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BarryMead · (This post was last modified: 04-10-2015 06:41 AM by BarryMead.)

(04-10-2015 05:51 AM)Thomas_Sch Wrote: This way the customer gets real ownership.

How does this work. Is it an offline viewable LOCKED PDF that won't open without a password? I have seen these too. If that is the case one could potentially encode the password into a desktop icon so that it seems painless to open the PDF. I don't know if the pdf viewers provide a means of passing a password command line parameter into the viewer or not. Has anyone had success with icon-opening such a locked PDF?

Even if you had to manually look up and type in the password each time you view the PDF document, it would be
better than depending on an online website that may go out of business and take your product ownership with it.

Marcus von Cube · (This post was last modified: 04-10-2015 07:44 AM by Marcus von Cube.)

Why not just rely on the honesty of the intended audience?

Let's face it: Who is willing to read the manual anyway? It's the owners of a WP 34S, a labor of love of a small group of people that is widely honored by its "customers" not only by positive feedback or even collaboration but by direct support through donations or buying a ready made device, e. g. from Eric.

So what can go wrong with the electronic manual? Nothing serious, I'm sure. If some kind of protection is required than only against modifying the PDF. This can be done with standard PDF means such as PDF/A. If it's necessary to buy Acrobat to create -not read- such a document, it's solely Walter's decision if its worth the hassle and expense. (I doubt it.)

Serious WP 34S owners will buy or have bought the printed copy anyway. This will give some return of investment to the author regardless of the availability of the soft copy version.

Just my 0,02€.

[Edited for typos.]

Thomas_Sch · (This post was last modified: 04-10-2015 08:04 AM by Thomas_Sch.)

(04-10-2015 06:37 AM)BarryMead Wrote:
(04-10-2015 05:51 AM)Thomas_Sch Wrote: This way the customer gets real ownership.
How does this work. Is it an offline viewable LOCKED PDF that won't open without a password? I have seen these too. If that is the case one could potentially encode the password into a desktop icon so that it seems painless to open the PDF. I don't know if the pdf viewers provide a means of passing a password command line parameter into the viewer or not. Has anyone had success with icon-opening such a locked PDF?

Even if you had to manually look up and type in the password each time you view the PDF document, it would be
better than depending on an online website that may go out of business and take your product ownership with it.

Hello Barry,

in this example above (among others a really good book for astronomers, http://www.praxelius.de/inhalte/astronomie.htm) the password for opening the pdf has to be entered in the viewer. In my case (Win7/Linux notebook from Lenovo), my build in password manager either in a Lenovo tool or in the pdf-reader (Sumatra PDF) remembers the password for later reopening.

Thomas_Sch · 04-10-2015, 08:02 AM

(04-10-2015 07:41 AM)Marcus von Cube Wrote: Why not just rely on the honesty of the intended audience?

Let's face it: Who is willing to read the manual anyway? It's the owners of a WP 34S, a labor of love of a small group of people that is widely honored by its "customers" not only by positive feedback or even collaboration but by direct support through donations or buying a ready made device, e. g. from Eric.

So what can go wrong with the electronic manual? Nothing serious, I'm sure. If some kind of protection is required than only against modifying the PDF. This can be done with standard PDF means such as PDF/A. If it's necessary to buy Acrobat to create -not read- such a document, it's solely Walter's decision if its worth the hassle and expense. (I doubt it.)

Serious WP 34S owners will buy or have bought the printed copy anyway. This will give some return of investment to the author regardless of the availability of the soft copy version.

Just my 0,02€.

[Edited for typos.]

+1 !

walter b · 04-10-2015, 08:35 AM

In principle I agree with you. I just remember a few furious inhabitants of southern mountains I'm not so sure about their intentions and understanding. And you know: as soon as it's on the net, it's in the world. Thus better think twice.

d:-/

jebem · 04-10-2015, 11:10 AM

(04-10-2015 08:35 AM)walter b Wrote: In principle I agree with you. I just remember a few furious inhabitants of southern mountains I'm not so sure about their intentions and understanding. And you know: as soon as it's on the net, it's in the world. Thus better think twice.

d

While I understand your concern, if i were in your place I wouldn't be so sure that my intellectual property is not being stolen as we speak...

