Excessively long final details...

[LostAgain]

[quote="Paul FrostFor the Scottish 6 Days we are planning to have the entire programme on 2 sides of A3.[/quote]

OR 1 side of A2

[mike g]

Well played RJ for taking note of this thread ... the Eskdale Tarns final details are a 5 line e-mail.

[pigweed]

I prefer them on word...

Not everyone has Microsoft Word, or the correct version, so PDF's are more universally readable on all computers and mobile devices. Even Word running on an Apple Mac may render the layout differently.

For the Scottish 6 Days we are planning to have the entire programme on 2 sides of A3.

I too prefer Word format to PDF because of the ease of editing afterwards so I can printout two sides of A4 back to back rather than 11 pages.

Whilst you are correct in that not everyone has the latest version of word this isn't the big problem it's made out to be. Using the SAVE AS and selecting RTF format will give the same flexibility of being easily read anywhere whilst also giving the competitor the facility to edit the final details.

For the non-computer literate who can't find the SAVE AS and insist on saving in the new Office 2007 .docx format Microsoft do provide a compatibility add-on for older versions of Office.

It'd be nice if the whole world changed to ODF instead though.

Two sides of A3 is a bad idea. Whilst I agree with the goal of reducing the content down, I don't know many people with A3 printers Paul, and reducing the A3 page down to print on A4 will have some of the M/W50+ grinding their teeth when they have to reach for their magnifiers.

[PeterG]

It'd be nice if the whole world changed to ODF instead though.

Acrobat reader is pretty nasty but nobody should have to use OpenOffice

[Paul Frost]

I too prefer Word format to PDF because of the ease of editing afterwards so I can printout two sides of A4 back to back rather than 11 pages.

You can always copy/paste from the PDF.

...Using the SAVE AS and selecting RTF format will give the same flexibility of being easily read anywhere whilst also giving the competitor the facility to edit the final details.

It wouldn't be a Word doc then though would it. Plus RTF doesn't allow much in the way of formatting layouts.

For the non-computer literate who can't find the SAVE AS and insist on saving in the new Office 2007 .docx format Microsoft do provide a compatibility add-on for older versions of Office.

So you expect the non-computer literate to realise the .docx format will need a plugin that they can search for on the Microsoft website and then install (that's assuming they are allowed to install applications on their company/institutes computer).

It'd be nice if the whole world changed to ODF instead though.

No it wouldn't, and it's not going to happen anyway, so lets be practical, PDF's are readable on almost every computer or device available.

Two sides of A3 is a bad idea. Whilst I agree with the goal of reducing the content down, I don't know many people with A3 printers Paul, and reducing the A3 page down to print on A4 will have some of the M/W50+ grinding their teeth when they have to reach for their magnifiers.

We are going to print them and give them to all competitors when they collect their bibs etc. at the event, so you won't need to print them. We plan to have more detailed sheets for each day available as downloadable A4 PDF's if people really want them.

[DM]

How about webmasters making a print style sheet? This can be set to choose what to print (cut out all the guff like images, ads, navigation items), and set the font to something common and print friendly.

Give people 2 options, full final details for those who like to read war and peace ahead of races, and a short section with the absolutely vital bits that can fit on a small area.

Not difficult and avoids the need to cut/paste, have specific software, know where plug ins are etc..

[Mrs H]

Amazing - it's over 4 years since I first suggested this and there was certainly a flurry of such information after that - perhaps I'll do a CSC article - "Things you always wanted to know about orienteering but never got told"

[IanD]

Acrobat reader is pretty nasty but nobody should have to use OpenOffice

What's wrong with OpenOffice? Streets ahead of Word in user-friendliness IMO. And free!

Anyway, using OpenOffice to cut down final details in Word format is easy, and requires no skill.

[Paul Frost]

How about webmasters making a print style sheet? This can be set to choose what to print (cut out all the guff like images, ads, navigation items), and set the font to something common and print friendly.

The point is that "Final Details" are not normally HTML web pages, they are usually produced in a word processor/page layout application without any thought of them being a web page. So print stylesheets are not the answer.

There is another option that is available on all platforms and operating systems that would allow you to edit and save the details in most formats, ODT, PDF, RTF, Word, Text or HTML.
Google Docs
It's free, doesn't need to be installed on your computer and doesn't require you to have a Google account to view and save. The organiser/club would need an account to publish them in the first place but that's not difficult.
They could even collaborate with other people whilst developing the details and keep the document private, then open it to all when it's finished. You could just put a link to the document on a web page or in an email.
Google Docs YouTube channel
Example EckO event details

[DM]

Paul,

I'll take a look at your suggestions, which look useful.

I still think print CSS has it's merits. As you say, final details are often produced in Word Processor but there's no reason why they can not start as a web page and work the other way round, ie print to a pdf (and then use the pdf as a linked document).

Printing direct from a web page can still have the appearance of a word processed document.

[Paul Frost]

...there's no reason why they can not start as a web page and work the other way round, ie print to a pdf (and then use the pdf as a linked document).

From personal experience, very few people can "write" a web page, but most people can use a word processor.

Plus converting Word documents to web pages can also be a pain. The HTML that Word generates in a "save as" is a complete mess and full of so much rubbish code that it's not usable. So you need to strip all the formatting and then re-format it in HTML.

