[sdiy] Manuals

[Dump Static]

Kind of related...  

One thing that I wish companies would do better with is the updating of manuals.  Most music equipment can be updated via software/firmware/ROM updates, and of course that requires a manual update to include the new features.

If the manual was in a three-ring binder (which makes it easy to add/remove pages, even in the middle), and the manual was laid out with lots of page breaks, it would be easy for updates to consist of a few pages (which could be delivered as PDFs) to be swapped out with the originals.

It drives me nuts to have "addendums" and "add these two paragraphs to page 347" papers floating around.

So (for example) when the one page section on Clock Division Setup changed, the updated version would fit on one page (even with the new information, since the original one left plenty of extra space at the bottom of the page!) and I could just throw away the original page and replace it with the new one.

Yes, leaving blank space at the end of each section wastes a bit of paper, but having to produce an entirely new manual (when 90% is unchanged) is even more of a waste  :)

Drew T. Robot

>>> Seb Francis <seb at burnit.co.uk> 08/21/07 6:14 AM >>>
We regularly get spiral bound manuals printed (for training courses - 
not SDIY related), and we just use a standard copy-shop and give them 
the manual on PDF.  They have machines that automatically do the 
printing and binding.

I just had a look at the cost of last lot we printed and it was:
2.2p per black & white side (for qnty 5810 sides, gets a bit cheaper for 
larger quantities)
Plus £1 per binding (metal spiral type that does lie flat when open, 
with plastic front cover)

Oddly enough the cost per side doesn't change if you print single or 
double sided (obviously the cost of the paper is not significant).

Seb



David J. Hughes wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Is anyone here producing their own equipment manuals?
>
> Ours are fairly large (> 150 pages) and, imho, look quite professional.
> They're bound with a plastic comb binder, which the customers seem to like
> but the whole process is very labour intensive.
>
> Is there a better way?
>
> Cheers
>     David
>
>   

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