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**rprosperi** · 12-11-2018, 03:21 PM

I discovered that this great website, with easily the best online HP manuals ever, will be closing down, apparently permanently, on Christmas day. I confirmed this is true with the site's author.

Please take one last look at these great manuals, obviously a labor of great love.

http://www.greendyk.nl/

If you are not yet familiar with these, feel free to take a look anyhow... though it will frustrate you as well that it is ending so soon.

wallyt · 12-11-2018, 03:36 PM

This is really terrible news for such a great website! Could he make the files available for download before he stops operation?

DavidM · 12-11-2018, 05:14 PM

Did the owner say why it was being shut down?

It appears that the Internet Archive (aka Wayback Machine) is blocked from crawling the pages, so there's apparently no current backup there.

You're right -- that collection is very obviously a labor of love. It represents a lot of work to have transcribed not only the text but also the graphics of those manuals. Even some of the graphical elements have embedded text in them (instead of graphical representations of the text). I can only guess at the amount of work someone put into those reconstructions (my guess: an extraordinary amount).

Obviously there are technical options to capture the data behind the pages, but I wonder if the author won't (or perhaps can't legally) support that being done. Either way, it does seem a shame to lose these gems.

burkhard · 12-11-2018, 05:17 PM

(12-11-2018 03:36 PM)wallyt Wrote: This is really terrible news for such a great website! Could he make the files available for download before he stops operation?

Are there files / manuals there which are not already on the MoHPC archive as PDFs? Is not everything already covered?

I always thought the greendyk.nl site looked great (and obviously took a lot of effort to so format), but felt standard downloadable, searchable, scrollable PDFs were so much easier to actually use.

Maybe I just wasn't using his site properly?

**rprosperi** · 12-11-2018, 06:19 PM

These manuals look magnificent; as I said the best online manuals (of any kind) I've ever seen, though by 'best' here I mean simply most like the originals. There is a search feature built-in, though you must of course be online to access them.

The content is not static, so it's not possible to simply copy the content; it's an actual dynamic webpage being generated as you use it. In fact, attempts to retrieve it (e.g. via wget) are detected and blocked, including IP block. So it's not only beautiful, it's sophisticated too.

Not only all the HP stuff, plus another love of mine: Thunderbirds are GO!

I'm not sure why the owner has chosen to shut it down, I inquired about offering to move the content, but as he is not the copyright owner, he rightly declined to do so (and while I do respect his decision, it still makes me sad).

Just wanted to pass along the news...

John Colvin · 12-11-2018, 07:18 PM

There are pdfs of some of these manuals that are available and downloadable on
line but the ones I've seen don't have the complete color graphics that the
greendyk website has. The pages of his manuals can be downloaded individually
and saved locally if you want to go to all that trouble, but I don't see anyway
of downloading the manuals otherwise.

morex · 12-11-2018, 07:36 PM

Un trabajo increíble, que no yo no conocía.
¡Una pena que desaparezca!

An incredible job, which I did not know.
A pity that it disappears!

franz.b · 12-11-2018, 07:41 PM

we could use programs (or sites) like http://www.httrack.com/

**rprosperi** · 12-11-2018, 08:15 PM

(12-11-2018 07:41 PM)franz.b Wrote: we could use programs (or sites) like http://www.httrack.com/

Great, didn't know that one, thanks for the info.

Let us know how it goes...

KimH · 12-11-2018, 08:25 PM

(12-11-2018 03:21 PM)rprosperi Wrote: I discovered that this great website, with easily the best online HP manuals ever, will be closing down, apparently permanently, on Christmas day. I confirmed this is true with the site's author.

Please take one last look at these great manuals, obviously a labor of great love.

http://www.greendyk.nl/

If you are not yet familiar with these, feel free to take a look anyhow... though it will frustrate you as well that it is ending so soon.

If I had the (many) individual files I would be able to combine them into one PDF and make it available where desired.

Is it possible to get rhe PDFs, then I would be happy to do this?

/KimH

Thomas Okken · 12-11-2018, 08:29 PM

(12-11-2018 06:19 PM)rprosperi Wrote: The content is not static, so it's not possible to simply copy the content; it's an actual dynamic webpage being generated as you use it. In fact, attempts to retrieve it (e.g. via wget) are detected and blocked, including IP block. So it's not only beautiful, it's sophisticated too.

That must be something he added at some later date. I have a snapshot of that site, which it looks like I took in 2009. I'm pretty sure I used wget, and didn't have to do anything tricky, but the URLs in the snapshot look different, e.g. http://www.greendyk.nl/hp41c-manual/func...-start.htm not http://www.greendyk.nl/hp41c-manual/index.php?m=J&p=85

**rprosperi** · 12-11-2018, 08:57 PM

(12-11-2018 08:29 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote: That must be something he added at some later date. I have a snapshot of that site, which it looks like I took in 2009. I'm pretty sure I used wget, and didn't have to do anything tricky, but the URLs in the snapshot look different, e.g. http://www.greendyk.nl/hp41c-manual/func...-start.htm not http://www.greendyk.nl/hp41c-manual/index.php?m=J&p=85

Interesting... I agree, it appears that while visually the same (or nearly so) the earlier, unprotected version was later wrapped with some active session mgmt. stuff, possibly simply to protect it. I know I got caught, stopped, spanked and was IP-banned until I sheepishly requested to be allowed back in a couple years ago when I tried to copy one of the manuals using wget (or something similar - it may have been a website copier tool similar to that posted above). IIRC, a certain active member from Italy also was able to get a copy of at least some of the manuals, but also many years ago. Perhaps when the owner noted it was being copied, he opted for 'shields-up' to prevent it?

