Electronic ASL Rulebook Now on Sale!!

Rock SgtDan

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Great idea: the EXCs in yellow, the EXs in brown, the rule number themselves in pink, the titles of the rule paragraphs in orange, words defined in the index could be cyan, the punctuation green, the important phrases magenta--just imagine how readable the eASLRB could be made to be!
Yellow and sometimes orange is completely illegible on some screens, under some lighting conditions.
Best would be for the user to be able to pick what colors denote what sort of items.
 

76mm

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Table of Contents/Bookmarks:
Thanks, but I gather this is on your computer? I thought you meant it was on your tablet. Still useful to know though, so thanks.
 

Bill Kohler

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Great idea: the EXCs in yellow, the EXs in brown, the rule number themselves in pink, the titles of the rule paragraphs in orange, words defined in the index could be cyan, the punctuation green, the important phrases magenta--just imagine how readable the eASLRB could be made to be!
Yellow and sometimes orange is completely illegible on some screens, under some lighting conditions.
Best would be for the user to be able to pick what colors denote what sort of items.
I guess I wasn't clear in my original post: I was (attempting to) go way over the top to make a point that adding color to the already-heavily-formatted ASLRB text wouldn't help readability--it would only hurt it.

IMO there's enough formatting in the ASLRB text--and I think to good effect. But more effects--color, or font face changes, or font size increases, or underlining, or dashed underlining, or text blinking on and off--would only harm readability. There's already enough italics, (), [], DEFENDER, DR/dr, 38A3-B2-A2, C2.2401, FFNAM, Defensive First Fire (capitalized words), PFPh, 7.35 (bolding of rule paragraph numbers), footnotes, smaller font EXs, odd symbols (triangles, 5-pointed stars), etc. in the text--all of it meaning something very precise. It's like with food: a dish can only handle a limited number of different spices: at some point, if you throw in more, you get a mess. There's a reason reputable newspapers, magazines, novels, physics books, and news sites don't scatter color all through their paragraphs: it's a pain to read.
 
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Rock SgtDan

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Since the user's copy is watermarked, can the user make formatting modifications like adding a carriage return to separate run-on sentences into separate lines? Even if so, probably would require the user to pay the usurous fee to Adobe to get more than a reader. I detest the PDF format...
 

Rock SgtDan

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I guess I wasn't clear in my original post: I was (attempting to) go way over the top to make a point that adding color to the already-heavily-formatted ASLRB text doesn't help readability in the slightest--it only hurts readability. Add much more, and you'll only get total sensory overload.

IMO there's already enough formatting stuff crammed into the ASLRB text--and I think to good effect. But piling on any more effects...would only harm readability....
Digital documents CAN allow the owner to control all that, to make it what the reader wants. Still waiting for my jet pack, too. I'd like to be able to toggle between italics and a colored font, for example. It would instantly highlight the particular information I want to concentrate on. I also like a lot of white space between lines, and to add blank lines to visually separate information within the terribly complex paragraphs.

Do the logical pages in the eASLRB PDF correspond 1:1 to the physical pages? Hope not.
 

Bill Kohler

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Digital documents CAN allow the owner to control all that, to make it what the reader wants. . . . I'd like to be able to toggle between italics and a colored font, for example.
I think this would be great: if the first page allowed the reader to select various highlighting/ color choices (as long as the eASLRB could remember those choices): I would turn most/all of them off--but I could see how some readers might like it.

Do the logical pages in the eASLRB PDF correspond 1:1 to the physical pages? Hope not.
I think they do, actually. In fact I think that was one of the points: for MMP to have one master document that they could publish at will as ASLRB, pASLRB, eASLRB. (I think that's a wise way to go.)
 
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Bill Kohler

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Hmm, then if I buy software that lets me edit the PDF, I can add, say, blank lines, and "logical page 7" just becomes longer, it will not "bleed over" into the next logical page. Good.
I may have misunderstood you before: I believe page A3 in the eASLRB will correspond exactly to page A3 in the pASLRB and page A3 in the ASLRB when they are next printed--that's all I meant.

(As for "logical pages", I'm not sure what you mean by that and doubt I could answer your specific question even if I did, as I probably lack the technical expertise to do so.)
 
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BigAl737

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There is one very good thing about the .pdf format from my perspective, and that is that pretty much every device can read it: tablets, cell phones, Kindles, desktops, tricorders, laptops, etc.
“tricorders”...cracked me up 😀
 

Rock SgtDan

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(As for "logical pages", I'm not sure what you mean by that and doubt I could answer your specific question even if I did, as I probably lack the technical expertise to do so.)
in acrobat reader, under Prefs/ page display / page content/
you can check "use logical page numbers"

& any device can read ASCII text - which is all that is necessary for 99% of all documents.

