"Doing" datasheets

[martin griffith]

I'm think of tidying up (my lack of) procedures in making data sheets
and documentation.

And again I'm a bit lost

I lke the format that www.rane.com or Jim Williams's stuff on
www.linear.com , ie text, PCB layout and schematics in the same PDF
datasheet.

How do I export/print to file diagrams from my Accel sch/pcb package.
I can use a facility like pdf995 (printer look alike software) to
produce a pdf file, that I can zoom into without loss of resolution.
(the buzzword is Scalable Vector Graphics, according too google)

I dont have micro$oft word, just wordpad and Open Office. OO is not
exactly intuative, but can OO do this sort of thing? If so, how?
Should I hire a typist? Do I have to blow the cobwebs off my
creditcards? How many puns can John Woodgate find here?

Thanks


martin

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"
Gandhi

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that martin griffith
<martingriffithX@Xyahoo.co.uk> wrote (in <c89c21pflea4ofnend1s49p434t2lo
ao1k@4ax.com&gt about '"Doing" datasheets', on Wed, 2 Mar 2005:

I dont have micro$oft word, just wordpad and Open Office. OO is not
exactly intuative, but can OO do this sort of thing?

What sort of thing? You covered getting the graphics into a PDF in your
previous paragraph.

If so, how?

Tell us a bit more about what you want to do.

Should
I hire a typist?

Depend how you feel about two-finger typing and how much text you have
to produce. I've done 7000 words in one day with two fingers, but I
don't recommend it.

Do I have to blow the cobwebs off my creditcards?

That thing isn't a flattened gold spider, you know!

How
many puns can John Woodgate find here?

It appears to be a pun desert, but some people can see them better than
I can.
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[martin griffith]

On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 21:22:42 +0000, in sci.electronics.design John
Woodgate <jmw@jmwa.demon.contraspam.yuk> wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that martin griffith
martingriffithX@Xyahoo.co.uk> wrote (in <c89c21pflea4ofnend1s49p434t2lo
ao1k@4ax.com&gt about '"Doing" datasheets', on Wed, 2 Mar 2005:

I dont have micro$oft word, just wordpad and Open Office. OO is not
exactly intuative, but can OO do this sort of thing?

What sort of thing? You covered getting the graphics into a PDF in your
previous paragraph.

If so, how?

Tell us a bit more about what you want to do.

Should
I hire a typist?

Depend how you feel about two-finger typing and how much text you have
to produce. I've done 7000 words in one day with two fingers, but I
don't recommend it.

Do I have to blow the cobwebs off my creditcards?

That thing isn't a flattened gold spider, you know!

How
many puns can John Woodgate find here?

It appears to be a pun desert, but some people can see them better than
I can.
Hi John,

Had too many glasses of wine...1999 seems to have been a reasonable
year

I can create a pdf file with pdf995 from my CAD system. but this only
makes a pdf of the CAD output
But I dont know how create a pdf with text, with the output from my
CAD system showing between the paragraphs of my text. I could insert
bmp/jpg screen dumps of the CAD , but that looks sort of "Sir Clive
Sinclar-ish"

I'm just lost with WP stuff


martin

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"
Gandhi

 

[jsmith]

First of all, you should not be asking such a question about doing data
sheets to an engineering oriented group, engineers are clueless about the
graphics world (and most other worlds as well!!)

Secondly, you should invest in a second hand Power Mac for about $99.00.
(Better than any modern day PC and their convoluted Microsoft operating
system)

Third, you need a program like Adobe PhotoDeluxe which often comes bundled
with Epson printer software and is free from that stand point. It will allow
you to convert any scanned images into a PDF file. (Note you will need a
scanner too)

Fourth, go onto e-bay and buy any version of QuarkXpress desktop publishing
software. It is incredibly intuitive and will allow you to create virtually
any data sheet page layout you can want.

Good luck.

"martin griffith" <martingriffithX@Xyahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:rtbc21l2n1tfj9iq3fptppprlo351jtl6e@4ax.com...

On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 21:22:42 +0000, in sci.electronics.design John
Woodgate <jmw@jmwa.demon.contraspam.yuk> wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that martin griffith
martingriffithX@Xyahoo.co.uk> wrote (in <c89c21pflea4ofnend1s49p434t2lo
ao1k@4ax.com&gt about '"Doing" datasheets', on Wed, 2 Mar 2005:

I dont have micro$oft word, just wordpad and Open Office. OO is not
exactly intuative, but can OO do this sort of thing?

