[Etoys] QuickGuides available as a .pdf file

[Ted Kaehler]

At 1:03 PM +0200 6/15/08, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>Are you sure you uploaded the right PDF? This looks like nothing 
>more than a web page printed as PDF, which is not too useful, since 
>one could easily print the html page directly.

Bert,
	Yes, it is indeed the web pages combined into a PDF.  It is 
useful for downloading all the guides at once, and having them all in 
one document.  Fetching and printing the web pages separately would 
take hours.  And, each would have the annoying sidebar on the first 
page.

>
>Now, if it was arranged so that 4 guides are on each page, if there 
>were page numbers and a table of contents, that would be useful.

Yes, what application would allow me to do this under program 
control?  I have no experience in creating PDFs.
	 I may be able to produce four guides up on a page, and 
landscape mode, and page numbers.  How do I make a table of contents?

>
>What would be even better (though much more work indeed) is to 
>create a PDF directly by exporting the guides as PostScript, not 
>take the bitmaps. That should considerably reduce the size of the 
>PDF and have a better quality (at least in the parts where actual 
>morphs embedded instead of screen-grabs of them)
>
>Unfortunately the PostScript exporter never worked really well,

Yep, I tried it too.  Maybe we could ask for a volunteer to improve 
the PostScript writer enough to export the guides?
	If you fixed things to produce your example, please upload 
your changes.  There seems to be a font size issue.

>so the current results (after patching it to work at all) are 
>somewhat unsatisfactory, see attachment. I exported one book (a 
>guide with 4 pages) as PS and converted it to PDF using Preview.app 
>on my Mac.
>
>- Bert -