K3 Manual Question

[Craig Smith]

Great news on the K3 manual being put up on the website sometime this week.
I know it will be excellent based on my experience with the K1 and K2
manuals.  But it prompts me to ask a question I've been wondering about
lately.

How does Elecraft plan to handle updates to the manual so that it keeps
current with new firmware releases?  Certainly the pdf can be kept
up-to-date, but how about the printed version?  It is nice to have a high
quality printed version, and I wouldn't mind paying a reasonable amount to
keep my printed operating manual up-to-date.  I guess the options would be
reprinting the entire manual or maybe making the pages replaceable
individually in some kind of attractive and convenient sized binder system.
Any thoughts?

        73
                ... Craig  AC0DS


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[Bill VanAlstyne W5WVO]

Craig D. Smith wrote:

> I guess the options would be . . . making
> the pages replaceable individually in some
> kind of attractive and convenient sized
> binder system.  Any thoughts?

Yeah. That, what you said.  :-)

The manuals I've obtained for some of my boatanchor (military) equipment are
loose-leaf, three-ring punched. This scheme makes a lot of sense for any
evolving entity that needs to be documented.

When there is a change, pages are simply deleted, replaced, and/or added. The
page numbering system uses military-style paragraph reference numbering rather
than serial numbering, so added pages don't change the numbering of the
existing pages unless new sections are added (and then you would just replace
the remainder of the chapter). You can make such pages just as attractive as
pages in any other kind of binding, and you could ship the pages as a block of
unbound paper, with the user supplying a binder of his choice obtainable from
any office supply store. You could use paper with a plastic-reinforced edge so
the three-hole binding wouldn't tear out. Updates could be shipped in a
regular-size manilla envelope with a reinforcing cardboard sheet.

What's wrong with doing it that way? There must be something wrong with it,
because nobody in the ham world is doing it. Would most hams not like such a
manual scheme? I sure would.

Bill / W5WVO

>
>        73
>                ... Craig  AC0DS
>
>
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[Craig Rairdin]

> What's wrong with doing it that way? There must be something wrong with
> it, because nobody in the ham world is doing it. Would most hams not
> like such a manual scheme? I sure would.

It's prohibitively expensive and adds significant complications for the
manufacturer, who has to maintain revision information per-page. The
solution of offering a downloadable PDF of the manual is simpler for the
manufacturer and solves the problem for the relatively small number of
people who care about having the very latest software rev and manual.

If I was in charge I would provide an electronic manual supplemented by a
thorough quick-reference booklet like the ones from
www.niftyaccessories.com. Users could print the manual if they wanted, but
otherwise I wouldn't have killed as many trees, Al Gore would be happy, and
we'd save $10/unit sold over distributing a seldom-read manual.

Craig
NZ0R
Back to monitoring my credit card
balance waiting to see a charge
from Elecraft.

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[N2EY]

In a message dated 10/10/07 5:50:41 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[hidden email] writes:


> What's wrong with doing it that way? There must be something wrong with it,
>
> because nobody in the ham world is doing it. Would most hams not like such a
>
> manual scheme? I sure would.
>

In my work, things like standard plans, timetables and rule books are often
done that way.

When you have a big book that is frequently revised, and is in the hands of
many people, it makes sense, because the cost of sending everyone a complete
new book is much more than the cost of keeping page-by-page revision info.

The big downside is that there must be absolute discipline in keeping the
books up to-date. An old timetable can be worse than none at all.

But in the amateur radio market, the revisions are few and the numbers small.
Keeping track of updates is a lot of administrative work.

It seems to me that having the manuals and revisions on the website is the
best way to go. That way, anyone can see them.

73 de Jim, N2EY




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[Bill VanAlstyne W5WVO]

Craig, we're really not that far apart here.

> It's prohibitively expensive and adds significant complications for
> the manufacturer, who has to maintain revision information per-page.

Maintaining revision information for updated pages is trivial. Adobe
FrameMaker makes this easy even without using XML tags. I won't bore everyone
with inside-baseball details here, but believe me, it's a no-brainer, takes
almost no time, and costs nothing extra. The tools are there. (No, not MS
Word. Anybody who is still trying to use MS Word for large, evolving sets of
complex technical documents either isn't really serious about technical
documentation to begin with, or is, um, alarmingly underinformed.  :-)

> The solution of offering a downloadable PDF of the manual is simpler
> for the manufacturer . . . Users could print the manual if they
> wanted, but otherwise I wouldn't have killed as many trees, Al Gore
> would be happy, and we'd save $10/unit sold over distributing a
> seldom-read manual.

