Altera data sheets.

Thu Feb 25, 2010 12:04 pm   

If anyone from Altera reads this forum, can they please email/call their
manual writing & publishing department and complain from me that their
stupid PDF manuals have occasional pages turned at 90 degrees, e.g. the
Stratix4 Handbook, page 1-11. This is very annoying, as it means my
reader displays all the other pages narrower than they would be. I'm
getting on a bit now, my eyesight isn't what it was, and I'm too
cantankerous to piss about with the magnifying glass tool. I'm perfectly
capable of using the special rotate button that the reader provides for
the odd occasion when the page needs to be turned, in the same way I
used to be able to turn a book in the good old days. Those dumbasses
(probably) wouldn't print a book with occasional pages sticking out, why
do they feel the need to do it with their PDF manuals.

The stupid thing is, doing what they have done, doesn't make the table
any easier to read on a computer screen than if they'd made the table
smaller and printed it across the page. It just makes all the other
pages harder to read. The only time it helps is if some bozo decides
he's gonna print out 27MB of file, in which case they're probably a
student and have good eyesight anyway.

This is the only reason stopping me from designing in Altera parts.
Xilinx have nice PDF files.

Love, Syms.

p.s. There's no charge for this free advice.

Thu Feb 25, 2010 2:56 pm   

On Feb 25, 6:04 am, Symon <symon_bre...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Maybe you should instead complain to Adobe about their *stupid* PDF
reading software. The only reason that the rotated pages are making
the others hard to view is because you are using "fit to page width"
for a magnification. In lieu of getting either of these multi-
national corporations to change the way they do business, perhaps you
could do a very little leg work yourself. One is to just view them
with a set magnification which will show all pages at the same zoom
level. It's not really so hard to do. You just type in a zoom level
that lets you view the first page to fit the width of the window.

The other method can only be done if Altera has not write or read
protected their data sheets. You can use a PDF editing tool to
actually rotate the page in the document and then save it so it will
be forever fixed. If you find that Altera's data sheets are write
protected, then you are screwed. I have seen some data sheets that
are *read* protected, or more accurately, copy protected. Yes, they
prevent you from using select, copy and paste to pull any information
out of the document. I find that insane and it drives me pretty much
up a wall. If I want to quote something from a data sheet, such as a
part number for ordering, I want to *COPY* it so as to eliminate the
possibility of a transcription error. With part number containing
some 12 or more digits and letters, it is oh so easy to mess it up.
Even more interesting is when I find a document that is protected in
some way, but they forgot to password protect it, so I can turn off
the protection... But I think you can use some third party tools to
get around the password protection. After all, if you can read the
document so that it can be viewed, you can always copy and/or edit
it. The "protection" is just a switch in the program you are reading
it with.

BTW, you can blame all of this on the community standardizing on a
proprietary document format instead of open source. There seem to be
open source tools for PDF files now, but it has taken a long time and
most people don't know about them.

Rick

Thu Feb 25, 2010 3:06 pm   

<big snip!>

PDF is now a 'proper' standard: ISO 32000-1:2008.


---------------------------------------
Posted through http://www.FPGARelated.com

Thu Feb 25, 2010 3:07 pm   

On 2/25/2010 12:56 PM, rickman wrote:


As I use Foxit, that wouldn't help very much, would it?

Thu Feb 25, 2010 3:43 pm   

On 2/25/2010 12:56 PM, rickman wrote:

Actually, that provoked me. You need Acrobat professional. Which isn't free.


File-> Create PDF -> from file

Document -> Rotate Pages ->
Counterclockwise 90 degrees
Landscape pages

Lovely. Maybe I will use their parts after all. It's still dumb the way
they publish the PDFs.

Syms.

Thu Feb 25, 2010 6:32 pm   

"Symon" <symon_brewer_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:hm62ai$hlr$1_at_news.eternal-september.org...


If you are using the Foxit reader then load the doc, go to View => Rotate
View => clock or anticlock as desired.

Thu Feb 25, 2010 6:59 pm   

On 2/25/2010 5:32 PM, Phil Jessop wrote:


Load this:-

http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/stratix-iv/stx4_siv51001.pdf

Look at the small writing because of the stupid wasted grey bits at the
sides of the page. (My Adobe reader only does the grey bits if you
scroll down to page 11. But then it's stuck in dumbass mode.)



They can do it right sometimes.

http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/stratix-iv/stx4_5v4.pdf

No stupid grey bits, and bigger writing.

Grrrr.

Regards, Syms.

