Copying Manual

[jheydt]

I just got this game yesterday so don't know if this was posted previously. However, what I am trying to do is to copy certain sections from the user manual and create my own play-aid. However, I find that the manual is somehow protected from copying so have been unable to do this. I have copied stuff from this board that is helpful but wonder if there is any workaround for the manual copy. I'm not too sure why this security was put into the manual.

John

[AlvinS]

Greetings

Documents that are created in Adobe cannot be copied unless you own Adobe Pagemaker.

Companies use Adobe because it is a common format that anyone can get a reader for. Most do this for convienience to the customer rather than to protect the document.

Copy protection is built into Adobe so that it can't be copied from Acrobat Reader and modified. Some companies do this for document control rather than protection. It insures that everyone is reading the latest unmodified version of a document. That way if you ask me a question about something on page 93, my page 93 will be the same as yours.

Hope this helps.

[IJN_Shinano]

Originally posted by AlvinS
Documents that are created in Adobe cannot be copied unless you own Adobe Pagemaker.

Hope this helps.

Actually, you need to own Adobe Acrobat 5.0 (not the reader, but the reader/writer.... set you back a few hundred bux). I use Acrobat 5.0 all the time for corporate docs, but you should know that the UV manual is also encrypted; that means you can't even copy/paste out of it even if you own the full-blown version of Acrobat.

Kinduva drag if you want to copy/paste areas out of it. I was going to do this in order to carry some of the more important tidbits from the manual in my PDA (i.e., Palm). No go.

Hope this helps, too.

[Reg]

I have found a tool called GSview quite handy for creating and manipulating pdf files and best of all it's free (Aladdin Free Public Licence).

Hope you find this useful,
Reg.

========================================
Overview
GSview is a graphical interface for Ghostscript under MS-Windows, OS/2 and Unix. Ghostscript is an interpreter for the PostScript page description language used by laser printers. For documents following the Adobe PostScript Document Structuring Conventions, GSview allows selected pages to be viewed or printed. GSview requires Ghostscript 7.00 - 7.99.

Features include:

Display and print PostScript and PDF files.
View pages in arbitrary order (Next, Previous, Goto).
Page size and Orientation are automatically selected from DSC comments or can be selected using the menu.
Print selected pages using Ghostscript.
Convert pages to bitmap, PDF or PostScript.
Selectable display resolution, depth, alpha.
Single button zoom.
Extract selected pages to another file.
Copy display bitmap to clipboard.
Save clipboard bitmap as BMP file.
Add bitmap or user preview to EPS file (Interchange, TIFF or Windows Metafile)
Graphically select and show bounding box for EPS file.
Extract bitmap preview or PostScript from DOS EPS file.
Extract text or search for text.
Can read gzip and bzip2 compressed PostScript and PDF files.
On-line help.
Win32, OS/2 and X11/Linux executables. Older versions support Win16.
Can be run directly off a CD-ROM.
English, German, French, Italian and Spanish languages.
Per user initialisation files for Windows.
Includes setup program.
Free (Aladdin Free Public Licence).
Works with AFPL Ghostscript 7.00 - 7.99 (GSview checks the Ghostscript version number). Older version of GSview will work with Ghostscript 4.03 - 6.50.


Win32
Obtain GSview (gsv41w32.exe) from
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/get41.htm
Obtain AFPL Ghostscript 7.03 (gs703w32.exe) from
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/AFPL/get703.htm
========================================

[Capitaine]

Originally posted by jheydt
I just got this game yesterday so don't know if this was posted previously.

John

John, I think I know you. Does WFU mean anything?

[jheydt]

Alvin - Thanx for replying. However, I have opened other documents in Adobe and have been able to copy excerpts. I certainly feel that in this case due to the fact that there is no printed manual that you should be allowed to copy excerpts from the manual as a play aid. I certainly am not ready to print out 132 pages but would appreciate the ability to copy and paste. I don't think the modifying of the user manual should be a major concern for Matrix. How many gamers do you think would do that?

John

Originally posted by AlvinS
Greetings

Documents that are created in Adobe cannot be copied unless you own Adobe Pagemaker.

Companies use Adobe because it is a common format that anyone can get a reader for. Most do this for convienience to the customer rather than to protect the document.

Copy protection is built into Adobe so that it can't be copied from Acrobat Reader and modified. Some companies do this for document control rather than protection. It insures that everyone is reading the latest unmodified version of a document. That way if you ask me a question about something on page 93, my page 93 will be the same as yours.

Hope this helps.

[AlvinS]

Alvin - Thanx for replying. However, I have opened other documents in Adobe and have been able to copy excerpts. I certainly feel that in this case due to the fact that there is no printed manual that you should be allowed to copy excerpts from the manual as a play aid. I certainly am not ready to print out 132 pages but would appreciate the ability to copy and paste. I don't think the modifying of the user manual should be a major concern for Matrix. How many gamers do you think would do that?

Your welcome John.

I did not think you could cut and paste text from the reader used to open PDF files. I thought you needed the program that created it to be able to do that. I agree not many or any gamers would modify the manual, but was using that as an example of why some comanies may protect their documents.

Some of the gamers here have gone to places like Kinko's to have the manual printed. I don't know how much it is per page but maybe they could print out only the pages you want.
If its not too many pages I could drop them in the mail to you.

[Fred98]

I read PDF documents in my work.

It is not possible to copy an excerpt from a PDF document.

It is possible to print just one single page and then use scissors and glue - to copy and paste.

[headhunter]

Hm ... I have just copied some text from the WiR manual, so it's definitely possible. But the creator of the .pdf can disallow copy & paste and I think that's the problem with the UV manual.
(Btw, I am using Acrobat reader 5.01.)

[Adam Parker]

FWIW I wouldn't go so far as having it professionally bound. I've printed mine on econofast laser setting, hole-punched it and its now sitting fine in a 2 ring A4 binder with dividers.

For those wanting to do so, it's also readable via Pocket PC for as the manual thankfully isn't spread 2 pages per PDF page, it fits better on screen and rotated 90 degrees - though still a bit of an eye-strain, least the graphics can be zoomed and are in colour.

[1089]

Originally posted by headhunter
Hm ... I have just copied some text from the WiR manual, so it's definitely possible. But the creator of the .pdf can disallow copy & paste and I think that's the problem with the UV manual.
(Btw, I am using Acrobat reader 5.01.)

You have it right.

kp

[Howling H R Bryars]

Originally posted by Reg
I have found a tool called GSview quite handy for creating and manipulating pdf files and best of all it's free (Aladdin Free Public Licence).

Hope you find this useful,
Reg.
...

Excellent info, Reg. Thanks for that very helpful post.

[petdoc]

Don't know if this helps, but I used the graphics tool in Acrobat 5.0 to outline certain sections, and printed these out separately. I then scanned them back into my documents and used the scanner software (photoimpression I believe) to merge, resize etc. I now have several player aids with all the tables together etc.

[Mark W Carver]

Originally posted by petdoc
Don't know if this helps, but I used the graphics tool in Acrobat 5.0 to outline certain sections, and printed these out separately. I then scanned them back into my documents and used the scanner software (photoimpression I believe) to merge, resize etc. I now have several player aids with all the tables together etc.

Would be so kind as to share them with us?