PRM font bounty

I am assuming the more permissive font license would be per PDF file to be made freely available. i.e. PRM 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 5a So perhaps the total financial amount required might in the thousands rather than hundreds.

But to be clear, that’s just my thinking. I look forward to ROOL providing more detail on the font situation.

Because, as we see so many times on here, perfect is the enemy of good.

That can cut both ways, though. Assuming that we’re not paying commercial rates for the work¹, then the updating and editing is presumably being done at least in part “for fun”, and things can very quickly stop being “fun” when others try to impose different goals on those doing the work.

In this case, the format of the finished manuals is only a tiny part of the work going into it, but if the “fun” is in updating the Acorn documentation to the standards of their technical publications department, then one needs to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Compared to all of the work that obviously goes into this, the font used in the finished layout might be a tiny issue to us but could nonetheless be an extremely important part of the overall aim of the project for those putting their time into it.

Given what was said yesterday, if a bounty for a few hundred quid will solve the font issue, then why not just do it and get the downloads sorted out that way? If a side-effect of doing that is to support and say “thank you” to those doing this hard work, then that’s got to be a bonus, hasn’t it?

¹ I don’t see a bounty for documentation.

One thing that didn’t come out in the discussion is what the originating format is/was. I don’t imaging they are in hand-crafted PDF, so there musyt have been some sort of document processing software involved.

What that is might impact on the difficulty of converting the fonts and layout, and updating content. Whatever is used now needs to allow PDF and print output, and ideally HTML as well. And how about bookreader format?

One thing that didn’t come out in the discussion is what the originating format is/was.

Framemaker, as mentioned twice above.

Probably used by Acorn in the pre-Adobe ownership because of the structured documentation aspect. That allowed for a quick change of house style. That would now allow a root and branch change of font use.

The real question here is how much ROOL want to restrict access to the raw content. That raw content could be considered a marketable asset, or it could be an open resource for volunteers to expand.
New users expect documentation in medium and large bucket loads these days.

A fashionable habit a little while back was releasing PDF info with a no print option on the PDF¹, but that seems rather pointless because most modern users don’t even possess a printer.
Thus I can see that perhaps the PDF might be considered a marketable asset.

¹ The printed item was available at a cost.

Probably used by Acorn in the pre-Adobe ownership because of the structured documentation aspect.

I’m pretty sure so. We were still using Framemaker at ARM for that reason up to at least 2007 when I left, as we had been in 1998 when I started there. There was a degree of continuity from Acorn to ARM back then…

Well at least it wasn’t 1stWord+

I don’t see a bounty for documentation.

This one was created a day or so ago (probably after your post; I’m just including a link for reference).

I don’t see in the new bounty any mention of changing to a free font. It seems madness to create more pages using the non free font. A slightly mess way would be to have Style B for new pages using the free font and then in time change too style B on each page manually that way any changes in flow should be seen on screen as it changes. Not sure if I’ve explained that well. ¹
It would be interesting to know what the extra cost would be for licence that covers downloads and inclusion on commercial disk images. Do they charge per page? Volume? per 1000 words?
¹ IIRC Impression Publisher would complain if a document had previously had text in a font that was no longer available. Load it into Publisher plus and resave and no further complaints.

A slightly mess way would be to have Style B for new pages using the free font and then in time change too style B on each page manually that way any changes in flow should be seen on screen as it changes.

That’s the reason for the structured documentation – it’s a central change, and you change font/style of ALL the documents at once. Make the change and proofread the output.

I seem to recall an earlier discussion mentioning that ROOL wanted all the books to have the same ‘look and feel’, so I suspect that a font change wouldn’t be on the cards for the physical PRMs (and therefore the FrameMaker masters).

With that said, assuming that FrameMaker works the way I assume it does, then a ‘redistributable’ PDF could be generated with freely-available fonts without affecting the printed copy. However, it remains to be seen whether that might have other effects, for example my Times New Roman copy of the PRMs seems to have slightly less text per page (is the font slightly larger?) than the printed PRMs and therefore the page numbers don’t match up between the two versions.

I don’t see in the new bounty any mention of changing to a free font.

How carefully did you read it? The deliverables include HTML and Textile markup of the content, and they are undoubtedly font-agnostic.

It would be interesting to know what the extra cost would be for licence that covers downloads and inclusion on commercial disk images. Do they charge per page? Volume? per 1000 words?

Steve discussed that on Saturday, which is what prompted the focus on a small bounty to cover the cost. He gave ballpark figures, too.

I seem to recall an earlier discussion mentioning that ROOL wanted all the books to have the same ‘look and feel’, so I suspect that a font change wouldn’t be on the cards for the physical PRMs (and therefore the FrameMaker masters).

