Like I'm sure many of you do, we maintain a collection of EN's in soft copy on our network.
Being good corporate citizens, when we set this up we searched around for sources that could give us what we needed (in English, by the way) with a license that either directly allowed network installation, or at least did not preclude network installation. We ended up with ILI Infodisk, who gives us network licensed subscriptions (automatic updates) to EN's published by Irish Standards. The service has been good and their pricing was competitive at the time. But it's been a few years, and I want to do a bit of comparison shopping. My question is who are people using for this? Specifically, who can people recommend that fit the following criteria: Mandatory: - English language EN's (primarily for LVD and EMCD) - PDF or other convenient soft-copy format - legally allowed to be installed on our corporate intranet - able to copy and paste extracts out of the standards (for design doc's, e-mails etc.) - able to print from the standards - automatic notification of availability of revisions and new versions Desired but not mandatory: - consolidated editions (*see below) - able to annotate the standards electronically (e.g. using the comments tool in Acrobat Reader) so that we can highlight passages, put in clarifying notes, etc.) - automatic downloads of revisions and new versions A far distant second choice would be internet-based access. Regarding my term "consolidated editions", here's what I'm on about. It drives me nuts that the standards we currently receive have a structure is very difficult to use, especially in soft format. There is usually a base IEC or CISPR document. Then there's a CENELEC "cover sheet" that says here's the EN such and such with a date and some other housekeeping odds and ends, and then a set of Common Modifications ("CM's"). Then there's (in our case) an Irish Standards cover sheet with its own date and housekeeping odds and ends. So far I have to look in 2 places to know the EN requirement - in the base document, and in the CM's. Then an amendment comes along. We get a new soft copy that now contains all of the above, plus a copy of the IEC or CISPR amendment, which lists the changes separately but does not embed them in the base document. That Amendment of course comes with a CENELEC cover sheet with CM's, and an IS cover sheet. I now have to look in 4 places to know the EN requirement since both base documents and CENELEC CM's exist for both the original version and the Amendment. Each amendment adds to the mess. For a good example try following some of the requirements in EN55022:1998 / A2:2003 (which is really CISPR 22 3rd Edition 1997 A2:2002, and by the way the 5th edition cleaned this all up but it of course hasn't been published in the OJ so it's a moot standard so far). So my desire is to find someone who consolidates all this garbage into a readable standard where all the base requirements, CM's, and Amendments are embedded into their proper place (and hopefully annotated to indicate their origin). I believe BSI has done this in SOME cases, but last time I checked they were not able to offer network licensed versions. I'll stop ranting and dreaming now. All input and comments are welcome. Thanks, Jim Eichner, P.Eng. Compliance Engineering Manager Xantrex Technology Inc. e-mail: jim.eich...@xantrex.com web: www.xantrex.com Any opinions expressed are those of my invisible friend, who would like to give a piece of his mind to the publishers (not the well intentioned authors) of these standards. Confidentiality Notice: This email message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message. e-mail: jim.eich...@xantrex.com web: www.xantrex.com Confidentiality Notice: This email message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message. - This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to emc-p...@ieee.org Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas emcp...@ptcnh.net Mike Cantwell mcantw...@ieee.org For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: j.bac...@ieee.org David Heald: emc-p...@daveheald.com All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc