Printable pdf User Manual from Wiki

I registered last month to help develop the LibreCad documentation.

I read the 36-pages user manual by Bob Woltz, which is more a starter guide than a user manual; it is this document which got me started with LibreCAD.

And I looked at the wiki site which is rather complete and well done at first sight.

I may be old style, but I like printed documentation. What I would like to see is a pdf document reproducing the wiki site information in a printable book style, with a table of contents and a word index. Does that make sense to anybody ? If there is interest for that, I am willing to produce that document.

I agree that a PDF version of the LibreCAD documentation is a good idea.

It would be useful even to those who don't actually want to print it out. Many users find offline documentation more convenient.


Mike

We can add a link to wiki "Download this article as PDF":

https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=wiki%20to%20pdf%20export

Help is needed!

Mike Hayes wrote

I agree that a PDF version of the LibreCAD documentation is a good idea.

It would be useful even to those who don't actually want to print it out. Many users find offline documentation more convenient.


Mike

Thanks for the list of software tools. I had already found a few others. My plan was to convert everything to a Word format and then use Word functions to create the table of contents and a word index (with links) and then to export as PDF in Letter\A4 format. Now I see that there are many tools out there that can do this automatically.

I will explore the different tools available (I am working in a Windows environment) and start working on the User Guide as a start. It is too early to give you a deadline, but sure I will be working on it.

Pierre,

first let me thank for your intention to contribute in LibreCAD documentation.

The problem in past and in future is, to keep things synced. So our aim is to use the wiki as base for collecting and editing information and use wiki tools to generate documents for printing or F1 help inside LibreCAD. This is the only way that makes sense to get most value of the editors efforts and keep the documentation roughly up to date with code development.
That means the wiki administration must offer the tools to create these documents, that changes in wiki articles can easy slip into corresponding documents.

Therefore we prepare a move from our current wiki software MediaWiki to DokuWiki, which should make work easier for administrators, contributors, translators and export of several formats of documentation.

So before you put too much effort in your work, please coordinate your steps here to see if they match with our wiki plans.

Armin

O Lord,

If I understand you correctly, you say that what I had in mind doing is useless, since the new DocuWiki site you are preparing will be offering this function without any outside intervention ? I gave a quick glance to the DocuWiki site and it does indeed look interesting.

Pierre,

I wouldn't say useless, but a kind of Sisyphus job. The way you described works of course, but between starting and releasing this document the content in the Wiki may change. Then one have to transfer the Wiki changes to PDF again and so on.

Of course an exported document is outdated after the first change too, but with an export function supported by Wiki software an up-to-date document is built within a few clicks.

Mediawiki has export support too, but we're discussing this from time to time and agreed to transfer our Wiki to DokuWiki. As I want to finish this now, it wouldn't be fair to let you put effort in the old Wiki what will possibly become obsolete then soon.
After the transfer, there will be some Wiki gardening necessary, maybe you want to support us with this job.

Armin

Sure Armin, I am willing to give you a hand when you need it. Just post it here.

Pierre

I say a document that may or may not become outdated within a short time is better than no document at all.  If I knew how to do this, I would not mind having to do it over from time to time to keep it current up until such time as the new procedure is in place.  

Well that didn't take long.  After a short google search I found that I could choose "Printable version" in the sidebar on the left.  After doing this, I highlighted the entire document and copied it into an Open Office document and exported it to PDF.  The entire operation took less than 5 minutes and I now have a printable document so that I can follow the directions of printing a copy to follow while doing the examples.

New to LibreCAD and I like the printable version of the manual except for one thing. Could the printable version have "black on white" illustrations rather than the current "white on black" versions e.g. the first is in the Coordinates section on page 4. For hard copies, this is extremely wasteful of black ink and on most inkjet printers will cause "bleed into the adjacent white areas causing a lot of the information to become blurred. I do realise that this will involve changing the diagrams in the online version as well - so regard this request as a possibility as and when you change the content of the online version.


The printable version is very easy to print from within Chromium - requiring only a right click once the "Printable version" is loaded providing an automatic pdf save.

It's even easier than that (on Google chrome at least).

1. Click 'Printable version' on the left sidebar of the wiki
2. File -> Print
3. Destination: Save as PDF
4. Save

The table of contents even works!

LibreCAD_users_Manual_-_LibreCAD_wiki.pdf

Regarding the black background,
other than recreating all the images,
someone could do a selective color inversion.