Is it just me, or does everyone else hate working from electronic service
manuals? Yes, I know that it's very convenient to be able to download
manuals from manufacturers, and to be able to trade them around, but boy, do
they make our life hard, or what ?

Today, I have been working on a Pioneer semi pro mixer desk. The manual is
on CDROM and is 176 pages long, so not practical to print the whole thing
out. It has been created using 'virtual A4' sheets, so the many big complex
diagrams, such as the DSP board, have been spread across multiple
disconnected pages. Helpfully (Ha!) they have put little diagrams at the
left side of the sheets to indicate that what you are looking at is a big
sheet, that they've kindly rendered into little sheets for you ...

So as well as having to follow signal and power lines between 'real' pages,
as you would have to in a paper manual, but which was easy to do, because it
told you exactly where to go looking for the line's carry-on, you also have
to follow these lines across broken up sheets, with little indication as to
where you will find the carry-on. All in all, I wasted about an hour and a
half, staring at a computer screen, zooming, de-zooming, rotating and
printing individual bits of the schematics and layouts, just to work out
where a couple of supply rails had disappeared to on the DSP board. If this
had been a proper Pioneer paper manual, the whole exercise would have been
trivial, taking perhaps 15 minutes total. Who pays for this wasted time ?

The initial problem is a couple of s.m. fuses that are open. Of course, they
are specials, so I have now got to go back to the manual to try to find part
numbers for them. There is also a problem with the VFD not illuminating now
that I have (tempoarily) restored the missing rails, so I suppose there is
now going to have to be another lengthy session, trying to sort out the
appropriate bits of schematic to get to the bottom of this fault ...

Sorry lads. rant over ... :-)

Arfa

All in all, I wasted about an hour and a half, staring at a
computer screen, zooming, de-zooming, rotating and
printing individual bits of the schematics and layouts,
just to work out where a couple of supply rails had
disappeared to on the DSP board. If this had been a
proper Pioneer paper manual, the whole exercise
would have been trivial, taking perhaps 15 minutes total.
Who pays for this wasted time ?

The customer, unfortunately. Pioneer isn't going to.


Sorry lads. rant over ... :-)

But a valid rant.

An electronic manual should actually be easier to traverse than a paper
manual, because there are no restrictions on page size or color. A bus or
rail can have a distinctive color that makes it easy to trace.

Arfa Daily wrote:
Today, I have been working on a Pioneer semi pro mixer desk. The manual is
on CDROM and is 176 pages long, so not practical to print the whole thing
out. It has been created using 'virtual A4' sheets, so the many big complex
diagrams, such as the DSP board, have been spread across multiple
disconnected pages. Helpfully (Ha!) they have put little diagrams at the
left side of the sheets to indicate that what you are looking at is a big
sheet, that they've kindly rendered into little sheets for you ...

I assume this is in PDF format?

There are some limitations to page size that you can (easily)
get into a PDF file. But, I have been able to coax my larger drawings
into PDFs so that they can remain intact. Then, you are stuck with
the fact that you are viewing the document through a "window" and
can't (quickly/easily) see where you are in the grand scheme
of things.

Try extracting the small pages, pasting them together and
then reimporting them to (another?) pdf. If the manufacturers
had compettent people doing their manuals for them... :

Try extracting the small pages, pasting them together and
then reimporting them to (another?) PDF. If the manufacturers
had competent people doing their manuals for them... :

AHEM I'm a techwriter, and they won't listen to me.

I just updated the firmware for my Sony BD player. The Website did not
explain how to access the new features. I had to call and have the question
escalated to level 2 before getting an answer.

William Sommerwerck wrote:
An electronic manual should actually be easier to traverse than a paper
manual, because there are no restrictions on page size or color. A bus or
rail can have a distinctive color that makes it easy to trace.

But you also need tools that are *intended* for this sort of use!
E.g., you "read" a schematic very differently than you read a
book! You often want to (rapidly and easily) flip between
several different places *on* a sheet and *between* sheets.
So you could have the source of a signal and (one) of its
loads, etc.

It seems like this is tedious, at best, using tools that
are intended for "general purpose documents".

Ideally, you should be able to open several windows into the
same document, resize them at will and maybe even *easily*
bind them to "hotkeys".

So, if you have a large virtual desktop, you could spread those
windows out across your desktop and just see the parts of the
schematic that are of interest to you AT THIS MOMENT.

Or, if you have a small desktop, you could position your fingers on
those "hot keys" so that you could easily flip between their
corresponding windows without having to take your eyes off
the screen (or shift your concentration away from the document)

William Sommerwerck wrote:
Try extracting the small pages, pasting them together and
then reimporting them to (another?) PDF. If the manufacturers
had competent people doing their manuals for them... :

AHEM I'm a techwriter, and they won't listen to me.

grin Sorry, it wasn't intended as a slam on "individuals".
Rather, the entire *process*.

