DXF and DWG formats provide most of what I'm after and give some relatively inexpensive methods of editing, as well as being able to covert to other formats. However, when I have a 400 page manual and it's all surrounded by a wide, very colorful, very ink wasting border, I would prefer not to pay for the ink. When the print quality is set as "high" by adope, it only means that the manual should be printed in a week to ten days and still have no more of the information I need than if printed in draft quality. When the manual is set for "landscape", it won't fit in a normal 3 ring binder and I hate loose sheets in an envelope, that manual won't be printed, nor the program uxed. As far as artists go, I'm aware that they fuss over every tiny detail, but when I want information, graphic details don't mean a lot except they're in the way.
On Thu, 16 Mar 2006 01:44:06 -0600, "greybeard" purred
However those formats are considered "exotic" as they are very specializes and PDF, like the old GIF is intended to reach as wide an audience as possible regardless of platform. I have seen no free DXF or DWG read/print programs un;like the widely available Acrobat Reader.
That is not the fault of the format it is the fault of the company or person making the PDF and I agree it is a big pain but don't blame the format, blame the maker and complain to them. You have several solutions to your problem. One is to set the print quality manually using your printer software. If your printer does not have that ability you will need either a different printer (my Canons are wonderfuly configurable) Also there are several programs which allow you to change print quality, orientation and colour removal within PDFs. As before I don't know the names of those programs but have seen them discussed in paper modeling groups. Like everything, PDFs are a compromise and have good and bad points. One simply needs to work with them and learn the abilities to get the most out of them.
I aware that the graphics industry has embraced pdf, and I have some programs that have some pdf editing ability, but removing an un needed border from 400 pages could turn into something I don't think I want to do. As far as silly willy and MS, I learned a long time ago that if you want to do a long animation, say 500 frames, no verseion of winblows will handle it with out crashing. (Speaking about 3D rendered images here, windoze explorer can't handle it, system goes belly up and anything rendered after that point isn't saved. 500 large frames may be as much as two or three days of rendering time, that's a lot for silly willy and his band of idiots to screw up for you and not accept any responsibility. Linux handles it just fine, no problems.) Legacy systems, maybe it makes sense to maintain some compatibitity with the people that I communicate with most often. COnverting a DXF to pdf and emailing me with something I'm going to have to delete from the server to get past because of it's huge size doesn't make sense. Send me the 20k or so for an average DXF and I've got the software to open it. 4 seconds instead of maybe half an hour.
Erm, one might infer from this that maybe most of my graphics work is in CAD. If I need a 3D rendering, there are freeware programs that will convert to POV-Ray for the rendering, they work extremely well, and POV allows me to move the lighting to suit myself as needed. It also allows me to change any texture I don't like with only a few lines of SDL code. pdf can't be converted easily to anything else at any price, or maybe adope has something, I would doubt it.
I have no problems with anyone that wants to use pdf, but if I start a download and see that it's 4 or 5 megs and pdf, cancel, on a dial up that's time I could be somewhere else. Where I am I have two options for high speed connections, bad and worse, um, RR or SBC, one of which is screwed up in the mind, the other which hides the human you want to talk to behind 50 layers of "For function x, push one" etc. (Time wormer has such a "modern" bookkeeping system that two accounts at one address are impossible, I wouldn't want my net access tied to my daughters TV cable bill. They can't do anything else, meaning they can't do anything at all. I tend to be "old school", I tell them what I'm looking for, they don't tell me how it has to be. I don't pay for what I don't want.)
Intellicad, Autocad, both used to be online, older versions, but either capable of opening and displaying, not to mention editing if you've got the time to climb the somewhat infinite learning curve.
No argument there, misuse of what might otherwise be of some possible use. It's the misuse that is the reason I avoid those formats.
Heres a place that has some real nice cardstock models that you can order. Actually , thats the only they sell as far I know. They are sorta pricey , but very nice. I just built their " Randsburg" false front stores and looks real good. Hard to tell it from a craftsman wood kit. It has a lot of parts such as laser cut windows , tar paper siding for a portion of it and tar paper roof. It was 29.95 for the HO version. IMO , it was worth it.
Cat , I agree with you. I've been in model railroading for most of my life , 63 now. I've also been into RC airplanes , cars, boats , bass fishing and on . Like you , I have run into many nice people , but there are more weird , ego filled , and unfriendly in this hobby by far than any other I have been involved in. Seen some really nice work also , but you know where most all the nice work comes from ? Not the rivet counters , those who are so eager to dispute anything one says as if they know it all , but from the nice quite guy in the corner who hardly says a word and is friendly to all. These guys never have an ego problem that I have seen and are usually the real experts . Another thing , I have participated in Model Railroad shows for quite a few years and talk about discouraging others who may get into the hobby....some interested person all excited about the trains walks up and wants to know "how much does it cost to get into something like this " ....before I can get to the person and tell them they can buy a starter train set for less than a hundred , a sheet of plywood and scenery stuff for another fifty or so , one of the local 'experts'... spouting 50 cent words and railroad terms that I don't understand picks up a loco that looks most like most any plastic loco to the guy whos interested , and proceeds to tell him about this brass locomotive that he paid 1500.00 for. He also tells the guy about those 5 or 6 brass passenger cars that cost a couple hundred each , and the countless thousands he has in his other stuff. Then he proceeds to tell him all about handlaying the track and driving all those thousands of spikes and so on ..and the complicated wiring and on and on.