As I noted above, there could easily be other complexities to this aside from the fact that the existing house style seems to work well and is easy to read¹. Personally, with the addition of HTML and Textile output (and, presumably, the option of other formats unless they’re being done “by hand”), I would be very strongly inclined to stick with the status quo for the books. The previous ones are easy to read, and if it indulges those doing the work by way of saying “thanks”, that’s got to be good, too.

¹ Compare the ROOL books to the ROL Wimp PRM from the noughties, which is in Homerton/Arial and very hard on the eyes.

How carefully did you read it? The deliverables include HTML and Textile markup of the content,

Which isn’t really the issue at point, as both of these could be done as is, given the creation of a suitable filter.

which is what prompted the focus on a small bounty to cover the cost.

Yes, this should be a separate bounty. Are we interested in having freely available documentation for our system? Yes or no. If yes, then the font issue needs looked at. Otherwise, it’s the status quo.

and very hard on the eyes

Benefits of PDF – easily available, quick to fetch, can be searched.
Benefits of dead tree – can actually be read.

Strange – sometimes I like using paper ie ‘Archive’ sometimes electronic.

If paper PRMs – a way of updating the pages when change’s are required.

ie replacement pages or some form of sticky updates.

PDFs can be searched – bit slow on RO – compared to the standalone RO Prog.

And read out loud – if the PDF reader can handle it. TextEase format!

Being able to swap files between RO Editors like Imp Ovn TextEase TxtW would be useful.

I have been waiting for someone to mention this, but I may have missed it.

In 2000 RISCOS Ltd and Pace published a CD-ROM with ALL the extant manuals in PDF and HTML formats.

Unfortunately, my copy of the CD has got damaged, but I have the HTML versions on my harddisc, neatly split using John Whitington’s HTMLSplit application.

These are eminently useable.

It is even possible I have copies of the rest somewhere.

What are the benefits of PDF or paper manuals at this point, apart from continuity? Even back in the old days you could argue that browsers on RISC OS could support HTML manuals, making that format the way to go.

It would be better to transform the content into something that could be put online. That way the information is available for everyone who is interested and there’s no need to mess around with fonts and layout unless you want to go down the CSS rabbit hole.

unless you want to go down the CSS rabbit hole

It’s well worth going down the CSS rabbit hole for other reasons, but very much best to avoid specifying fonts while you’re there…

In 2000 RISCOS Ltd and Pace published a CD-ROM with ALL the extant manuals in PDF

They stuck the lot on their website for a while. I downloaded them all way back when.

I noted that the page numbers were different, perhaps the font situation was “fixed” by just not using that font?

that could be put online

And the offline easily usable version is….?

This is, incidentally, one of my complains with CVS/GIT. When I download the sources tar file, the early changes are recorded in BlackLog (usually). But all the later changes are recorded (better) with the source management, but it doesn’t seem to be easily possible to extract a list of changes for each version (short of either keeping it all online, or running your own git locally).
Makes it harder than it needs to be to browse histories of things to see what has changed when.
“Put it online” isn’t always the answer.

that could be put online

…which can equally be used offline. Web browsers are also able to show local HTML files.

Making it available online also makes it possible for people to link to the pages they are referring to in online discussions. Also, it makes a difference to people who are just curious about developing for the system.

I downloaded them all way back when.

Yes, they were freely available. The date is important, because it is before the involvement of Castle in the problem of rights. I recall that it was the very first effort of the nascent ROL.

The copyright is to Pace Micro Technology. The publisher is RISCOS Limited. Surely this puts these files in the area of shared rights between the two branches and might be a convenient starting point here.

Web browsers are also able to show local HTML files.

To quote the note about the conversion of the Pace files:

After considering several possible release formats it was decided that HTML was the best candidate because:
• It can be read by many applications on many platforms
• It can be updated without tying us to any particular software
• Cross references within the manuals can be maintained easily
• The structure of the manuals can be kept
• The manuals can be easily released on-line if required
• End users can submit updates and changes with relative ease

Surely this ‘conversion’ is a red herring. Holding the master in Framemaker means that it can be exported as PDF or as HTML equally easily.

It means the only people who can work on it are anyone who has Framemaker though.

anyone who has Framemaker

I don’t think the bounty is quite big enough to cover converting it to be an ODT file.

I also doubt whether the bounty will be big enough to buy many Framemaker licences.

I wonder in what way Acorn used Framemaker – did everyone in the technical documentation department just have a copy installed? How is Framemaker used to collaborate for documentation? How are documents or chapters or sections or whatever versioned?