Documentation is considered an afterthought in many firms.
Years ago, I adopted the approach of writing the *manual* for any
product that I designed *before* designing the product (!).
This serves several purposes:
- it becomes a concrete "specification" that will serve
to referee the products design (i.e., "What does the
manual say the product *should* do in this case?")
- it ensures the manual that is ultimately available to
the user *can* be very comprehensive (it is much easier
to take stuff out of an existing document than it is
to justify the time/expense of putting stuff *in*)
- it lets people "evaluate" a product before the product
exists
- it forces the designers to *think* about how they are
going to solve problems *before* they encounter them.
If the manual starts to read like a kludge, it is a sure
indication that the design is a kludge (and should be
rethought)

Years (decades) ago, manuals were very detailed. And,
products (especially the expensive ones) were designed to
facilitate troubleshooting, etc.

Nowadays, everything is viewed as disposable. :

I just updated the firmware for my Sony BD player. The Website did not
explain how to access the new features. I had to call and have the question
escalated to level 2 before getting an answer.


I'm surprised they even *supported* the firmware upgrade!
I think they count on consumers replacing kit every couple of years
so why bother adding any cost if a new model will be out...

:

"Arfa Daily" wrote in message
news
Is it just me, or does everyone else hate working from electronic service
manuals? Yes, I know that it's very convenient to be able to download
manuals from manufacturers, and to be able to trade them around, but boy,
do they make our life hard, or what ?

Today, I have been working on a Pioneer semi pro mixer desk. The manual is
on CDROM and is 176 pages long, so not practical to print the whole thing
out. It has been created using 'virtual A4' sheets, so the many big
complex diagrams, such as the DSP board, have been spread across multiple
disconnected pages. Helpfully (Ha!) they have put little diagrams at the
left side of the sheets to indicate that what you are looking at is a big
sheet, that they've kindly rendered into little sheets for you ...

So as well as having to follow signal and power lines between 'real'
pages, as you would have to in a paper manual, but which was easy to do,
because it told you exactly where to go looking for the line's carry-on,
you also have to follow these lines across broken up sheets, with little
indication as to where you will find the carry-on. All in all, I wasted
about an hour and a half, staring at a computer screen, zooming,
de-zooming, rotating and printing individual bits of the schematics and
layouts, just to work out where a couple of supply rails had disappeared
to on the DSP board. If this had been a proper Pioneer paper manual, the
whole exercise would have been trivial, taking perhaps 15 minutes total.
Who pays for this wasted time ?

The initial problem is a couple of s.m. fuses that are open. Of course,
they are specials, so I have now got to go back to the manual to try to
find part numbers for them. There is also a problem with the VFD not
illuminating now that I have (tempoarily) restored the missing rails, so I
suppose there is now going to have to be another lengthy session, trying
to sort out the appropriate bits of schematic to get to the bottom of this
fault ...

Sorry lads. rant over ... :-)

Arfa



When done right they are great. I can access them on my iphone, or do
searches for component locations, etc. When they are nothing more than a
scan to jpeg, they are a PITA.

Leonard

Documentation is considered an afterthought in many firms.
Years ago, I adopted the approach of writing the *manual* for
any product that I designed *before* designing the product (!).

The man who created "Mathematica" did exactly that. It is a terrific idea,
because it puts the focus on how the user interacts with the product, before
any code is written.


I just updated the firmware for my Sony BD player. The Website
did not explain how to access the new features. I had to call and
have the question escalated to level 2 before getting an answer.

I'm surprised they even *supported* the firmware upgrade!
I think they count on consumers replacing kit every couple of
years so why bother adding any cost if a new model will be out...

Some products have become so complex that manufacturers have no choice to
put the firmware in flash memory, so it can fixed if bugs or omissions are
found.

If Sony, et al, didn't provide updates, at least some customers would
complain. In this case, the BDP-S560 included freeze-frame and slow-motion
features missing from my BDP-S550. So it probably wasn't too hard to update
the earlier product.

My plasma TV and my digital SLRs (including the lenses!) use flash firmware.
I'm hoping the TV will be upgradeable to 3D (but who knows?). In the case of
the cameras, the manufacturers are correcting bugs and adding features. If
they didn't do this, there'd be a lot of kvetching from customers -- and
possibly class-action lawsuits.

In message , Arfa Daily
writes
Is it just me, or does everyone else hate working from electronic service
manuals? Yes, I know that it's very convenient to be able to download
manuals from manufacturers, and to be able to trade them around, but boy, do
they make our life hard, or what ?
Datasheets, service manuals, ebooks, all bloody horrible. Nothing like
having paper in your hands that you can open out on the bench, desk
whatever and follow the information/schematic.