Raymond Del Tondo · (This post was last modified: 12-11-2018 09:23 PM by Raymond Del Tondo.)

(12-11-2018 08:29 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:
(12-11-2018 06:19 PM)rprosperi Wrote: The content is not static, so it's not possible to simply copy the content; it's an actual dynamic webpage being generated as you use it. In fact, attempts to retrieve it (e.g. via wget) are detected and blocked, including IP block. So it's not only beautiful, it's sophisticated too.

That must be something he added at some later date. I have a snapshot of that site, which it looks like I took in 2009. I'm pretty sure I used wget, and didn't have to do anything tricky, but the URLs in the snapshot look different, e.g. http://www.greendyk.nl/hp41c-manual/func...-start.htm not http://www.greendyk.nl/hp41c-manual/index.php?m=J&p=85

Even in 2014 it was downloadable via WGET...
A later online version seems to have added some more navigation buttons on the top and bottom of the page, and some style tuning incl. slight color and font adjustments, however the manual contents look the same at first view.

Thomas Okken · 12-11-2018, 09:24 PM

(12-11-2018 08:57 PM)rprosperi Wrote: Perhaps when the owner noted it was being copied, he opted for 'shields-up' to prevent it?

Could be he simply wanted to limit the amount of traffic. When a site becomes too popular, the hosting provider may come a-knocking and raising your rent. It's happened to me, too!

I didn't take a complete snaphot of greendyk.nl, I just got the 41C manual, 41C quick reference, and card reader manual, which adds up to less than 10 MB uncompressed. I hope that didn't push the site into a more expensive tier...

(My main interest in this was to give the HP-42S manual the same treatment, but since I'd never be able to distribute it legally, that idea went nowhere.)

Thomas Okken · 12-11-2018, 09:36 PM

FWIW, the Internet Archive appears to have some pretty recent, and complete, snapshots.

tcab · 12-11-2018, 10:57 PM

(12-11-2018 09:36 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote: FWIW, the Internet Archive appears to have some pretty recent, and complete, snapshots.

It seems so - just checked e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/201804211333...dyk.nl:80/

Perhaps most HP calculator websites will only be accessible via the wayback machine in 20-30 years time, after the dying breed (as Tim. W put it) moves on...

Massimo Gnerucci · 12-12-2018, 07:34 AM

(12-11-2018 08:57 PM)rprosperi Wrote:
(12-11-2018 08:29 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote: That must be something he added at some later date. I have a snapshot of that site, which it looks like I took in 2009. I'm pretty sure I used wget, and didn't have to do anything tricky, but the URLs in the snapshot look different, e.g. http://www.greendyk.nl/hp41c-manual/func...-start.htm not http://www.greendyk.nl/hp41c-manual/index.php?m=J&p=85

Interesting... I agree, it appears that while visually the same (or nearly so) the earlier, unprotected version was later wrapped with some active session mgmt. stuff, possibly simply to protect it. I know I got caught, stopped, spanked and was IP-banned until I sheepishly requested to be allowed back in a couple years ago when I tried to copy one of the manuals using wget (or something similar - it may have been a website copier tool similar to that posted above). IIRC, a certain active member from Italy also was able to get a copy of at least some of the manuals, but also many years ago. Perhaps when the owner noted it was being copied, he opted for 'shields-up' to prevent it?

Ahem... Here I am.
Yes, I downloaded them years ago, using httrak. Got caught and IP banned :) and, many moons later, forgiven an re-allowed.
I always used a very low bandwidth thereafter, and that allowed me to update my copies.

Very sad news, indeed.

Thomas_Sch · 12-12-2018, 08:25 AM

(12-11-2018 09:36 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote: FWIW, the Internet Archive appears to have some pretty recent, and complete, snapshots.

Maybe there are not all pages of each chapter archived.
e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/201802281124...?s=N&p=177 (ok) --> https://web.archive.org/web/201812112134...?m=J&p=180 -->
"The Wayback Machine has not archived that URL."

Garth Wilson · 12-12-2018, 09:00 AM

I wish the site would remain; however, regarding its methods, I think it is quite unadmirable that someone would take measures to keep this information from being disseminated far and wide to help keep these machines alive. That leaves a bad taste in my mouth! So now he's shutting it down and doesn't even want Wayback Machine backups?! On a forum that's focused on the main thrust of my own site, I have asked people to back it up occasionally so the service to the community is not lost should anything happen to me; and a few have done so.

Maximilian Hohmann · 12-12-2018, 11:09 AM

Good morning,

two things:

1. I have plenty of non-bandwidth-limited webspace left in my package. If the author of the greendyk.nl site reads this forum and is interested, I would let him use as much of it as he requires to keep his resources online.
2. As good and complete as these online manuals are, I personally prefer them to be downloadable as a single file (.pdf or .epub) for offline reading on a portable device in a dedicated reader app. As it is now, online access and a web browser are required to access these documents.

Regards
Max