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Download manuals?

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Download manuals? 08/04/2011 at 19:22 #2793
barry106
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14 posts
I would like to be able to download on to my computer the manuals that appear in the Wiki. Can this be done?

The reason is that I use mobile broadband for my interbet connection, i.e. I am not online all the time.

Thanks

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Download manuals? 08/04/2011 at 19:22 #14908
barry106
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14 posts
I would like to be able to download on to my computer the manuals that appear in the Wiki. Can this be done?

The reason is that I use mobile broadband for my interbet connection, i.e. I am not online all the time.

Thanks

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Download manuals? 08/04/2011 at 19:31 #14910
Meld
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1111 posts
Online
Would be nice once the wiki work is completed on the sims pages, if there was a downloadable pdf version
Passed the age to be doing 'Spoon Feeding' !!!
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Download manuals? 08/04/2011 at 19:42 #14913
AndyG
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1842 posts
Will be done now manual is virtually done.
I can only help one person a day. Today's not your day. Tomorrow doesn't look too good either.
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Re: Download manuals? 28/09/2011 at 16:57 #21385
barry106
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14 posts
Any news on this?
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Re: Download manuals? 18/11/2011 at 13:48 #23231
maxand
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1637 posts
Just stumbled across this thread. One solution is to use an offline browser app such as Teleport Pro or Website Extractor that downloads all subpages linked from a starting point. They are also known as Website Rippers. Some experience and care is needed to set download limits. If done properly, the web pages are relinked to each other offline, so you can read them all without needing to go online. Naturally, as further edits are made to the online version, you will need to repeat the process to keep up with the changes.

Not as convenient as a single PDF file, but you can zip all the HTML pages into one archive.

Start by giving one of these apps the address of the manuals' home page, then tell it to download all the pages linked to it to a depth of 1 link. That should give you the manuals only and spare the rest of the Wiki.

Last edited: 18/11/2011 at 13:53 by maxand
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Re: Download manuals? 18/11/2011 at 14:35 #23235
UKTrainMan
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1803 posts
If I wanted to download a manual from the Wiki, I'd open the page on it's own tab and save the page. I recall doing this before for this page prior to the London meet in July 2010 and had I needed it (turns out I didn't, but it was better to have been prepared), it would have opened up absolutely fine at the meet itself because it was on my hard drive and I wouldn't have needed Internet access to open it.

If you're going to save a page from the Wiki, I think you'll need to specifically open it in a new tab, instead of the website frame. To clarify, note when going to the link above that the 'side-bar' of the website on the left doesn't appear. I found that page by searching on the Wiki for "nescot ab", then middle-clicked on the hyperlink to the page (alternative if you can't middle-click is to right-click and open in a new tab or window) and it opened it in a new tab. Should I need to now, I could save that page as it appeared at the time and hey presto I've got a copy of it I can access without needing to be online.

Unfortunately, however, the latest manuals seem to span multiple pages and I'm not sure if the same procedure above will work on them or not.
*goes to try it out*
No, it doesn't work, but there is nothing stopping you opening the further pages and saving them individually for reference to later.

Any views and / or opinions expressed by myself are from me personally and do not represent those of any company I either work for or am a consultant for.
Last edited: 18/11/2011 at 14:44 by UKTrainMan
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Re: Download manuals? 19/11/2011 at 14:02 #23277
outofsection
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149 posts
TBH the only really reliable way I've found to save multiple consecutive web pages is to copy & paste the contents of each page into a MS Word document (Word seems to work a lot better than WordPerfect for some reason) which enables you to edit & rearrange the content to suit yuorself & then if needs be you can print it out. A right P.I.T.A. agreed, but worth it in the end!

OOS

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Re: Download manuals? 19/11/2011 at 15:07 #23281
Lardybiker
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771 posts
This only applies to me so I can't say this is the same for other developers.....

The manual (at least for South Humberside) was created initially by me in OpenOffice. I then gave it to one of my testers to complete and he did a great Job. However, like most large pieces of documentation there are likely to be errors and omissions. More importantly, we may not have explained things in a way that suits everyone (though we do try). The Wiki is therefore a great place to put it as people can add to it, correct the faults or make it more understandable as required.

Unfortunately, its not perfect. The downsides are
a) In order to make it readable it needs to be split into small chunks rather than be one large document.
b) The wiki can be updated by anyone at anytime so any fixed document copy is consequently out of date as soon as the first edit to the wiki is made.
c) As has been mentioned, its a pain to create a single document from the separate pages.

Given the information is out there, if someone wants to make a PDF of the manual then by all means go ahead. I should warn you though that the South Humberside manual is due for a major overhaul in the future as work continues with the sim itself and the updated version, when released, has lots of changes. More on that though on the SH thread......

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