On 5 Sep 2011, Stuart Buchanan wrote: > ..... > One immediate question is how you see your changes being incorporated into to latex source code? > > Producing a nice PDF is quite important for a lot of people so I wouldn't want to lose that.
On 5 Sep 2011, Peter Morgan wrote: > ..... > I still like Jomo idea of a flight school very much.. starting from > the bottom up.. from a cadet to a commander, atc et all > Certainly though, looking toward the future and more usage.. and more > eyes.. we should plan for that, not only in printed media.. but in > game help of ipods of a website browsing on an olde retired FG > machine.... > The main issue to consider is whether is actually "a flight manual" of > now to fly an aircaft, or the simulation .. or both > We'd need to make it "original" and copyrightable to every contibutor > to make it 100% proof.. Thank you both very much for your interest and encouragement I have to admit: I did not yet look into the current release and update process of the "getstart". Martin Spott mentioned that "latex" system about a year ago, but to that time I planned just a pure translation, and thus saw that as a minor problem for me. Especially I did not see a major dependency on a "PDF"-base for my German version. Till now I saw that relatively "blue-eyed". Let me just outline my "process-environment": One guy with NO budget and no records department, using a single PC running Ubuntu, all tools are Multiplatform, OS, no charge: - the HTMLs are made with KompoZer, a very nice and easy WYSIWYG HTML-editor - pictures are edited with GIMP - PDFs are made by: Open the "*.html" with "LibreOffice Writer" (former OpenOffice), convert the page-format to "Landscape" and push the PDF-button -- and that's it. --> see 2 examples of the output (just converted as is!): http://www.emmerich-j.de/Handbuch/EN/B3_intro.pdf http://www.emmerich-j.de/Handbuch/EN/B8_IFR.pdf On first sight those prints look pretty good to me. (The location/size of some graphics could be relocated/sized already in the source! Maybe even add header/footer or so - but all in all ??) I agree: That is a very-very "cheap and dirty" approach - I hope you can help me finding something more adequate - based on your experiences. I mainly hang on the following questions: 1) I am sure that most of our customers/users today rather read/search online in a WIKI and/or Forum - but I also see that some people still prefer a hardcopy to study. (Is there an additional requirement for a hardcopy for advertisement and or selling?) 2) What customers/users are we addressing? Till now I mainly address - the "FGFS-newbies that want to learn" - and the "FGFS-users that want to look up or refresh some basics" 3) Is the PDF just used for Hardcopies or also for Online-Viewing? - If just a Hardcopy the above primitive conversion could be tuned to be good enough -- but all the extended internal and external "linking" would be lost in the hardcopy! -- would we then need the old style "Index" at the end? That would be a major effort! - Or do we need Softcopy PDF's to distribute for local off-line viewing -- then all the links still show up correct - but look for a "html" file - not a PDF. So that links would have to be edited. Personally I would guess that would not be a big effort with todays "find/replace" possibilities. 3a) or would it be easier to distribute the "Handbook" as html in a subdirectory to $FG_ROOT/data/docs, instead of the now getstart.pdf? The security/copyright problems would not change, because everybody can copy also a central HTML via todays browsers! Those browsers even have no problem in directly printing the HTML (If e.g. a user wants only some parts of it printed)! Maybe (in some future) that manual could even reside (controlled) in the GIT and thus would be a compromise to the WIKI-process. Everybody could input at any time (in normal text) and the responsible guy integrates that into the Manual. Again: I have no experience in that area and look for help. One word to "Copyright" and so. After finding out how easy it is nowadays to just copy the HTML-source from a browser and change and sell it - I am worried what to do against it. Right now I guess I have some "private protection" as the "originator". But surely I would like to put it (some day?) into the "ownership" of FlightGear. In some of the discussions here I noticed there are quite some lawyers around - maybe someone can advise what to do. (I hope such a document must not be GNU/GPL like: Free!). And no big hurry: I still have to review (links, spelling, wording,..)! End of the month I want to link it on may homepage - and am sure that will not be the end of my work! Thank You for Your interest joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Special Offer -- Download ArcSight Logger for FREE! Finally, a world-class log management solution at an even better price-free! And you'll get a free "Love Thy Logs" t-shirt when you download Logger. 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