I agree! It does cost less not to publish paper manuals. As a tech writer for
a major Silicon Valley semiconductor company, I put out thousands of pages of
PDF documents a year that are never printed on paper. What I'm saying is not
that manuals necessarily have to be printed on paper by the manufacturer, but
rather that adopting a different documentation paradigm  (a) would cost no
more than the current process, and  (b) might well be more attractive to many
end users than the current process.

I'm suggesting that it makes sense to structure ham radio manuals more like
military radio manuals, and adopt a similar upgrading scheme. Whether you do
this on paper, on a CD-ROM, as downloadable files, or as a combination of all
of these doesn't really matter. Documentation downloads from the website and
CD-ROMs shipped with the radio would be free, but CD-ROMs ordered separately
from the radio would be charged for, as would any paper documentation (whole
manuals and updates) printed and shipped by the manufacturer. It could be
preprinted and inventoried or, since it doesn't have to be bound, produced
in-house as ordered. The saved cost of binding could be used to cover the
additional cost of edge-reinforced punched stock, if desired.

Most end users who want a paper manual would choose the option of printing it
themselves on ordinary printer paper. If the manuals and updates were designed
as I described in my previous post, they would lend themselves exceptionally
well to home printing and loose-leaf binding. The user wouldn't have to print
out a whole new manual every time there's an update. Those who care to could
keep their manuals up-to-date elegantly and with a minimum of fuss; those who
don't care to would never be bothered.

Bill / W5WVO

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[Julian, G4ILO]

I'm glad you're not in charge, then.:) Some (many?) of us only have
cheap, slow home inkjet printers that use very expensive ink
cartridges and it would take a long time and be prohibitively
expensive to print off a manual. And I don't want to turn on a
computer every time I want to look up something in the manual.

Perhaps in the cities there are places that will print a PDF at
reasonable cost, but I have never come across a service that will do
that here in the UK.

Perhaps the answer would be to make the printed manual an extra cost
option. Then those who don't want it don't have to pay for it and
those who care about having the latest version could order up a new
one whenever they want.
--
Julian, G4ILO K2 s/n: 392  K3 s/n: ???
G4ILO's Shack: www.g4ilo.com
Ham-Directory: www.ham-directory.com


On 10/10/07, Craig Rairdin <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> If I was in charge I would provide an electronic manual supplemented by a
> thorough quick-reference booklet like the ones from
> www.niftyaccessories.com. Users could print the manual if they wanted, but
> otherwise I wouldn't have killed as many trees, Al Gore would be happy, and
> we'd save $10/unit sold over distributing a seldom-read manual.
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[Julian, G4ILO]

I don't agree. Printing it yourself for most people would take a long
time, cost more than a mass-reproduced manual, use twice as much paper
(most hams don't have office-type printers that will print on both
sides) and not be bound.

Nor would updating be any easier unless the manual was structured with
a lot more white space because any additions would push text on to the
next page. So you'd probably have to reprint the whole section from
the amendment onward.

Providing manuals only in electronic form is a cheapskate option that
just passes the cost and bother of creating a printed copy on to the
consumer.
--
Julian, G4ILO K2 s/n: 392  K3 s/n: ???
G4ILO's Shack: www.g4ilo.com
Ham-Directory: www.ham-directory.com


On 10/11/07, Bill W5WVO <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Most end users who want a paper manual would choose the option of printing it
> themselves on ordinary printer paper. If the manuals and updates were designed
> as I described in my previous post, they would lend themselves exceptionally
> well to home printing and loose-leaf binding. The user wouldn't have to print
> out a whole new manual every time there's an update. Those who care to could
> keep their manuals up-to-date elegantly and with a minimum of fuss; those who
> don't care to would never be bothered.
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[N2EY]

In a message dated 10/11/07 4:20:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
[hidden email] writes:


> (most hams don't have office-type printers that will print on both
> sides)

I don't know any printer that won't print on both sides. Of course it may
take two passes through the printer,  but that's why the printing dialog box
allows you to select only the even-numbered pages or only the odd numbered pages.

73 de Jim, N2EY


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[Eric Swartz - WA6HHQ]

Let's end this thread for now.

We are shipping printed manuals in the box with every K3.

73, Eric   WA6HHQ
------

Julian G4ILO wrote:
> I don't agree. Printing it yourself for most people would take a long
> time, cost more than a mass-reproduced manual, use twice as much paper
> (most hams don't have office-type printers that will print on both
> sides) and not be bound.
>  
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