So as well as having to follow signal and power lines between 'real' pages,
as you would have to in a paper manual, but which was easy to do, because it
told you exactly where to go looking for the line's carry-on, you also have
to follow these lines across broken up sheets
Ahh, no. Print the relevant pages out and join them up with sellotape to
make a proper schematic. If they won't join then print them anyway and
have at it with a set of highlighters or pencil crayons so you can see
at a glance which sheet the lines go to.

Sorry lads. rant over ... :-)
No problem, it's a regular one here, I know plenty of people who hate
electronic documentation, we used to go through toner and binding
supplies like mad at our office. Some of it was even work related.

Arfa



--
Clint Sharp

William Sommerwerck wrote:
Documentation is considered an afterthought in many firms.
Years ago, I adopted the approach of writing the *manual* for
any product that I designed *before* designing the product (!).

The man who created "Mathematica" did exactly that. It is a terrific
idea, because it puts the focus on how the user interacts with the
product, before any code is written.



I totally agree with that approach. Waaay back when I was writing database
applications for a living, I found that writing the user manual and
designing the reports before starting the coding made life MUCH easier for
me. It gave me the logical flow of the program, the user interface and most
of the database design up front, where it's easiest to change and get
customer approval with least impact on the project.

--
Dave M
masondg44 at comcast dot net

On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:21:59 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

All in all, I wasted about an hour and a half, staring at a
computer screen, zooming, de-zooming, rotating and
printing individual bits of the schematics and layouts,
just to work out where a couple of supply rails had
disappeared to on the DSP board. If this had been a
proper Pioneer paper manual, the whole exercise
would have been trivial, taking perhaps 15 minutes total.
Who pays for this wasted time ?

The customer, unfortunately. Pioneer isn't going to.


Sorry lads. rant over ... :-)

But a valid rant.

An electronic manual should actually be easier to traverse than a paper
manual, because there are no restrictions on page size or color. A bus or
rail can have a distinctive color that makes it easy to trace.


Automotive wiring diagrams confound me.

--
Boris

Automotive wiring diagrams confound me.

Especially when they're wrong. A few years back I was helping a neighbor
troubleshoot a problem with his Volkswagen Golf. We simply couldn't figure
out why the schematic appeared to be wrong, when it occurred to me that
perhaps it /was/ wrong. We found the correct schematic under another model,
and fixed the problem.

William Sommerwerck wrote:
Documentation is considered an afterthought in many firms.
Years ago, I adopted the approach of writing the *manual* for
any product that I designed *before* designing the product (!).

The man who created "Mathematica" did exactly that. It is a terrific idea,
because it puts the focus on how the user interacts with the product, before
any code is written.

I think it results in a more robust product. It is a relatively
well-contained (temporally) task so you can remember almost
everything that you have written/defined even while you are
putting on the finishing touches. So, inconsistencies are
usually fresh in your mind: "Gee, I did something LIKE
this someplace else but did it *differently*; why?"

The same sort of approach also applies to things that don't
have "traditional" user-interfaces. E.g., creating an API
that another programmer might have to "use" -- even though
the END user never is aware of it.

I just updated the firmware for my Sony BD player. The Website
did not explain how to access the new features. I had to call and
have the question escalated to level 2 before getting an answer.

I'm surprised they even *supported* the firmware upgrade!
I think they count on consumers replacing kit every couple of
years so why bother adding any cost if a new model will be out...

Some products have become so complex that manufacturers have no choice to
put the firmware in flash memory, so it can fixed if bugs or omissions are
found.

Yes, understood. It makes sense from a manufacturing standpoint
(since you can load the firmware "late" in the manufacturing
process). I am just surprised that they were making this
available to the "end user". (as it adds a maintenance cost)

If Sony, et al, didn't provide updates, at least some customers would

Yes. But would *enough* complain that it would "hurt them"?
My experience has been that most users don't even know how
to fully utilize most of the things they own (i.e., the
blinking 12:00 on the VCR syndrome) and those things see
rapid turnover.

complain. In this case, the BDP-S560 included freeze-frame and slow-motion
features missing from my BDP-S550. So it probably wasn't too hard to update
the earlier product.

My plasma TV and my digital SLRs (including the lenses!) use flash firmware.
I'm hoping the TV will be upgradeable to 3D (but who knows?). In the case of
the cameras, the manufacturers are correcting bugs and adding features. If
they didn't do this, there'd be a lot of kvetching from customers -- and
possibly class-action lawsuits.

On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:14:38 -0000, "Arfa Daily"
wrote:

Is it just me, or does everyone else hate working from electronic service
manuals? Yes, I know that it's very convenient to be able to download
manuals from manufacturers, and to be able to trade them around, but boy, do
they make our life hard, or what ?