What sort of thing? You covered getting the graphics into a PDF in your
previous paragraph.

If so, how?

Tell us a bit more about what you want to do.

Should
I hire a typist?

Depend how you feel about two-finger typing and how much text you have
to produce. I've done 7000 words in one day with two fingers, but I
don't recommend it.

Do I have to blow the cobwebs off my creditcards?

That thing isn't a flattened gold spider, you know!

How
many puns can John Woodgate find here?

It appears to be a pun desert, but some people can see them better than
I can.
Hi John,
Had too many glasses of wine...1999 seems to have been a reasonable
year

I can create a pdf file with pdf995 from my CAD system. but this only
makes a pdf of the CAD output
But I dont know how create a pdf with text, with the output from my
CAD system showing between the paragraphs of my text. I could insert
bmp/jpg screen dumps of the CAD , but that looks sort of "Sir Clive
Sinclar-ish"

I'm just lost with WP stuff


martin

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"
Gandhi

 

[gwhite]

martin griffith wrote:

I can create a pdf file with pdf995 from my CAD system. but this only
makes a pdf of the CAD output
But I dont know how create a pdf with text, ...

I know exactly what you are talking about. I wanted to create text searchable
layout pdf's from Protel. It doesn't work because the print job is precision
artwork; it is all image, with no override (at least no text print override in
version 99se).

I did find a workaround that allows text searching in what is effectively a free
viewer in Acrobat.

I exported to dxf (at least I think it was dxf) and then imported to a cheapo
CAD program called Design Cad Express 3000. When printing from Design Cad
Express 3000 to pdf, I did not lose the text. In a way, this is a mistake
because the precision graphics were lost. However, it was a nice mistake
because precision is not needed for casual review by people such as tech's and
assemblers. They just want to find where the parts are on the board. Text
search functionally provides this.

I should warn though. There is a lot of work/touchup to get it how you want
before printing. For one, you'll need to make auxilliary CAD drawings that
strip all the junk you don't want to see on an assembly drawing. (Like most of
the polygon fill copper on component sides; and much other copper.) Other
little problems cropped up too.

However, the bottom line is that I accomplished it, and thus it is possible
others can too. I should note that I also tried importing into AutoCAD.
AutoCAD would not make the "nice mistake" of printing text as text. It came out
as images there too, just like in Protel. I don't know about other CAD packages
such as TurboCAD. Design Cad Express 3000 worked and is cheap. Funny thing is,
it is all I ever used it for.

 

[Don Lancaster]

John Woodgate wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that martin griffith
martingriffithX@Xyahoo.co.uk> wrote (in <c89c21pflea4ofnend1s49p434t2lo
ao1k@4ax.com&gt about '"Doing" datasheets', on Wed, 2 Mar 2005:


I dont have micro$oft word, just wordpad and Open Office. OO is not
exactly intuative, but can OO do this sort of thing?


What sort of thing? You covered getting the graphics into a PDF in your
previous paragraph.


If so, how?


Tell us a bit more about what you want to do.


Should
I hire a typist?


Depend how you feel about two-finger typing and how much text you have
to produce. I've done 7000 words in one day with two fingers, but I
don't recommend it.


Do I have to blow the cobwebs off my creditcards?


That thing isn't a flattened gold spider, you know!


How
many puns can John Woodgate find here?


It appears to be a pun desert, but some people can see them better than
I can.

My free gonzo utilities at http://www.tinaja.com/post01.asp#gonzo give
you the highest possible data sheet and schematic quality.

But with a steep learning curve and purposely not WYSIWYG.

Zillions of examples on my web site.


--
Many thanks,

Don Lancaster
Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
voice: (928)428-4073 email: don@tinaja.com

Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com

 

[gwhite]

John Larkin wrote:

It does that. As I said, the gif's seem to be the best path for simple
line work from Autocad or Pads into a Word doc or just an image you
can email. For some reason jpegs come out huge, but that may just be a
setting or something; tiff's work fine but tiff's tend to crash Word.

I'm assuming he wants to do search text -- otherwise there is no point that I
can think of. Images obviously provide no text search capability.

