Picaxe Manual PDFs

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wapo54001

Senior Member
I have a question regarding the way the three Picaxe manuals are implemented in PDF.

I have both Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat Standard, and I've confirmed this behaviour with both of them, at least on my computer:

Each of these two programs has a Preferences page where a variety of options can be set. One of these options is how pages are displayed when selected for view (default zoom). You have a wide range of choices -- Fit Width, Fit Page, Actual Size, Automatic, and a variety of zoom levels in percentages etc.

This setting works for all of my PDF documents EXCEPT The Picaxe Manuals. For these manuals, I have to resize the page to make it big enough to read *each time* I move to a new page. And I've been doing this without thinking much about it ever since I started playing with Picaxes, but today, I was jumping around looking for something and I realized that I was wasting time resizing every single page I went to, and I wondered if this was necessary.

Is this just my computer, or does everyone suffer from the same situation? If everyone has to deal with this, then, Technical, please fix your PDFs so they work like they should -- opening the way that individuals have set their readers to open them!
 
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westaust55

Moderator
At home, I use Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1.2 under WinXP -SP3.

I use auto and Fit to Width and in both cases It fills the screen width - usually around 120% size with all pdf files I open including the PICAXE manuals.

At work, again with Adobe Acrobat Reader V???? and WinXP - SP3,
All documents open the same as Fit Page and then I do have to zoom them up to read them.
 
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BCJKiwi

Senior Member
Been using Foxit PDF reader for some time (way faster than Adobe and currently only around 2Mb Download instead of 60 to 80!). Also it doesn't 'phone home' every time you load it. http://www.foxitsoftware.com/downloads/ ~ make sure you get the free version.

Anyway have found the same problem with the PICAXE Manuals and some other PDFs but most are fine.
 
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wapo54001

Senior Member
westaust55 said:
At home, I use Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1.2 under WinXP -SP3.

I use auto and Fit to Width and in both cases It fills the screen width - usually around 120% size with all pdf files I open including the PICAXE manuals.

At work, again with Adobe Acrobat Reader V???? and WinXP - SP3,
All documents open the same as Fit Page and then I do have to zoom them up to read them.
Click to expand...
Westaust, thanks for your reply. It caused me to go back and relook at my situation -- I find that the Picaxe Manuals open in Adobe with the "bookmarks" menu on the left side of the page. if I close that menu then once zoomed it stays that way. If the bookmarks menu is open (which is nice so you can click on a topic and go to that page), then the pages revert to a small size each time you click on a new bookmark. If you use that menu to navigate around the manual, you run into the problem that I am discussing, but if you close the bookmarks menu and simply move between consecutive pages, then the page keeps the selected zoomed size.

Maybe this is just the way it is in Adobe. It's disappointing, I'll try and ask Adobe to clarify.
 
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Dippy

Moderator
I'm using 7.1.0 and setting Preferences/Magnbification/Default Zoom> Fit width seems to work just fine regardless of book marks situation. But on another PC it always opens Fit to Page. I must check it now you've reminded me.
 
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wapo54001

Senior Member
Dippy said:
I'm using 7.1.0 and setting Preferences/Magnbification/Default Zoom> Fit width seems to work just fine regardless of book marks situation. But on another PC it always opens Fit to Page. I must check it now you've reminded me.
Click to expand...
Dippy, I wonder if this is an Adobe version difference?
 
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W

westaust55

Moderator
wapo54001 said:
Westaust, thanks for your reply. It caused me to go back and relook at my situation -- I find that the Picaxe Manuals open in Adobe with the "bookmarks" menu on the left side of the page. if I close that menu then once zoomed it stays that way. If the bookmarks menu is open (which is nice so you can click on a topic and go to that page), then the pages revert to a small size each time you click on a new bookmark. If you use that menu to navigate around the manual, you run into the problem that I am discussing, but if you close the bookmarks menu and simply move between consecutive pages, then the page keeps the selected zoomed size.

Maybe this is just the way it is in Adobe. It's disappointing, I'll try and ask Adobe to clarify.
Click to expand...
Hi Wapo,
had another look in view of you futher explanation.
While Picaxe and Microchip manuals open full width, never an issue with the Microchip manual pdf but for the Picaxe manuals even closing the bookmarks menu at the left still results in the page reducing from max width to fit to page if you use the links from the content pages.

So in retrospect, something wihin the Picaxe manuals is amiss.
 
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Dippy

Moderator
Oh, sorry I see what you mean. As in USING the 'bookmark' to navigate.

Yes, mine shrivels to fit to width too. Pain in ass!
 
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westaust55

Moderator
Dippy,
Seems they open full width but what hapens when you jump to a page using the contents page links?

edit: ah seems you found the same problem
 
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Michael 2727

Senior Member
My computer is old PIII 7XX MHz, 512 RAM etc. ( on it's last legs )
I got so fed up with Acrobat taking forever to load I also changed to Foxit,
around 2 months ago, .PDFs are almost a joy to open these days :)
What BCJ said, Foxit is very small and very fast, try it.

