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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : document format for project literature
| Author | Message | ||||
| zeitfest Guru  Joined: 31/07/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 573 |
What is a good format for distributing project guides and so on ? I don't want to use pdf's / acrobat as they can include gateways for snoops etc. But otherwise the choices for something reasonably common get limited. Maybe even just Notepad  |
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| Andy-g0poy Regular Member  Joined: 07/03/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 75 |
Use pdf it has issues but it's pretty much universal on all systems. Avoid commercial versions such as Acrobat. Use plain text ASCII - learn ASCII art :-) Notepad is windows centric - avoid locking out other platforms like the plague Use open document format .odf available for most systems Andy |
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twofingers Guru Joined: 02/06/2014 Location: GermanyPosts: 1573 |
It depends. HTML, Markdown (.md) and plain text would be possible. Maybe ODF or RTF? Regards Michael causality ≠ correlation ≠ coincidence |
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karlelch Senior Member  Joined: 30/10/2014 Location: GermanyPosts: 235 |
If you want something generally readable with a minimum of formatting, I suggest MarkDown. Many editors support it and it can also be used for documentations on Wikis and repositories (GitHub). Best Thomas |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7852 |
My favourite was RTF, but the file sizes are pretty big. Now MS have decided to get rid of Wordpad (idiots!) so it's not as attractive as it once was. TXT is universal but not very pretty. PDF is fine, I think, if you produce the files using non-Acrobat, non-Microsoft programs. At the moment I'm using DOC, but I'm using AbleWord to produce them. I do want something with embedded images though. That is quite a restriction. . Edited 2025-02-09 01:44 by Mixtel90 Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| tgerbic Regular Member Joined: 25/07/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 65 |
Depending on what the majority of the content is (graphic vs. text) I will create it in DOCX or PPTX format. I use either MS or Libreoffice apps, mostly the latter. This gets the doc into a working format. I try not to use any unusual formatting features that might not translate correctly moving from one format to another. After that I will usually convert to PDF format. I have had no reported problems or complaints using PDF. If the document is one page, sometimes I will just take a screen copy and post as a JPG. I have on rare occasions published in DOCX or PPTX since anyone could read it in that format unless the platform is so old only apps that support DOC or PPT will run on it. Since Libreoffice is capable of saving in many formats, occasionally I will just dump the document in PDF, DOCX, DOC and ODF and just let the user pick the one they want. If a doc is expected to be read on anything older than what Libreoffice can run on, it will get written in, or translated to, text format. Graphics are translated to JPG pictures. If for something like vintage equipment then text art and very clear descriptions will be used. Anything format between text and DOC/DOCX/PDF is of questionable value these days. Embedding links are hit and miss over time. Your critical graphic or web page could be a 404 tomorrow. Edited 2025-02-09 09:25 by tgerbic |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7852 |
I draw my circuit diagrams in TinyCAD then use the "Print to PDF" in Windows. I've also done it with CAD drawings from nanoCAD and some other files - it's much better than some PDF converters. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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