Anyone really wanting to copy your book, already did it. They do not need a PDF format book to do that.
A copy of your paperback book, a auto-feeder scanner reader, a OCR reader program (like ABBY Fine Reader) to create a MS Word document, and voila.

walter b · 04-10-2015, 11:25 AM

(04-10-2015 11:10 AM)jebem Wrote:
(04-10-2015 08:35 AM)walter b Wrote: In principle I agree with you. I just remember a few furious inhabitants of southern mountains I'm not so sure about their intentions and understanding. And you know: as soon as it's on the net, it's in the world. Thus better think twice.

While I understand your concern, if i were in your place I wouldn't be so sure that my intellectual property is not being stolen as we speak...

Anyone really wanting to copy your book, already did it. They do not need a PDF format book to do that.
A copy of your paperback book, a auto-feeder scanner reader, a OCR reader program (like ABBY Fine Reader) to create a MS Word document, and voila.

Again I concur in principle. The devil, however, is in the detail - graphics, tables, etc.

d:-)

Sanjeev Visvanatha · 04-10-2015, 12:22 PM

I fear the good intention of the pdf manual will get marred by over thinking the 'security' issue. I agree with Marcus' post above. Put a watermark on each page with the user's name, restrict editing and printing, and be done with it. I have no interest in distributing a pdf maliciously. Also remember there is nothing to stop someone from buying a printed manual, scanning with OCR and spreading it on the net. Could we keep the solution simple and rely on professionalism here?

**rprosperi** · 04-10-2015, 12:54 PM

(04-10-2015 12:22 PM)Sanjeev Visvanatha Wrote: I fear the good intention of the pdf manual will get marred by over thinking the 'security' issue. I agree with Marcus' post above. Put a watermark on each page with the user's name, restrict editing and printing, and be done with it. I have no interest in distributing a pdf maliciously. Also remember there is nothing to stop someone from buying a printed manual, scanning with OCR and spreading it on the net. Could we keep the solution simple and rely on professionalism here?

Agree with Sanjeev, and well-said. PDF copies should definitely be marked with the original owner's name to avoid casual copying of the file, but that's sufficient, IMHO. Easily > 100 copies can be quickly sold, and while no one will retire on that, the proceeds will more than cover the effort to mark and email the files, plus add a little for the devteam to share.

I also think sooner is better, while interest in Walter's new tutorial is high, the new 34S features from Bit are being explored and before interest shifts to the 43S.

BarryMead · 04-10-2015, 05:13 PM

(04-10-2015 12:54 PM)rprosperi Wrote: I Agree with Sanjeev, and well-said. PDF copies should definitely be marked with the original owner's name to avoid casual copying of the file, but that's sufficient, IMHO. Easily > 100 copies can be quickly sold, and while no one will retire on that, the proceeds will more than cover the effort to mark and email the files, plus add a little for the devteam to share.

I also think sooner is better, while interest in Walter's new tutorial is high, the new 34S features from Bit are being explored and before interest shifts to the 43S.

Me too

jpcuzzourt · 10-15-2019, 01:45 PM

(04-10-2015 05:13 PM)BarryMead Wrote:
(04-10-2015 12:54 PM)rprosperi Wrote: I Agree with Sanjeev, and well-said. PDF copies should definitely be marked with the original owner's name to avoid casual copying of the file, but that's sufficient, IMHO. Easily > 100 copies can be quickly sold, and while no one will retire on that, the proceeds will more than cover the effort to mark and email the files, plus add a little for the devteam to share.

I also think sooner is better, while interest in Walter's new tutorial is high, the new 34S features from Bit are being explored and before interest shifts to the 43S.
Me too

I just received my 34S V3.3 manual (PDF) from Dr. Bonin. It has my name on each page [good], but also displays a yellow watermark diagonally across every page [not so good]. Maybe I'll learn to ignore it, but I find it very annoying as I'm trying to read and absorb the information.

It it possible to turn it off? I've done my best at searching for an option for it, but I'm only finding third-party hacks. I just want a clean copy to read. After reading these posts I see there is a lot of concern for security of the document. I get that. But from a useability perspective I find the watermark objectionable if I cannot turn it off.

