Printing out huge datasheets

[KL27x]

@elecman14

Can you give me some basic pointers, here? Lulu is the kind of service I googled the other day. And I can't seem to figure out how you did this. When I select all the options, I get price of 11.00, but minimum order of 32 pieces. That is over $300.00.

If I can order a 500 page datasheet printed and bound for under $30.00, I think I will give it a spin.

*Oh... neer'mind. Reading it wrong. Oops.

Now the problem is

Your document could not be created: We do not accept password-encrypted PDF documents.

[suicidaleggroll]

Have you ever had to read a PDF with no bookmarks?

Of course, it's no worse than reading a printout...plus you can still search.  Looking for chapter 5?  Ctrl+f "chapter 5".  Looking for the "Timer A" chapter?  Ctrl+f "timer a".

[cs.dk]

Now the problem is

Your document could not be created: We do not accept password-encrypted PDF documents.

Decrypt it then? Easy enough.

[KL27x]

Decrypt it then? Easy enough.

You underestimate my incompetence.

So Google to the rescue
Tried to print it to another PDF.
Microsoft XPS document writer only saves in XPS
PrimoPDF broke. Document too large?

The links I get from Google suggest password protected PDF, you have to enter a password to view it? I don't have to enter a password. Honestly, I don't know what any of this #$% is. But 20 minutes of registering for Lulu and googling PDF password and figuring out templates and format I'm ready to go back to the garage with the clamps and drill press and glue and plane blade.

[cs.dk]

You underestimate my incompetence.

So Google to the rescue
Tried to print it to another PDF.
Microsoft XPS document writer only saves in XPS
PrimoPDF broke. Document too large?

The links I get from Google suggest password protected PDF, you have to enter a password to view it? I don't have to enter a password. Honestly, I don't know what any of this #$% is. But 20 minutes of registering for Lulu and googling PDF password and figuring out templates and format I'm ready to go back to the garage with the clamps and drill press and glue and plane blade.

See PM..

[Fsck]

I use a tablet and a laptop to view PDFs in addition to using primary and secondary desktop for work.
yeah, it's energy inefficient but it's the best solution I could come up with. If I need one more interface, I use another laptop.

If you're wondering, the total is 2 desktops, 2 laptops and a tablet for 5 interfaces and 8 monitors.

[Fungus]

Why on earth would you want a shelf full of non-searchable paper?

Just get a tablet. Job done.

[KL27x]

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/paper-or-pdf-how-do-you-do-your-datasheets/

If you want to vote, go to the poll! Tomato tomato tomato.. Who says tomato?

[Mechatrommer]

I don't understand why anybody would want to print them in the first place.  You can't ctrl+f a stack of paper, you can't follow links to other pages, tables, or other sources online...what's the point?

have you come across... you are reading a page, then it refers to another page, then you bookmark it, and then the referred page refers to another page, in the end you have like 5 bookmarks, now you want to go back and forth between 2 or 3 of this bookmarks in no particular order, sometime i want to see them both side by side. say i have bookmark 1,2,3,4,5. first i want to "flip between"/"compare both" book mark 4,2 and then 5,1 and then 3,5 and then 5,3,1. if you can demonstrate an app of device faster than my hand can do and portable enough to be brought to kitchen, toilet etc, then entertain us. btw i will read on monitor if it doesnt require that complexity and read topic only involved few pages like 20 pages top. above that my brain and eye start to condensate... ymmv..

[amyk]

I'm with everyone here who prefers them in PDFs --- with the exception that if the PDF is a horribly unreadable scan, I'd want the hardcopy just so I could do a better job of scanning it.