However I did download a data sheet the other day where the pinout drawing didn't
show up and maybe other stuff ?. I have yet to investigate why, but it's no biggie
I'll still keep using Foxit.
The Datasheet that partially failed was for the Mitsubishi M51660L Servo Controller (76Kb)
( I have a P4-3Gig, 1Gig RAM DVD R/W sitting in a box, I'll set it up when this one dies ;) )
 
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wapo54001

Senior Member
Aha! I got it. Read the attached (instruction in Adobe Standard).

The size of the page is set at the time the bookmark is created.
 
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wapo54001

Senior Member
Uh, Technical, I don't suppose you could redo your bookmarks so the pages are readable without adjusting magnification? My Adobe reader shows that the page is at 61% magnification -- too small for these admittedly old eyes . . .
 
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BeanieBots

Moderator
I was more concerned about RegCure needing to be a desktop icon!

The manuals changing to "fit page" on every page change is annoying.
 
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Dippy

Moderator
Wish List. You know... those bits and pieces you want when CADding and then forget when placing an order. So chuck them in there.

RegCure very good. Especially when you've loaded Eagle, Vutrax and Tsien Boardmaker to try then delete, and they ain't completely gone. It's very good. I don't use it every day.
Try out their free diagnostics.. it may make you think... or not.

And PICFlash speaks for itself eh?
Skype is handy too. A 2 hour chat to friends on Ascension Island for free. Not bad. Ordering my coffee and brown sugar from St.Helena. Lovely. I have an SMC WiFi phone to go with it.
 
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boriz

Senior Member
@BCJKiwi
Thanks for that link. I have always hated Adobe. Big, slow, mostly useless bloatware. Downloading FoxitReader right now.
 
Technical

Technical

Technical Support
Staff member
We'll see if we can find the appropriate setting in the pdf export option for the next release, but to be honest we don't at this point know what that setting is...!
 
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wapo54001

Senior Member
Technical said:
We'll see if we can find the appropriate setting in the pdf export option for the next release, but to be honest we don't at this point know what that setting is...!
Click to expand...
The Adobe Standard instructions say to be sure that the magnification is set to what you want when you create the bookmark. I think that means that when you create the bookmark you have to have sized the PDF page view on your computer to the size that you want people to see when they click the bookmark. It appears to me that there is no setting that takes the default from the reader's application -- you just have to find a compromise setting that shows most of the page, but with text big enough for people to read it without resizing. Not the best of situations. I hope I'm wrong . . .
 
Technical

Technical

Technical Support
Staff member
Ok, so we have the following options...

- Fit page (current setting)
- Fit page contents
- Fit top left of page (50% to 800%, configurable)

Any suggestions....
 
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wapo54001

Senior Member
I've just tried those three choices.

First, I think the current choice (Fit Page) is the worst possible, it's almost a large thumbnail of the page.

The other two seem to have different names from my Acrobat Standard 7.0 so not sure but:

1. Fit page contents sounds like it would give much larger text because it would not include page margins. Is that the case? Does it look easily readable when you use that setting?

2. Also, 100% seems to work well for me, but that would change by screen size and resolution so others might not be as satisfied as I would be.

Either would be an improvement over Fit Page, I think.
 
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wapo54001

Senior Member
I love it!!!!!

Still, is there a 'fit width' option and if so, could we see some pages of it. But I would be completely satisfied with the 100% . . .
 
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BCJKiwi

Senior Member
@ Technical

Post #25 Sample fixes the issue in Foxit Reader as well.

Now all that is needed is to fix the links between index page numbers and the actual page numbers. When reading the first few pages which are the index and clicking on an item often the page jumped to is 1 or 2 before the page it should be. This problem does not arise at the top of the index and gets worse the further down the index the item is.
i.e. if read is clicked in the index, readi2c (the page before) comes up!
 
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westaust55

Moderator
Technical,

Can you please do the same change for the links from the contents page. Those Contents page links still revert to "fit to page"
 
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westaust55

Moderator
Can the links in the contents pages also be fixed to "jump" to the correct pages. Not necessarily all but far too many links goto the page before the correct/desired page.

For example try the "Reset" link on contents page of manual 1 and the "Reset" link on the contents page of manual 2.
 
lbenson

lbenson

Senior Member
Much better. As it happened, the first page I looked at, p.25 of Manual 1, had a display error, at least on my PC, as shown below--text overwriting graphics. In a quick scan through every page of Manual 1 and Manual 2, none others jumped out at me except for pp 187-188 of Manual 2, where there is something wrong with the Acknowledgements.

What are the odds?
 

Attachments

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greencardigan

Senior Member
Another Manual Issue?

The updated manuals 1 and 2 fix another problem that I've been having.

Manual 3 still has the problem.

When I click the links on the Contents pages, it seems to jump to the previous page. The first 4 links work normally but from "Note on the Basic Code Samples" is goes whacko.


EDIT: Pages 8 and 44 in Manual 3 also have some display errors.
 
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Texy

Senior Member
Manual 1 page 98 still states
"This manual was prepared using version 5.1.0 of the software."
(contrary to what is stated on page 3, which is using 5.2.0)​

Manual 2 page 187 - at the bottom, text is corrupt as the 'Acknowledgements' section should really start on page 188​
 
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