Not me. It's a rare day when I have a schematic. From my warped
perspective, any schematic, in any form, is better than nothing.

It has been created using 'virtual A4' sheets, so the many big complex
diagrams, such as the DSP board, have been spread across multiple
disconnected pages. Helpfully (Ha!) they have put little diagrams at the
left side of the sheets to indicate that what you are looking at is a big
sheet, that they've kindly rendered into little sheets for you ...

Big schematic? No problem. Get a big HP DesignJet large format
plotter. Hopefully, you have a wall big enough to hang the printed
schematic. (I cheat. I have two architects, both with big plotters,
near my office).


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

The same sort of approach also applies to things that don't
have "traditional" user-interfaces -- eg, creating an API
another programmer might have to "use" -- even though
the END user never is aware of it.

No argument. If you want to see how I feel an API should be documented, let
me know and I'll send you something I wrote at Microsoft.


Yes, understood. It makes sense from a manufacturing standpoint
(since you can load the firmware "late" in the manufacturing
process). I am just surprised that they were making this
available to the "end user". (as it adds a maintenance cost)

Other than posting the files on the Website, it costs Sony nothing. You
download the ZIP file, expand it, then burn a CD with the content. Sony will
give you the update on a CD, but I've never checked to see if they charge.

"Arfa Daily" wrote in message
news
Is it just me, or does everyone else hate working from electronic service
manuals? Yes, I know that it's very convenient to be able to download
manuals from manufacturers, and to be able to trade them around, but boy,
do they make our life hard, or what ?

Today, I have been working on a Pioneer semi pro mixer desk. The manual is
on CDROM and is 176 pages long, so not practical to print the whole thing
out. It has been created using 'virtual A4' sheets, so the many big
complex diagrams, such as the DSP board, have been spread across multiple
disconnected pages. Helpfully (Ha!) they have put little diagrams at the
left side of the sheets to indicate that what you are looking at is a big
sheet, that they've kindly rendered into little sheets for you ...

So as well as having to follow signal and power lines between 'real'
pages, as you would have to in a paper manual, but which was easy to do,
because it told you exactly where to go looking for the line's carry-on,
you also have to follow these lines across broken up sheets, with little
indication as to where you will find the carry-on. All in all, I wasted
about an hour and a half, staring at a computer screen, zooming,
de-zooming, rotating and printing individual bits of the schematics and
layouts, just to work out where a couple of supply rails had disappeared
to on the DSP board. If this had been a proper Pioneer paper manual, the
whole exercise would have been trivial, taking perhaps 15 minutes total.
Who pays for this wasted time ?

The initial problem is a couple of s.m. fuses that are open. Of course,
they are specials, so I have now got to go back to the manual to try to
find part numbers for them. There is also a problem with the VFD not
illuminating now that I have (tempoarily) restored the missing rails, so I
suppose there is now going to have to be another lengthy session, trying
to sort out the appropriate bits of schematic to get to the bottom of this
fault ...

Sorry lads. rant over ... :-)

Arfa


Modern Sony PDF's have "hot links" where you can click on a connector, for
example, and it takes you to where that connector ends up. Click on a IC,
and it takes you to it's circuit board location. Click on the picture of the
IC in the circuit board view, and it takes you to that part in the parts
list. Pretty cool.

The later versions of Adobe do seem to support multiple windows.

I prefer decent PDF's over paper anymore - I have a wide format monitor over
to my left and it keeps paper roadmaps from getting in my way.

Mark Z.

On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:14:38 -0000 "Arfa Daily"
wrote in Message id: :

Is it just me, or does everyone else hate working from electronic service
manuals? Yes, I know that it's very convenient to be able to download
manuals from manufacturers, and to be able to trade them around, but boy, do
they make our life hard, or what ?

[...]

Sorry lads. rant over ... :-)

One potentially good thing about .pdf files is that they can be text
searchable. Very helpful when a service manual is a thousand pages in
length.

On 10/26/2009 1:10 PM Dave M spake thus:

William Sommerwerck wrote:

[someone unknown wrote:]

Documentation is considered an afterthought in many firms.
Years ago, I adopted the approach of writing the *manual* for
any product that I designed *before* designing the product (!).

The man who created "Mathematica" did exactly that. It is a terrific
idea, because it puts the focus on how the user interacts with the
product, before any code is written.

I totally agree with that approach. Waaay back when I was writing
database applications for a living, I found that writing the user
manual and designing the reports before starting the coding made life
MUCH easier for me. It gave me the logical flow of the program, the
user interface and most of the database design up front, where it's
easiest to change and get customer approval with least impact on the
project.

Plus, on a more elementary level, it increases the chance that what the
manual says and how the program works (and, more importantly,
*reads*--menu options, commands, dialogs, etc.) actually match. (What a
concept!)


--
Found--the gene that causes belief in genetic determinism