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Willot
June 10th, 2012, 08:26
It maybe time for an updated manual. The PDF that ships with the game is getting a little old (well mine is :) ) Especially as we are now getting near Fantasy Grounds III!
Moon Wizard
June 10th, 2012, 08:49
Unfortunately, I have not found an inexpensive tool that publishes to HTML and PDF equally well. I have spent many hours over the last year reviewing different options, but they are either too expensive or lacking key features.

As of v2.9, the manual will no longer be included with the install of FG, and the online manuals will be the only option. That said, the online manuals also need some love, especially with all the additions in v2.9.

Cheers,
JPG
Willot
June 10th, 2012, 10:11
An Online Manual is fine. The user can always print out sections if they feel the need, but yeah.
The online ones do need some work. Perhaps With a small Video Demo for the feature being explained. But it all takes time I guess.
phantomwhale
June 11th, 2012, 04:25
I really like having an offline manual. I do this currently by capturing the reference doc part of the website with HTTrack, but it's always a bif of a faff to remember how that works and setting it up.

HTML to PDF as it's cheapest is best achieved via using Webkit engine (wkhtmltopdf). However, this would require custom CSS files and as such, probably quite a bit of effort, esp. if your not currently producing the HTML directly rather than via a tool.

So maybe a nice compromise would be a download link to an "offline version" of the reference documents ? Basically to save me messing about with HTTrack after every upgrade !
Olodrin
June 15th, 2012, 00:15
Maybe possible to port the whole thing into Google Docs? Crowdsource some of the material?
JohnD
June 16th, 2012, 04:39
I have a legit copy of Adobe Acrobat X Pro... would that be of use?
Moon Wizard
June 16th, 2012, 07:24
Acrobat Pro could be used to build a PDF of the developer documentation, but I believe the 3.5E/4E manuals use scripts to hide/show text (for better or worse).

I really want to do something crowd sourced, but the options I looked at weren't great before.
* Free wiki sites are covered in lots of ads.
* In general, wikis did not handle the concept of workflow well. (i.e. I want to vet any changes to wiki to prevent loss of data, and ensure quality.)
* CMS systems are better at workflow, but worse at ease of use. (especially the free ones)

I'm open to suggestions on a crowd sourced platform I can use to host a community manual.

Regards,
JPG