Fri Feb 26, 2010 10:43 am   

On 25/02/2010 13:56, rickman wrote:

I can't see this effect with any pdf reader I've tried - Foxit which I
normally use on Windows, evince on Ubuntu, or Acrobat Reader 8 on
Windows. Maybe you are using an old version of Acrobat Reader?

It makes sense to complain to Adobe about how they have managed to make
such an insecure file reader, or to ask why they have allowed executable
javascript and plugins by default, or why their software is orders of
magnitude bigger, slower, and more ram-hungry than alternatives such as
Foxit. But I am totally failing to replicate these viewing problems.


Rather than going through all this effort, install a decent (free and
open-source) pdf printer such as PDFCreator. Then you can "print" your
document to a new pdf file that has all the pages at the same
orientation, and is certainly editable if you want.


PDF came from a proprietary source, but it is an ISO standard (at least,
for some version of pdf format) now. The format has been well known
since it became popular, and there have been open source tools for PDF
reading, generation, and editing for years - the xpdf viewer is at least
14 years old, and pdfLatex for generating pdf files is at least 12 years
old. While the pdf standard could be more "open", it is pretty good as
standards go.

Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:19 am   

On 25/02/2010 15:43, Symon wrote:

Since you already use Foxit for reading, you should probably look at
Foxit Editor rather than Acrobat Writer. I've not used it myself, but
considering how much better Foxit reader is than Acrobat reader, I'd
look there first.

pdfedit is an alternative for Linux, but it's a bit slow, and it Foxit
has trouble reading the files it produces (apparently it's a bug in
Foxit, not pdfedit).

Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:38 am   

On 2/26/2010 9:43 AM, David Brown wrote:


Hi David,

I don't like to see failure.

I have Foxit 3.1.4.1125, which seems quite up-to-date.

I have set the default to show the pages at their biggest, i.e. 'fit
width', because I am getting old and my eyes aren't like they used to
be. When I load :-

http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/stratix-iv/stx4_siv51001.pdf

The portrait pages in it, e.g. pg 1-1, no longer 'fit width', because
there are pages like 1-11 that, and this is my complaint, are included
in landscape mode. The reader's rotate button doesn't help, 'cos it
rotates every page. The solution is to publish documents with all pages
portrait and draw the tables across the page.

This is 'totally' driving me bonkers, and is why I keep clogging up the
useful discourse on CAF with these ridiculous posts.

If you don't see this effect, please, for God's sake, put me out of my
misery, and let me know what you did.

Thanks, Syms.

p.s. A similar thing happens in my old version 7 Adobe viewer, but only
after the viewer has 'seen' a landscape page.

Fri Feb 26, 2010 12:44 pm   

On Feb 26, 5:38 am, Symon <symon_bre...@hotmail.com> wrote:

I've seen this before in Acrobat and it shows up when the document is
opened. There are settings that control the initial view and I didn't
explore how they were set, but it was due to a page being landscape
controlling the default magnification of the entire document.

Like I said before, I have my own nits to pick with data sheets and it
really does make a difference about what parts I consider. Heck,
there is an inductor company that puts everything on web pages and not
even all on one page! You have to visit multiple pages to get all the
data on their parts. Maybe they have updated by now, but have I never
used any of their parts because it was such a PITA to store the data
sheet.

Rick

Fri Feb 26, 2010 1:58 pm   

On 26/02/2010 11:38, Symon wrote:

That's what I am using too.


It may be off-topic for this newsgroup, but I have certainly learned
enough from your posts over the years to be happy to try to help - if I can.


I've figured it out - you are using "continuous" mode, so that the pdf
reader is looking at the document as though it were one very tall page,
and thus fit-width applies to the this whole continuous page. I prefer
"single page" mode, in which fit-width (and fit-page) apply to a single
page at a time.

Hope that helps,

David.

Fri Feb 26, 2010 2:57 pm   

On 2/26/2010 12:58 PM, David Brown wrote:

David, you've solved it! I tried going into single page mode before, but
I didn't re-click the fit-width thing.
Cheers!

p.s. I still maintain Altera are wrong to have landscape pages mixed in!
I like continuous mode.

Sat Feb 27, 2010 3:22 pm   

On 26/02/2010 14:57, Symon wrote:

Glad to be of help. Much of what I know about high speed PCB design
I've learned from listening in to you and other experts in c.a.f., so
it's nice to give a little back.


It's never easy finding a layout that suits everyone. If they kept the
tables in portrait mode, they would have less information, or be crushed
up. If they used landscape tables but kept portrait mode in the pdf
file, you'd have to rotate the page to view it. Personally, I think it
works well - but then, I like single-page mode. I think single-page
mode is more like reading a book, while continuous mode is like reading
fan-fold paper printouts from ages past.