AFAIK, if you have Acrobat or some other pdf-editing capable WP, changing the margin is just a few clicks' work. Unless of course the author has turned off editing. But there are hacks for that, too.
The underlying issue is bozos who accept all defaults without thinking about the needs of their audience. And it will get worse. I just read through a prospectus of a course on PowerPoint. All about the bells and whistles - not a word about the real issue: designing a PP presentation that actually helps the audience. That's fundamental, and is a _writing_ task, not a programming task. I hardly ever watch PP presentations anymore, since 99% of the time the presenter just reads off the text on the screen. And no, model railroaders are not immune to the PP disease.
Hey, since you brought it (my sig) up, here's something to do for ha-has; go to Wikipedia and look up "Xenu" (the core belief of $cientology). OK, here it is:
Won't matter by the end of the day, I'm now in the process of trashing micro$oft windblows out of all my computers and putting linux in. Four hours of trying to get win 98 to install in an older machine and no luck, windblows can't find it's ass with both hands and a manual in pdf. Not even going to install pdf support in any of them. (But I'm going to have to go buy some new programs, ported for Linux of course, and there will be some pretty expensive ones that will become crossbow targets.) Micro$$$oft now gets $35 for a lousy support email, they can go put their heads back in their browneyes.
Bingo! Look at any of the "instruction manuals", if programs even come with them, all the bells and whistles are defined and described, but not basic things, such as how to configure the defaults so you don't have to go back and reconfigure every time you open the program. Most manuals are written with the continuity of a plate of spaghetti, nothing in any logical order, and then the company will decide that the time honored terms for functions aren't good enough, they've gotta have their own, written with one third of each word taken from a different dialect of an extinct language.
(My mood today is fouler than foul.)
Rich. (No, I ain't even gonna touch a model today.)
Been there, done that; and whether or not Harlan Ellison's story of the genesis of Scamentology is exactly or even mostly true, his description of it as "bullshit" and "looney tunes" is right on. Dangerous; scheming or stupid, darkly manipulative or lamely credulous, but all dangerous, people.
in article snipped-for-privacy@40tude.net, Steve Caple at snipped-for-privacy@commoncast.net wrote on 3/17/06 1:41 PM:
If one is gullible enough to accept the whole sci-fi liturgy of Scientology, then L. Ron Hubbard's estate deserves the money. Scientology may be doing us a service in converting fools with money into fools without it. Maybe then they won't have any to spend on dubious political causes.
Except that it (the space-alien/Xenu story) doesn't get fully revealed until the mark has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to get all the way to "OT III"; they don't tell this stuff to the newbs. Just go to any $cientology "org" and ask them about Xenu. This is now very embarassing stuff that they're desperately trying to hide from the public, but that's becoming increasingly more difficult. (Not to mention their many "foot bullets": like just in the last week Isaac "Chef" Hayes, and Tom Cruise threating to pull his summer movie from a magazine over an unfavorable article in _Rolling Stone_.)
in article 441c5dcd$0$3695$ snipped-for-privacy@news.adtechcomputers.com, David Nebenzahl at snipped-for-privacy@but.us.chickens wrote on 3/18/06 11:22 AM:
Maybe not stupid, but gullible. Personally, I think the Greek god myths make more sense...
You don't understand. They're not necessarily gullible, because when they walk in for their personality test, the first free one that sucks them into the "church", nobody talks about space aliens, body thetans, Xenu, or any of that other shit. They talk about getting "clear", taking control of one's life, being the master of one's own destiny, all that good stuff. So, no, it doesn't take a particularly gullible person to get started down that road.
On Sun, 19 Mar 2006 00:25:44 +1100, mark_newton purred
Well, they do and in large numbers. The trick is that only a few get to the level where they hear the space opera (Doc Smith wrote better and more believably than Hubbard ever did) and by then they are thoroughly brainwashed and would believe anything. Most members of the cult are strung along with promises that their life will improve as long as they believe and keep paying. If they have any setbacks like losing a job they are informed it was due to an outside action they could have prevented if they had just believed more and paid to get the higher level "training". Sadly the majority of the population is so weak minded they will believe any scheme which promises them happiness and success no matter how silly that plan may be. Perhaps we need to start a religion using railroad symbology so we can build our layouts (from those "donations" and then if anyone says we are nuts to play with trains we can sue them for discrimination and add a new yard with the profits.
in article 441c71bc$0$3689$ snipped-for-privacy@news.adtechcomputers.com, David Nebenzahl at snipped-for-privacy@but.us.chickens wrote on 3/18/06 12:47 PM:
The "gullible" part is when they are asked to pay more than the price of a paperback to get anything at all. If someone joins a legitimate "church," they are asked to donate: strictly voluntary. With Scientology, you MUST pay to get beyond the general counseling sessions. A bunch if friends and I went to one of the dianetics sessions back in college and it was hard to keep a straight face even for those. Later "EST" reminded me of the same thing: "I'm OK You're OK."
I started my own training: OST (Oates Sensitivity Training): I'm OK, you're all screwed up." (followup: "gimme all your dough.") Since I was so direct, I had not takers. So I went into the software biz where we could sell a $20 tape for $50,000. And the buyers actually got their money's worth.
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