[suicidaleggroll]

I don't understand why anybody would want to print them in the first place.  You can't ctrl+f a stack of paper, you can't follow links to other pages, tables, or other sources online...what's the point?

have you come across... you are reading a page, then it refers to another page, then you bookmark it, and then the referred page refers to another page, in the end you have like 5 bookmarks, now you want to go back and forth between 2 or 3 of this bookmarks in no particular order, sometime i want to see them both side by side. say i have bookmark 1,2,3,4,5. first i want to "flip between"/"compare both" book mark 4,2 and then 5,1 and then 3,5 and then 5,3,1. if you can demonstrate an app of device faster than my hand can do and portable enough to be brought to kitchen, toilet etc, then entertain us. btw i will read on monitor if it doesnt require that complexity and read topic only involved few pages like 20 pages top. above that my brain and eye start to condensate... ymmv..

2-3?  Sure.  5? Never.  Doesn't change the approach though.  Open up 5 copies of the PDF, scroll to the 5 pages of interest, put them on 5 different workspaces (1-5).  Then just use ctrl+alt+1-5 to hop between them.  From what I understand Windows doesn't include support for multiple workspaces for whatever idiotic reason Microsoft has for reducing their customers' productivity, but if you use Windows there are 3rd party tools you can install to get it done.

[KL27x]

Thanks, all, for the suggestions. And specially to CS for "decrypting" the PDF. Lulu accepted this and I have a 440 page datasheet/book on the way for $14.00. I will find out if I screwed something up and update with pics when it arrives in 3-5 business days. 

Aside from potentially screwing up the formatting, the part that I'm most curious about is the paper. If I understand, correctly, this is going to be printed on 60# paper, and there was no option I could find to change it. I have feeling this book might be hilariously thick.

[mariush]

I think you'll find it good enough to print 2 pages on each side, in landscape.  Still text big enough, but saving lots of paper.

Print all datasheet  2 pages per side in landscape format , odd page numbers first then put the stack of papers back in the printer and repeat the process but choose to print even pages .. now you can cut all pages in the middle and you have 500 smaller pages made out of 125 regular sheets.

Some printers have a template for this scheme (called booklet maybe)

[KL27x]

@mariush, this is how I have always done it, before. My new printer actually prints both sides automatically, so I don't have to put the stack back in. And instead of cutting the pages, this one will actually print them into the bookmaker "stacks" that you fold over (although I haven't tried this, yet).

I can't figure out all the options on Lulu, yet, so I ended up going with 6x9" instead of 5.5" x8.5". So it's going to be a little bigger than the rest of my datasheets, but the thickness of the paper will be the curious thing.

One time I printed a datasheet with w/e my GF uses. It's regular printer paper but it is heavier weight than what I use. I think 20 or 25lbs. It came out so fat I redid it. I think this is going to be 60# paper... but after going through all the other steps, I can't stop now over 14 bucks.

 

[KL27x]

@Mariush

BTW, here's another tip you might like. I started out spending an obscene amount of time trying to get the pages to line up straight, so you can turn pages without sticking. This gets impossible to do, the thicker the book. After some research, I found out that bookmakers bind the book, then they trim the edges, after. So they always come out flush. They use a monster guillotine for this.

Without spending thousand dollars, you can do this with a little elbow grease. Clamp the book between some boards with a straight edge/board lined up where you want to flush cut, and then have at it with a sharp knife. I use a plane blade held flat against the straight-edge block guide. Take multiple passes. And chisel/plane out any little problems, after.

[Circlotron]

the [name eludes me... the little bundles which you fold in half and then staple/sew together before gluing them all to the spine].

Signatures?

How about having a tablet dedicated to datasheets?

[KL27x]

I bought a tablet back in the day thinking it would be great. Aside from playing poker on it, I don't use it. The battery died several years ago from disuse.

A tablet needs a power cable or it runs out of batteries at the wrong time.

When you put your finger on a tablet as a "pointer" a bunch of shit pops up. When you pick it up , you touch the screen and a bunch of shit pops up. Or you lose your page. Or you open up angry bird.

To use bookmarks/search, apparently people these days like to use Alt F and Alt tab and a bunch of other shortcuts. Which means you are using a keyboard or tapping on the screen. Or a bunch of swiping back and forth. Or doubletapping. Or some confuscating combos of the above.