I hope I'm just missing a simple [view]-->[watermarks]-->[off] option in Acrobat Reader DC for Windows. (Yes, I'm currently using Windows for the time being.)

Any help from our community is greatly appreciated. Even if it's only commiserating. :-)

JP

toml_12953 · 10-15-2019, 02:16 PM

(04-08-2015 08:28 AM)BarryMead Wrote: A while back there was a discussion about making the searchable PDF manual Version 3.3 available for a fair price.here
The number $9.00 US Dollars was mentioned, and there was significant interest by several members of the community in purchasing a searchable PDF version of the latest manual at that price. Walter had indicated that this option might be acceptable to him if he could SECURELY ENCODE the name of each purchaser into the PDF download to track illegal sharing and copyright infringement. I was wondering if any progress has been made in rolling out this purchasing option? Will this PDF purchasing option be offered? If so can you give us a guess as to when it might be available?

Thanks, Barry

There's really no way to do that. Any PDF can be unlocked by visiting one of many websites that automatically unlock them and remove the password. Once that is done, any watermarks or identification can be removed simply.

burkhard · (This post was last modified: 10-15-2019 03:23 PM by burkhard.)

(10-15-2019 01:45 PM)jpcuzzourt Wrote: I just received my 34S V3.3 manual (PDF) from Dr. Bonin. It has my name on each page [good], but also displays a yellow watermark diagonally across every page [not so good]. Maybe I'll learn to ignore it, but I find it very annoying as I'm trying to read and absorb the information.

Yeah, I feel your pain. I gently complained about that to Walter also, but he was most adamant about needing it to remain. Personally, I think that with EVERY PAGE having my name (spelled wrong as it turns out...) in the footer, I things are pretty safe. Is anyone going to take the effort to cover up his name on 339 pages in order to pirate the manual to a small user base? Unlikely.

I do wish that is something they reconsider, certainly for the futureware WP43S, if it follows the same business model for its manual. I do think the WP34S is a great calculator and a fantastic example of a successful worldwide collaboration enthusiast project. I've bought both the hard manual and also the PDF in order to support the teams' expenses a bit. It's truly a fine manual, too... The PDF is very handy for cntl-F searching. I'm fairly reasonable... The (misspelt) name in the footer is fine; it's only that giant killer watermark that drives me a bit batty and really detracts from the work. It's like an architect designing an elegant mansion with great attention to detail and then spray-painting his firm's name over the whole front of the completed facade.

jpcuzzourt · 10-15-2019, 05:24 PM

(10-15-2019 01:45 PM)jpcuzzourt Wrote: I just received my 34S V3.3 manual (PDF) from Dr. Bonin. It has my name on each page [good], but also displays a yellow watermark diagonally across every page [not so good]. Maybe I'll learn to ignore it, but I find it very annoying as I'm trying to read and absorb the information.

(10-15-2019 02:16 PM)toml_12953 Wrote: There's really no way to do that. Any PDF can be unlocked by visiting one of many websites that automatically unlock them and remove the password. Once that is done, any watermarks or identification can be removed simply.

(10-15-2019 03:21 PM)burkhard Wrote: Yeah, I feel your pain. I gently complained about that to Walter also, but he was most adamant about needing it to remain. Personally, I think that with EVERY PAGE having my name (spelled wrong as it turns out...) in the footer, I things are pretty safe. Is anyone going to take the effort to cover up his name on 339 pages in order to pirate the manual to a small user base? Unlikely.

I do wish that is something they reconsider, certainly for the futureware WP43S, if it follows the same business model for its manual. I do think the WP34S is a great calculator and a fantastic example of a successful worldwide collaboration enthusiast project. I've bought both the hard manual and also the PDF in order to support the teams' expenses a bit. It's truly a fine manual, too... The PDF is very handy for cntl-F searching. I'm fairly reasonable... The (misspelt) name in the footer is fine; it's only that giant killer watermark that drives me a bit batty and really detracts from the work. It's like an architect designing an elegant mansion with great attention to detail and then spray-painting his firm's name over the whole front of the completed facade.

I agree completely. Well, at least I have the comfort of knowing I'm not suffering with it from my own ignorance. Big Grin

Thanks for the replies guys!