Suppose you have an assembly with 500+ parts, but you want your techs and
assemblers (and anyone else who needs to see it) to be able to use a free viewer
rather than an expensive+propietary viewer. They want to find *where* the parts
are efficiently. Text search in Acrobat provides this. Images don't.

 

[Joop]

Jim Thompson <thegreatone@example.com> wrote:

....

Hi John, Is that program like a virtual printer? The web site
implies that it is a file converter.

What I want is a program that can "print" from any program, but
creates graphical files.

....

I have used PDFCreator a couple of times. It is an open source printer
driver. The created file size was usually pretty small, which implies
it uses text whenever it can instead of turning it into images.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

Joop

 

[R Adsett]

In article <reje21dbdv9bqeb7pvi6q2mf0dhbik0ju4@4ax.com>,
l_o_u_s_take_most_away@xs4all.nl says...

...
I have used PDFCreator a couple of times. It is an open source printer
driver. The created file size was usually pretty small, which implies
it uses text whenever it can instead of turning it into images.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

Another possibility is Fineprint Factorypdf http://www.fineprint.com/

Like others it concatonates prints from multiple applications into a
single PDF.

Robert

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 02:25:20 GMT, gwhite <gwhite@deadend.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:


It does that. As I said, the gif's seem to be the best path for simple
line work from Autocad or Pads into a Word doc or just an image you
can email. For some reason jpegs come out huge, but that may just be a
setting or something; tiff's work fine but tiff's tend to crash Word.

I'm assuming he wants to do search text --

Why assume that? Jim didn't mention it.

otherwise there is no point that I
can think of.

No point in extracting printable images?

John

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 13:35:56 +1100, "Roger Lascelles"
<invalidl@invalid.invalid> wrote:

2. Buy MS Word. Last time I looked, Open Office was clumsy and
complicated, ran slow and got confused. Word is simple, overpriced and just
works. The beauty of Word is that you can copy and paste just about
anything into a Word document : bitmaps, EMF (Windows own zoomable graphics
format), jpg, stuff out of your web browser, printscreen, html.

I am the proud owner of a simple tiff file that crashes Word 2003
whenever I import it.

John

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 11:25:22 -0800, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highSNIPlandTHIStechPLEASEnology.com> wrote:

On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 13:35:56 +1100, "Roger Lascelles"
invalidl@invalid.invalid> wrote:


2. Buy MS Word. Last time I looked, Open Office was clumsy and
complicated, ran slow and got confused. Word is simple, overpriced and just
works. The beauty of Word is that you can copy and paste just about
anything into a Word document : bitmaps, EMF (Windows own zoomable graphics
format), jpg, stuff out of your web browser, printscreen, html.


I am the proud owner of a simple tiff file that crashes Word 2003
whenever I import it.

John

I am the proud owner of Office '97 ;-)

Word 2000 came on one of my laptops, but it simply looks to be
bloatware.

And I own Acrobat v5, but have v4 set up as the default.

I've never been able to figure out why programmers can't write NEW
things instead of bloating old things to beyond usefulness.

For instance I dearly love my Eudora Pro v3.0.5, it never fails me.
My wife's EP v4.3 is pure crap... designed by some YoYo who must think
he knows what the customer wants better than the customer does... and
they've now bloated it all the way up to v6.2 :-(

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 11:25:22 -0800, the renowned John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highSNIPlandTHIStechPLEASEnology.com> wrote:

On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 13:35:56 +1100, "Roger Lascelles"
invalidl@invalid.invalid> wrote:


2. Buy MS Word. Last time I looked, Open Office was clumsy and
complicated, ran slow and got confused. Word is simple, overpriced and just
works. The beauty of Word is that you can copy and paste just about
anything into a Word document : bitmaps, EMF (Windows own zoomable graphics
format), jpg, stuff out of your web browser, printscreen, html.


I am the proud owner of a simple tiff file that crashes Word 2003
whenever I import it.

John

I remember looking at the tiff format definition once, IIRC it's a
dog's breakfast, more like a container file format. Ah, here's a file
that describes it:
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/tiff/TIFF6.pdf

The real graphics guys like it (the TIFFs that Photoshop emits)
because it's lossless and always seems to work (probably because
everyone uses or is compatible with Photoshop rather than anything to
do with TIFF). My digital SLR has a RAW format that is MUCH more
compact and is still lossless. Not much of a difference on a big HDD
but the CF card I have is not very large (only half a gig) so it would
fill up quickly if the images were not fairly compact.