This doesn't work for me. I tried it and I don't like it. To setup peripheral on a microcontroller can involve multiple registers, setting up prescaler, and a whole shitton of completely arbitrary 1's and 0's in arbitrary places. And using other peripherals, some of these are interrelated. I do this better with a book.

To anyone who prefers PDF, I wonder if they also prefer to use USB scope over separate device? Just a few more clicks here and there. A few more mouse movements. Or perhaps even touchscreen gestures for the truly proficient at incorporating the abstract and arbitrary into the reading of a datasheet in order to try to understand the controls for a device, which are themselves abstract and arbitrary.

I don't even like a mouse. I am on my third fifth "refurb" trackball, cuz no one makes a decent real trackball anymore. Fingerball.... thumball... what the $@%@ is this shit? I play with microcontrollers and electronics, because I'm old school dinosaur. If I was a cool kid I would be coding on a complete workstation on thumbstick sized pcb, in python, on Virtual Windows emulator, over Linux. But I wouldn't even be coding on it, directly. I'd be doing it virtually, in an simulator, and I'd have finished product without even touching a wire.

But I'm not that guy. By the time I'm done clicking this, swiping that, I have forgotten what I was doing in the first place. I need to break out the white board to even hold a few ones or zeros, else they fall out of my head by the time I close page/book. Sometimes I have to even draw things out to understand the hierarchy, structure, interaction, order. The printed datasheet just works better. I get better feel for the structure of the datasheet, itself. I can see/feel where I am in the datasheet. Without looking at a page number and having to process that and try to actively associate it with something. Just being passively aware of the physical location in the thickness of the datasheet I'm reading, rather than any place where "timer0" happens to pop and click "next, next next," I have frame of reference in which to put this information. Also, if I alt +F... do I need to write "timer0" "TMR0" "timer 0"? I dunno. If I'm looking at an index, I will find any of the above and I'll also see other significant entries in the index which are going to jog/mesh/click some synapses in my overall understanding of the device. For example, I might see "TMR2/4/6," which reinforces the other available timers, and also I know that 2,4, and 6 are mirror images of each other, but timer 0 (TMR0?) is different. Oftentimes we use a small fraction of what a device can do. Reminders of all the other stuff and where/how the device is structured are all the better. Moving from PIC to AVR, for instance, I have no clue what to even search. Names/acronyms/abbreviations for things will be different. Memory structure is different. I need to learn the language of the datasheet to know what to look for. Browsing, skimming, reading a real datasheet will work much better for me.

Alt+F is like going to a restaurant and the waiter says: "Tell me exactly what you want, and I'll tell you if we have it... provided you spell it the same way our technical writing department does." Maybe you will ask for a menu?

[Howardlong]

FWIW, five or so years ago I had identical feelings about tablets, I felt they were unnecessary because I need a PC to do my work. I hated reading stuff on screen. Like you, I printed _lots_ out. The same applied to reading books, I simply couldn't fathom how a tablet was going to be better than reading a book, and, frankly, in many respects it isn't the same as reading a book.

Then, over the period of barely two weeks with an iPad, I was converted. Yes, they do misinterpret touch commands, a lot in fact, and it's bloody irritating, but in mitigation some do far better than others in this respect. On a tablet, I would say that IOS in my experience is a significantly better user experience than Android, and a million times better than Windows 10 in tablet mode.

I also draw an analogy to the kitchen stove and microwave, comparing them to the PC and tablet. You can pretty much cook everything on a kitchen stove, but you can only do a limited subset of those things in a microwave. However the microwave is often a lot more convenient than a stove for the few things it does well.

On a side note, if you are only able to use a resolution of 1600x900 on a reasonably sized monitor then I do understand, I would find that a huge limitation. Personally I use a 32" 4k monitor in native resolution, with a second one on the side when doing board layouts so I can have schematic and board together. You enter a whole different paradigm at those resolutions on a large enough form factor.

[KL27x]

Yep. I have a 32" 4k monitor, too, FTR. And a second smaller monitor.