If “Go to Page” shows the wrong page of a PDF in Preview on Mac
In some PDFs, the pages are labeled with numbers that don’t match the actual positions of the pages in the document. For example, in some documents, the first five pages are labeled with roman numerals i-v, and the remaining pages are labeled with Arabic numerals starting with 1, so the page labeled “1” is actually the sixth page in the document. In this case, the logical page number is “1” and the page’s position is sixth.

If the “Go to Page” command in Preview doesn’t display the page you expected, it might be because the document is set up to use logical page numbers.
 

Philippe D.

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What are good options for viewing this on an iPad? Currently I only have the standard "Books" app, and while it works fine for linear reading, the table of contents is displayed with one line for each single rule, making it pretty difficult to use - one would need hierarchical display, with the displayed level chosen by some toggle, like many file explorers will do (the TOC is, after all, a treelike thing). I would also need easily accessible "back" and "forward" buttons.

(I have seen Goodreader mentioned here, but since it's not a free app I'd like to know whether it has the features I am looking for before I buy it)

On my (Linux) laptop, the standard PDF reader evince works fine, and okular has a better standard of not switching to the default display mode when changing pages, and pretty good hierarchical display of the TOC. It has a "back" function, but not visible on the default toolbar - though it's easy enough to reconfigure.

One thing I am not sure is whether the hyperlinks are supposed to link just to pages, or to places within the pages - when I use one, it seems to only link to the page, so when I am zoomed in it doesn't go to the relevant part of the new page (and when the link is to the same page, it doesn't do anything).

But really, my main problem is that the PDF rulebook is still laid out in two columns. This makes sense for the full-sized binder, much less so for the pocket rulebook, and it is pure nonsense on a file that is destined to be read on a device. On my iPad 2, zooming to a single column makes the characters slightly larger than in my original 1st ed. rulebook (and let's face it, my eyes are not what they were in the early 90's, so a slightly larger font size isn't that bad); but moving to a different page resets to full page mode, and scrolling in a zoomed in page is pretty clumsy (down, then right and up... oh wait, was I on the second column already?). Single column would be soooo much easier - or even better, an HTML-based format with no artificial separation between pages.

From a short email discussion with Scott, I understand that this two-column mode won't go away because it would require redoing the whole layout of the rulebook - something I don't understand too well, because this should really be done by software (and even if the result isn't 100% professional, it's not a big deal IMHO - readability should trump looks, at least in the electronic version). Again, Web browsers do a reasonably good job of laying out long linear HTML documents and giving the user the choice of display size. I understand the appeal of PDF because there are so many available readers on all kinds of platforms, but I still think that reading on conventional (landscape mode) computer screens would be way easier in an HTML-like format.

I also like to read PDF documents on a low-power device (10 inch eink tablet) which has a much better battery life than my iPad, and on which reading for a long time is much less tiring on the eyes; but with a two-column layout and very slow zooming, it would be unusable for such a large document.
 

Gordon

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Has anyone figured out how to add bookmarks to the eRB using Foxit on a tablet? The "Bookmark" icon in the top menu bar is greyed out. TIA
 

Rock SgtDan

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One thing I am not sure is whether the hyperlinks are supposed to link just to pages, or to places within the pages - when I use one, it seems to only link to the page, so when I am zoomed in it doesn't go to the relevant part of the new page (and when the link is to the same page, it doesn't do anything).

But really, my main problem is that the PDF rulebook is still laid out in two columns.
Not one but two automatic fails for the product. Too typical.
 

holdit

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Has anyone figured out how to add bookmarks to the eRB using Foxit on a tablet? The "Bookmark" icon in the top menu bar is greyed out. TIA
I don't have a tablet, but on my Android phone there is a toolbar at the bottom that appears if you tap anywhere on the page. The left-most icon that looks like bullet-pointed lines brings up a page that just has a title "ASL Rulebook", but if you tap the arrow to the right of that, the TOC of chapters appears, and each can be similarly expanded.

HTH...
 

Gordon

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I don't have a tablet, but on my Android phone there is a toolbar at the bottom that appears if you tap anywhere on the page. The left-most icon that looks like bullet-pointed lines brings up a page that just has a title "ASL Rulebook", but if you tap the arrow to the right of that, the TOC of chapters appears, and each can be similarly expanded.

HTH...
Yeah, I've got that, I'd like to have a few specific bookmarks to "hot zone" pages that I'll be frequently visiting.
 
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