The other problem is that every web browser has different capabilities when it comes to printing, so it's hard to have a standard approach.

I do have "printer friendly" page options for items on the SOA website, so I might look at doing this on the event details pages for the club websites I develop. But as I don't manage all the club websites in the UK it's not a universal fix for the problem.

[Roger]

converting Word documents to web pages can also be a pain. The HTML that Word generates in a "save as" is a complete mess and full of so much rubbish code that it's not usable. So you need to strip all the formatting and then re-format it in HTML.

Completely agree. I used to use HTML Tidy for things saved from Word, and a macro that produced 'clean' HTML for saving from Excel. Google Docs (as used for Nopesport Urban League up to 2010) were an improvement on both fronts. Simple documents convert OK to Google Docs, but I've had problems with converting moderately unusual functions (offset) in Excel and numbering and cross-referencing in Word. Probably not an issue for Final Details though.

But as I don't manage all the club websites in the UK...

Yet?

[pigweed]

It wouldn't be a Word doc then though would it. Plus RTF doesn't allow much in the way of formatting layouts.

Exactly, the whole point I was making was that RTF not being a Word document is universally acceptable in practically everything, for everyone.
Also, for a copy of the final details you shouldn't really be needing a load of special formatting arrangements that don't translate to rtf. This is the final details of a single orienteering event here: not a final year dissertation or
I just want the basic facts presented neatly, not pretty formatted tables with styled borders!

So you expect the non-computer literate to realise the .docx format will need a plugin that they can search for on the Microsoft website and then install (that's assuming they are allowed to install applications on their company/institutes computer).

What I'm saying is that by using rtf you don't need to worry about the new .docx format.

No it wouldn't, and it's not going to happen anyway, so lets be practical, PDF's are readable on almost every computer or device available.

I don't see why everyone using an open document format wouldn't be a good idea. Can you elaberate on your reasons why don't like this?
You comment that it's not going to happen can't be substantiated. At the moment MS and .doc formats (and Excel for spreadsheets) are the mostly wildly used but back in the early 90's you could say the same thing about Wordperfect and Lotus 123. The one thing everyone should have learned by now is that nothing stands still and I suspect in that at the end of the next decade the .doc and .docx word formats will be history.

We are going to print them and give them to all competitors when they collect their bibs etc. at the event, so you won't need to print them. We plan to have more detailed sheets for each day available as downloadable A4 PDF's if people really want them.

Okay, that's acceptable, but this wasn't obvious in your previous post. Thanks for clarifying it, although again I have to say I'd much prefer you to save as rtf instead of creating a PDF.

My reasoning is time-saving. If you export a PDF then you are wasting time creating something that I don't want, and then I have to waste time in opening, select all, copy, paste into a wordprocessor of my choice (openoffice, but you can pretend it's Word if it makes you feel better! ), then cutting out the bits I don't want. This is a silly waste of time for both you and me. I think it's just far more efficient if you just save as rtf in the first place.

A final comment on PDF: not everyone leaves PDFs accessible, some people seem to think that orienteering event final details deserve the security settings on full preventing copy and paste.

[Paul Frost]

What I'm saying is that by using rtf you don't need to worry about the new .docx format.

My point is that non-computer literate (the quantity of which always amazes me) don't worry about .rtf or .docx they just click save, oblivious to the issues.

...The one thing everyone should have learned by now is that nothing stands still and I suspect in that at the end of the next decade the .doc and .docx word formats will be history.

I quite agree, and don't get me wrong, I hate the constant use of .doc or docx as well, I'm a Mac user so have to suffer dodgy formatting when they are opened in Pages or Google Docs or even Word for Mac. The future is in the cloud, with device/platform agnostic text.

The whole argument of this thread is about the problems printing out final details, I never print them (or almost anything). I have a laptop, iPad & iPhone and use things like Dropbox or Evernote to store info and keep it synched across all of them, or just access the website when on the move.

I'm computer literate and so don't need any of the help that is being proposed, but as the developer of websites I recognise that there are a large number of people that don't know a docx from a pdf, so I try and reduce the barrier to entry. A pdf can be opened in any browser and many other applications without knowing what to do, you just click on it.

A final comment on PDF: not everyone leaves PDFs accessible, some people seem to think that orienteering event final details deserve the security settings on full preventing copy and paste.

I suspect that it's not done deliberately but ignorance of the options available (see my above comments).

You probably won't need to copy/paste/edit the 6 Day details, if we get all 6 days on one sheet of A3 there won't be much unnecessary text.

[roadrunner]

I think that PDFs are the obvious choice; as Paul says, any computer (and operator!) is going to be able to cope with it, after all not everyone will have either MS Office or Open Office installed. (Yes, I know they could get Open Office for free, but that's more of a pain than printing a few extra pages...) Surely the simplest answer to the problem of over-long details is to put the critical stuff (if we can agree what that is ) on the first couple of pages, then those who want short details can print that out, those who want everything can print the lot.

To answer IanD's point - nothing's wrong with Open Office except market penetration - and while it accepts MS formats, I don't think the reverse is the case (though my version of MS Office is quite old so I could be wrong).