Converting CODM Manual from Landscape to Portrait

A comment was made almost a year ago in a thread in this forum regarding difficulty in reading the CODM documentation due to it being in landscape mode and using a rather small font. I would like to offer the following suggestion to others for how to convert the manual to portrait orientation. I posted this suggestion to the original post, but I thought that others might find it helpful.

I don't know if my suggestion violates the copywrite, so I will not be offended if the moderators delete this because of that.

I have had several occasions in which I would like to discuss a document with someone else via e-mail, but it's difficult because it's in pdf format. I have found that I can copy the text from the pdf document and paste it into a Word document. Of course, there's a bit of tidying up I have to do. Then I can interject my own comments into the document using a contrasting font/color.

1. I use Microsoft Word as my word processor.
2. Depending upon which version of Adobe Acrobat (I always have the free version), I COPY paragraphs of text from the pdf document and PASTE them into the Word document. You need to make sure your Adobe will allow you to copy text as opposed to considering the entire page as an image. This won't work if you use the "Snapshot" tool. You have to use a "Text" tool.
3. Often, you will have to take some moments to add spaces between paragraphs and delete the last space of many lines in order to tidy it up.
4. After you're done, you can intersperse your own comments using a contrasting font and/or color - or even highlight lines.

I just tried this while viewing the web page pdf of the CODM manual and it worked. Since the lines are longer in the pdf version, many of these lines are wrapped to the next line, with the following line on the next. So, I have go to the end of the partial line, click DELETE to bring the line fragments together.

Of course, it's a bit time-consuming, but it's worth it to me because I can add my own notes.

Hope this helps,
Keith

There are ways, on a Mac at least, that the locked PDF can be used to create an unlocked copy. In theory, a version of Adobe Acrobat Pro could be used to change the page orientation. I tried doing it with Open Office, but it did not go well, so I assume that it is a difference between Acrobat and OO. My reason for wanting a portrait version was not to alter anything, but to be able to read it on my kindle and iPad where landscape doesn't work well with old eyeballs.

Nondefined,

My understanding has been that Acrobat and Open Office are two completely different things. I thought that OO was simply an "open" suite much like Microsoft Office that consists of word processor, spreadsheet, presentation applications.

There have been some pdf documents in which I have been unable to "copy" text, although I can use the Acrobat's "Snapshot" tool to copy the contents of a page as if it were an image - and this won't help with the current situation.

From a Windows standpoint, I use Mozilla Firefox as my browser most of the time. Whenever I download a pdf document, if often opens in a browser window, but sometimes opens in an Adobe Reader window (I downloaded the free version). For copying, I've been able to simply highlight and copy paragraphs of text from Adobe Reader into Word. In the case of Open Office, I would think that I would copy from Adobe Reader and paste into a blank document on OO's word processor.

I'm not sure how this works on a Mac. Two of my kids have Macbooks, so I can see how it works with Safari and Adobe Reader on one of their machines when one of them is home.

Anyway, I wasn't doing this in order to alter the document, but simply so I could change the font and/or orientation to make the document more readable. The ability to insert my own notes is just an added benefit.

BTW, if you have a word processor that can read Microsoft Word documents - either in the older .doc or the newer .docx format, I wouldn't mind creating the document myself and sending it to you in an e-mail. OTOH, I have a free program on my computer that will convert a Word document into a pdf document, so I could do that for you and attach it to an e-mail.

I'd like to make sure that the administrators would not consider that a copyright violation.

Sincerely,
Keith

Anyway, it was working for me

Open office writer (a component of open office) has the ability to process PDF files if they are unlocked. I first open the pdf in the preview and then tell it to save a version. That copy is not locked and can be edited in any application that knows how to handle PDF files, such as open office writer. When in there, I just change the page format and in some cases, it takes care of the rest. Sadly, that is not the case with the CODM PDF

I imagine that these files are locked, though. I've noticed that I can use highlighting in some of the pdf documents I download, so I guess it has to do with what permissions are granted.

I spent a while copying and pasting the pages from the CODM Manual into a word document the other day. Things were going along quite nicely until I got to the pages that had the charts of the various commands and variables. There is so much information per line that you really have to view it in landscape mode.

If it was an actual physical book in portrait mode, I would imagine that each chart would be spread across a pair of facing pages. That said, there are times when I really want a printed book in front of me instead of reading on a computer.

Respectfully,
Keith

I produced the first part (not the tables) as an A4, portrait document for my own use. I've left the second part of the manual (the tables) as a separate landscape document. I found this most helpful since I was struggling to read the original format (though if I had printed it on A3 would have been much better).

{I opened the PDF version in Word (Office 2013) and deleted the second part of the manual. I changed the paper size and orientation to A4 and portrait; I tidied up the headers and footers and the section/page breaks). I also increased the font size to make the document easier to read. }

I wonder if MDA might consider providing the first part of this document in as an A4 portrait document?

Iain