both the line drawings (from 
>>> scratch) and we shot new photos and he added fresh callouts and 
>>> annotations. Al pulled it all together in Acrobat with Adobe's 
>>> authoring version. The first version, complete with real 
>>> (searchable) text, photos (mostly color) and drawings, was 4.3 MB's. 
>>> The first (and last) revision wasn't expanded by much, mostly for 
>>> corrections, somehow grew to about 14 or 17 MB's and that seemed to 
>>> have something to do with the newer version of Acrobat that Al used 
>>> to generate it.
>>>
>>> Regardless, pdf is the format of choice, considering that it's a 
>>> standard and is generally very efficient with mixed media -- text as 
>>> text and graphics as graphics. It has it's own compression logic.
>>>
>>> Overall, it would be best if Al could put some time into it again. 
>>> Whether or not he can, it should retain the work that was done thus 
>>> far and the format should remain pdf. Another consideration with pdf 
>>> files -- they seem to be more reliable in downloading. Some formats, 
>>> when files are complex, may partially disassemble when downloaded, 
>>> such as Word, etc. where the user's own settings may re paginate and 
>>> rearrange things when pulled up on the user's computer.
>>>
>>> Forget about TIFF. We're way past that.
>>> Barry
>>>>>>
>>
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