And yes, my tablet is android. Good guess. I have no doubts Apple has better touch interface. I have used them, and they are great. Android doesn't have control over the hardware like Apple. Maybe I'll bite the bullet and give that a try. But even my second monitor gets little use. I find myself futzing with it more than benefitting from it. Just cuz it's there, I end up wanting to USE it even when I don't need it. Lately it's off more than on. I guess I'm easily distracted.

[KL27x]

https://hackernoon.com/why-i-stopped-using-multiple-monitors-bfd87efa2e5b

The 1% of the time I'm actually being productive when doing embedded design and firmware, I'm in a deep zone. I am following a tenuous thread. I lose all concept of time. And if someone interrupts me to ask if I want sprinkles on my icecream I will flip the fuck out. Getting into that zone is the hardest part. Staying there is pretty easy, when I have my own space. Interruption/distraction can make all the marbles fall out.

A paper datasheet is an assistant that does only one thing and does it well. A tablet is the assistant that does other stuff I don't explicitly tell it to do, when I tell it. It needs updates. It needs to be at a certain angle to read it. It tells me the batteries are getting low. The screen saver turns on while I'm looking at it. It misinterprets what I want. It requires more actual attention to make it do things. I can navigate a book/index without losing the marbles that are trying to bust out of my puny little mind. It has nothing to do with how FAST I can find what I need. It's the fact I can use it without thinking. I don't care about the speed, cuz I have no concept of time at this point. And I can find things that I am conceptualizing before I even realize the name of what I'm looking for. To navigate PDF, it takes up one level of stack in my brain. And I'm already using all of it and barely functioning.

A strange analogy maybe, but I see a relationship to how you keep your bench. While I try to keep my bench organized and clean, by the end of any complex project, I'm having to clear an empty space as I go, wading through parts, and cords, and clippings, and debris. It would probably be more efficient if I stopped to clean it as I went. But while I'm trying to keep the marbles from escaping, I just can't spare the attention. It's almost like if I had 10x the bench space, it wouldn't matter. I'd just fill up that entire space with the same clutter and end up working in the same, tiny clearing, anyway. The one spot where the most things I need are in reach. (If I'm doing something routine and repetitive it's the opposite. Then I keep everything tidy while I work.) I wish I didn't make such a mess so often, but that's how it works for me. Multiple monitors are kinda similar in having more space to clutter up.

[cs.dk]

Hope it goes well.. $14 is a bargain IMO.

[Howardlong]

Yep. I have a 32" 4k monitor, too, FTR. And a second smaller monitor.

And yes, my tablet is android. Good guess. I have no doubts Apple has better touch interface. I have used them, and they are great. Android doesn't have control over the hardware like Apple. Maybe I'll bite the bullet and give that a try. But even my second monitor gets little use. I find myself futzing with it more than benefitting from it. Just cuz it's there, I end up wanting to USE it even when I don't need it. Lately it's off more than on. I guess I'm easily distracted.

Same here, at one point I was using three 4k 28" monitors. With my eyesight, I couldn't run them at native resolution without scaling, which for me is a big compromise. Dropping down to a single 32" in native 4k works for 95% of the time, the only time it doesn't is when doing board layouts with schematic back annotation. In that case, I put one of my old 28" 4k monitors on the quick release articulated gas spring Vesa mount that a scope usually sits on. Last time I checked, you don't need a scope when doing board layout!

[KL27x]

10 days and $14.00:

Unfortunately mail carrier allowed the box to get wet, at some point. The box was dry but showed signs of water. The book is thoroughly wet, still.

It's just slightly thicker than the 18F datasheet which I printed myself. The ATmega has 10 or so more pages, so the thickness of the paper is almost exactly the same.







 

[KL27x]

So... ...uh.... yeah.

I see the PDF POV much clearer, now. Datasheet dried out. Gave it the twice over. And I finally notice.

400+ page Atmel datasheet doesn't even have an index. 

[alm]

Guess they do not expect anyone to print out entire datasheets anymore. At least the Atmel datasheets have PDF bookmarks. Are there any large datasheets without either index or bookmarks (sucks on paper and PDF)?