Hi all:
Like my computers, I am old school and like to hold paper versions of manuals and documents. But, as we all experience, the cost of adding to our vintage collections keeps rising and rising (like the cost of everything else).
I have started printing a lot of the digital versions of various manuals and books, but many are WAY more pages than is cost effective to print at home on an ink jet. I also hate stapled documents if its a reference book or I'm adding it to a collection of books.
To solve this I have been printing smaller manuals at home and having them ring bound at Staples and Office Depot, but for the larger ones, I have been using a company called Printme1. I've had about 3 documents printed by them and they have done a nice job.
If you're looking at a small manual and can get one off eBay for $10 or so, go that way. But for the thick, out of print books/document, this is the way to go, if you are ok without an original copy and want a document you can hold.
Just thought I'd share the expereince.
mark
I also much like written docs, and books, especially for anything Apple II era.
I have a laser printer at home which breaks down pretty well cost wise, but that service you linked is still definitely cheaper if I needed something that was sizeable (over 50-100 pages). I appreciate you sharing it!
I have 3 ring binders at home with printed docs in them for a couple of reasons. The main reason is home brew products, I always print the corresponding manual to my version of the product, until or unless I upgrade firmware at which time I update my docs. Otherwise you can find yourself consulting newer docs than your hardware, or worse, without docs for that one-off card. The other big reason is soldering / schematics, I really don't like having a computer at the workbench if I can print out a schematic / cap list / etc for the work. Then whenever I'm done, I can 3 ring punch it and put it in the appropriate binder. Should I ever revisit the repair, it takes me right back to where I was.
So I found this the other day while trying to clean up a manual. The program is called Briss. (funny how it is for 'trimming' PDFs LOL)
It has a bit of a learning curve to use the app but once you have it down, it does an AWESOME job fixing pdf scans of manuals.
It doesn't improve the quality of the scan, but it lets you carve out pages so a document scanned with document pages per pdf page can become one document page per pdf page.
I'll post some examples after work.
BTW: there are several PDF format Apple manuals on Asimov that are password protected, why I don't know. But, I am trying to improve them with the software above and can't edit them with out the password. Anyone know who may be the owner? An example is Apple II Super Serial Card
All forms of PDF protection can be bypassed with a PDF password remover.
Speaking of which I will soon be releasing an updated version of the Apple II Redbook, it is as close to the real deal as possible, using correct fonts, sizes, etc., etc, while not perfect, compared to the scans currently online, it's a Rembrandt.
It can be printed or viewed, no protection since there is no point to protection.
All Apple II manuals can be replicated this way, however the time to do so is somewhat high.
Have you seen this new version of the Red Book? Apparently it has updates from the original author and improved images.
Perhaps you're involved, as you graphic work is amazing.
Anyway, worth a look-see.
That's mine, it's a semi update, a newer update will fix other quirks.
The light italic font has been replaced with a vastly more accurate font, the original book used IBM Selectric Light Italic, I had to remake the font using a scan and the font although usable was total garbage, the new replacement font made by someone else is about as good as it gets.
Other quirks include the main body of most of the pages using Letter Gothic 10 pitch, it suppose to be 12 pitch.
Page 123 is now an actual graphic illustration not scan crap.
Other fixes include small letter L and number 1 replacements, with the good old days of Typewriters, people often used small letter L for number 1 and that was a tedious thing to correct, or match to the original book.
Some issues remain such as replacement fonts to match the typewriter used, these fonts do not exist, when and if they do exist, then another update.
The font used on the Teletype pages needs to be replaced, it is an ok font, but not great quality, making fonts is not terribly hard when you have access to quality material, however such material is not easy to find.
The dot matrix fonts used in this manual I made myself, fairly easy considering its just a pile of dots.
And the beat goes on..
That's fantastic!!!!
Looking forward to it. So should wait on having it printer and bound? ;-)
I read everything as most people do on a screen, where as some pages printed out might be handy, when you have spent as much time as i do in front of computers, aka decades, you tend to prefer it all come that way, even when i worked in the printing business.
While it would be nice to have something like the Redbook printed in modern time crisp and clear, how many people would actually buy it and more so actually read it?
I managed to work around all the pdfs with passwords except 3. Do you have any recommended methods? Online pdf password removal sites are sketchy but if you've used one without incident, I'd be inclined to try it. The three docs I'm trying to unlock are 1) Mountain Computer ROMWRITER Operating Manual, 2) Orange micro Grappler plus Printer Interface - Operators Manual, and 3) Orange Micro Grappler plus Printer Interface - User's Guide. All of these are on the Asimov site. Not sure what motivated the original provider to lock these down with password protection and restricted print permissions.
You can download my copy of the ROMwriter manual from here
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hnMjh6UbVWdZAnPE1_8eTfIPoNpa2hjV/view?usp=sharing
Awesome! Thanks
Send me one of the PDF Files you can't unlock, I'm sure I will find a way, I haven't encountered any PDF files I couldn't unlock.
I have spent alot of time looking into ways to protect my PDF files and found none that couldn't be defeated, Adobe has billions of dollars and they have yet to protect their stuff from hacks and pirates.
I've never found a pdf file that couldn't be unlocked.
Most are unlockable from https://smallpdf.com/unlock-pdf
With regards to printing pdf manuals, I find that printed manuals are incredibly more useful than their electronic versions.
Even reading them on a tablet sucks. Ones that have decent OCR text are at least searchable, but most of the time the index at the back of the document does a better job.
For small manuals I use a comb-binder. You can get them on craigslist for next to nothing or on Amazon, Staples, Business Depot or other business stationery shop usually under $100 and they're totally worth it.
For large documents I use 3-ring binders.
Forget inkjet printing for manuals - it's cheaper to set fire to $20 bills to keep your house warm in the winter.
Buy a duplexing laser printer. You can get a really nice high speed Brother laser printer with a page duplexer under $350 that can print 40 pages per minute single sided, and 18 pages per minute double sided.
If you can program there are libraries which can defeat any PDF locks. I've done it before for work when I needed to edit PDF documents that were "locked".