<cool- Globalflyer is just touching down> Quite a trip.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Jim Thompson
<thegreatone@example.com> wrote (in <bfpe21hbmiimqh5et2mddbcqb6ae8gja1g@
4ax.com&gt about '"Doing" datasheets', on Thu, 3 Mar 2005:

I've never been able to figure out why programmers can't write NEW
things instead of bloating old things to beyond usefulness.

Look what the hardware guys did to the 4004!(;-)
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[Active8]

On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 22:40:23 +0100, martin griffith wrote:

<snip>

I can create a pdf file with pdf995 from my CAD system. but this only
makes a pdf of the CAD output
But I dont know how create a pdf with text, with the output from my
CAD system showing between the paragraphs of my text. I could insert
bmp/jpg screen dumps of the CAD , but that looks sort of "Sir Clive
Sinclar-ish"

Take screen shots of the schems and make a web page. Then use
pdf995. It's worthless for anything else. I've found Mathematica
makes an excellent webpage out of notebooks filled with equations.
IIRC MatCAD does too, but I didn't like the way it did[n't] do
higher than 1st degree derivatives like d2v/dt2.
--
Best Regards,
Mike

 

[Active8]

On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 17:30:33 -0500, jsmith wrote:

First of all, you should not be asking such a question about doing data
sheets to an engineering oriented group, engineers are clueless about the
graphics world (and most other worlds as well!!)

There's a lot of knowlege outside of EE in this group.

snip

Fourth, go onto e-bay and buy any version of QuarkXpress desktop publishing
software. It is incredibly intuitive and will allow you to create virtually
any data sheet page layout you can want.

Quark is used by publishers and newspapers, so that might not be a

bad idea if he's planning on going outside the realm of electronic
media.

<snip>
--
Best Regards,
Mike

 

[Active8]

On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 12:38:42 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

<snip>

designed by some YoYo who must think
snip

If you'd have seen that 4 or 5 year old Yo-Yo champion on Ripley's
last night, and the things he does with Yo-Yos, you'd understand why
Yo-Yos are as FUBAR as they are.

Trivia: They said that stone Yo-Yos were used way back when as
hunting weapons.
--
Best Regards,
Mike

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <bfpe21hbmiimqh5et2mddbcqb6ae8gja1g@4ax.com>,
Jim Thompson <thegreatone@example.com> wrote:
[...]

I've never been able to figure out why programmers can't write NEW
things instead of bloating old things to beyond usefulness.

They are stupid. Now you know :>

Actually I think it is because programming classes spend a billion hours
on coding and five minutes on design. It is easy to add a bunch of stuff
to a program. It is a lot harder to figure out how to make the user
interface more straight forward to use.

--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 18:40:49 -0500, Active8 <reply2group@ndbbm.net>
wrote:

On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 22:40:23 +0100, martin griffith wrote:

snip

I can create a pdf file with pdf995 from my CAD system. but this only
makes a pdf of the CAD output
But I dont know how create a pdf with text, with the output from my
CAD system showing between the paragraphs of my text. I could insert
bmp/jpg screen dumps of the CAD , but that looks sort of "Sir Clive
Sinclar-ish"

Take screen shots of the schems and make a web page. Then use
pdf995. It's worthless for anything else. I've found Mathematica
makes an excellent webpage out of notebooks filled with equations.
IIRC MatCAD does too, but I didn't like the way it did[n't] do
higher than 1st degree derivatives like d2v/dt2.

I use the PDFWriter than accompanies Adobe Acrobat as a virtual
printer... "prints" directly from my schematic capture, and DOES make
searchable text.

But I have other needs where print-to-GIF would be highly desirable.

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

[Paul Hovnanian P.E.]

While we're on this topic, are there any industry wide attempts to
develop an XML schema for component data sheets?

Theoretically, this would make putting component data into databases,
making it easily searchable on various parameters, etc.

In practice, it would make for some interesting fights between various
vendors and other interested parties which could provide us all with
months of entertainment.

--
Paul Hovnanian mailtoaul@Hovnanian.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
The ark was skippered by amateurs, the Titanic was skippered by
professionals.