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Since the title of this issue is "make manual download from the website" is already there, I am marking as resolved and this can be closed soon. Although the additional notes have not all been resolved, they were kind of a digression and is needed can be put into a new issue. |
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I have repaired locally the bad parts of Features pdf file EXCEPT for point (5) which makes scripts not easily copy/paste-able. My current plan, as stated previously, is to create a single manual and GG has agreed to set up a GITHUB for this making it easier to check out and work on. Hopefully, we can find a way to then create html web pages too. |
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@ferdnyc - thanks for the feedback and suggestions. I have had plenty of problems as you stated with PDF too. I did try collaborative editing once but at that time the document was changing so much that another person working on it had to just give up and I wasted their time - same problem with language translations. After a single manual is put together that covers everything, I would be very happy to go the collaborative method permanently. |
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@PhyllisSmith To be honest — and PLEASE don't take this as a criticism of your manual-writing efforts, merely of the software tools in question — the PDF export isn't all that great either. It suffers from some of the same problems, like: 1. images appearing in the middle of sentences (see e.g. page 42) 2. certain strings recognized as hostnames and automatically hyperlinked, erroneously (e.g. two occurrences of "configure.ac" on page 9) 3. Insufficient space between text and graphics (page 16, 33, 39, the wrapping damage on 35...) 4. The random TOC items on pages 1 & 2 which are black underlinked text, instead of blue underlined text like the rest of them. (That one's just _bizarre_...) 5. And there are a lot of areas with code or output listings that would greatly benefit from terminal font styling and syntax highlighting (e.g. page 10, 12-14 for sure, the shell script on 201, etc...), something that's far easier to implement in HTML than with any sort of print-focused document format, even PDF. But one advantage to exporting it to HTML would be that it makes the content collaboratively editable, so you DON'T have to do all the work to fix it up yourself. In these days of GitHub Pages, ReadTheDocs, etc., collaborative editing and community-submitted improvements are as common for documentation as they are for source code. I've filed many pull requests to update software documentation, rather than the source code itself. Getting documentation online is, as @Sam noted, a great way to mine the community as a resource for improvements. |
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@Sam - when I save the LibreOffice .odt file in html format instead of pdf format, it is simply very ugly and screencasts are not lined up with the wording and so on. Of course, I could make it look better (which is how I originally created the shortcuts.html file) but I would much rather spend my time on combining the other 2 manuals into one that fits all of cinelerra-gg. |
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@ferdnyc Thank you for the helpful information. I agree with you, it would also be a possibility. My primary concern is the SEO of the website. If I integrate the content into our CMS I can optimize the particular page for SEO, keywords, metadata etc. to increase the visibility of the whole website. Users can also comment on certain content and improve the content over time. |
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@Sam Oh, no, understood. But you can even link to a PDF from HTML these days, and most browsers will happily display the file. I read it in Chrome by just navigating up from file:///usr/share/cinelerra-gg/doc/cinelerra.html to the enclosing directory, then clicking on the link for file:///usr/share/cinelerra-gg/doc/Features5.pdf An HTML copy would be good to have, of course. But point is, these days PDF is very nearly just as accessible as HTML. In fact, to your point about downloading, I know that a PDF file generated in the correct manner ("linearized", which has the user-facing branding of "Fast Web View") can be streamed to the browser — much like a web-optimized MP4 video stream — so that you can start reading it without even having to download the entire thing. It'll continue downloading in the background as you read. https://www.foxitsoftware.com/blog/how-to-optimize-pdfs-for-web-viewing-and-why-you-should/ |
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@ferdnyc As far as I know there is no HTML for it. @PhyllisSmith It would be quite good if we have this document also as HTML. Bring the content to the website so that users have it easier to look up smaller sections on the website without having to download the whole document. If you agree, I will prepare it. |
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BTW, the Original Manual content (HTML plus images) is in the source tree cinelerra-5.1/doc/ directory, and gets installed in $(datadir)/cinelerra-gg/doc/ (usually /usr/share/cinelerra-gg/doc/ or /usr/local/share/cinelerra-gg/doc/) — as Phyllis mentioned, the "Original Manual" link in the 'shell cmds' menu (yellow-and-gray icon) will open the cinelerra.html file (the manual) in a web browser tab. ...Am I correct in observing that there's currently no link to the included $datadir/cinelerra-gg/doc/Features5.pdf anywhere in the interface or the HTML documentation, though? Or did I just miss it? |
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I've added an additional internal link so you can jump directly to the documentation. |
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Yes, there are 2 more manuals and they show up in the yellow colored ms-dos symbol above FF "shell cmds". One still takes you to the CV site for that manual and Original Manual is Adam's rendition. I am working on one chapter of a combined manual that includes everything combined with the Features pdf file. It is about time to just have a single manual. The chapter I am working on is Plugins/Transitions because that is the easiest to combine for now. |
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After you mentioned that I found Cin GG's manual buried among the documentation below that, I hadn't scrolled down to the bottom...I think putting an icon near the packages makes more sense as one can download software + manual, it would be more visibile, but that's my 2 cents:) I remember there are other 2 manuals for Cinelerra one targeting CV and one maybe written by Adam? Do you know if they are "endorsed" also for GG's version? If yes I wonder under which license they come from and whether they can be redistributed. |
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The manual is already available on the download page. Do you mean another manual? |
- Anonymous
