So with the introduction of PDF's it seems to me like there should be an option that allows me to shut off the graphics, or perhaps a stripped down version of the books should be introduced. The reason I'd like this is we often use eBooks, or smaller media devices to keep books on while playing. Loading the graphically intense PDF's is often slow, and time consuming. (Don't get me wrong I understand the effort that went into them, and why some people really like the pic's, etc...but for speed purposes I want something with no pictures, no background images, and no fluff)

So is a stripped down version of the books a possibility? Otherwise I guess it's going to be quicker for me to buy several print copies, and do it the old fashioned way. (Which is sort of ironic for a game about the near distant future.)

You could copy/paste everything needed from the PDF to a Word document.

I recommend using Foxit over Adobe Reader. From all my usage of Foxit and Reader with PnP sourcebooks, I've had a lot faster response from Foxit over Reader. I told the guys I play with to use Foxit and they all agree that it is superior. I just opened the SR4 book in both Foxit and Reader 8.1, and Foxit is definitely more responsive.

For the same PDF...
Foxit: 16.8K memory
Reader: 35.6K memory

Give it a try and see how much of a performance increase you gain.

Yeah that would be real convenient...wait no it wouldn't. I appreciate your optimistic thinking, but the reason I asked this is I'm both too lazy to do that, and lack the technical proficiency to do it. (Yes, I'm too stupid to use PDF's, and word.)



I'll look at it, but the last thing I was hoping for was "Try another program." But who knows this may blow my mind!

Catalyst's new editions of their pdfs will come with multiple "layer" settings, which will allow you to remove the graphics and backgrounds and display just the text if you want to. I'm not sure if this will speed up loading times because the data will still be in the file, just not actively being shown... but it sounds like sort of what you're looking for.

I think a demo of the feature was in the catalyst page news feed not too long ago, check their website. Not sure when the new layered versions will be coming out.

So far, we've only done this with one PDF, Dawn of the Artifacts: Dusk ... we're gauging feedback on it before rolling it out on others.

http://www.shadowrun4.com/wordpress/2009/0...come-in-threes/

Shinxy and Adam thank you, that is exactly what I am looking for. (Not that Happy Daze and StealthSigma were wrong, just they had an answer I wasn't willing to expend the effort to achieve-but thanks anyways folks!) Please chalk my groups vote up for this, a definite yes from us!

I found a freeware program that cuts text out of pdf's, have Running Wild on my Ipod now. Makes for much smaller file and uses a heck of a lot less ink if you wanna print just the text.

edit: While nice to have something to read on break at work now, text size is not adjustable and pain to read on the pod sometimes.

I'm relatively certain that one of the major driving factors behind layering for PDFs is because Acrobat reader is a bloated application, unfortunately it has a relatively large market share.

Foxit also does do text only displays, there is a button that toggles it. I'm not sure of its supports for layers, though that may be in a newer version than what I have.

See my brother is shipping his broken eBook back from Iraq, and all it needs is a replacement screen. A friend of mine does that sort of thing, tech stuff-I have the Gremlins flaw at unimaginable level. Seriously it's bad-and he's going to replace the screen.

This means I'll be better off than Prime Mover, but I do wish I could have a computer at work. That would rock. I'd have so much stuff done!

The version of FoxIt that I tested works just fine with layers. I highly recommend keeping up with the new versions of FoxIt, as, well, the previous ones could be kind of dire [but very quickly dire, that I admit!] about complicated PDFs.

Sweet, so there is no reason to use that bloatware Acrobat Reader. I still suspect that removing the picture layers in Reader would only put performance on an equal level to Foxit with picture layers. Can you confirm/deny this since you've tested layered PDFs on Foxit, and I assume Reader?

IIRC you should be able to suppress graphics in Adobe if you need to. While this doesn't give you the "No Fluff, just Stuff" book you want it will load the book faster. I find that in the new SR4A book the helpful Master Reference Table helps as well (it states which book and which page in that book that something can be found).

What would be cool is if someone would create a program like BattlePlanner for RPG rules. I know that there are similar apps out there but nothing that is too commercially viable yet.

I've tested the layers in both Reader and FoxIt. I can't compare speeds because I tested them on different computers -- I work on two different Macs, and I have a PC kicking around for stuff like testing things in FoxIt.

Honestly, I can't speak too much to the speed of Reader. I use the full version of Acrobat most of the time, and the newest version is a marked sight better in both speed and stability. Makes me VERY happy.

Damn, I was hoping for another avenue to aggressively attack the usage of Adobe Reader and promote Foxit.

On the mac side, I got tired of Acrobat getting bogged down when I had SR4a, Street Magic, Arsenal, Augmentation, Unwired, and Runner's Companion all open at the same time (thank you multimonitors!) I found a freeware program called Skim that's so much faster it's ridiculous, while having the same feature set as acrobat (at least the features I use.) I would recommend it.

By the way ... to be totally shameless, the way to convince Catalyst to publish more PDFs with layers is -- buy Dawn of the Artifacts: Dusk. It's your $8 vote.

PDF from Catalyst: http://www.battlecorps.com/catalog/product...roducts_id=2300
PDF from DTRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info...iliate_id=77000

Sorry, but I prefer the tactile and olfactory sensation of a newly printed book. All the rest of the players at my "table" like PDFs, I have to have a hard copy of most books that I use.

It was my vice when it came to Magic: The Gathering. I loved the smell of fresh out of the booster pack cards.

Stealth... if you don't like PDFs, does it matter to you what we're doing with them?

After playing with both pdf and physical copies of the books, I still find the books more convenient for everyday lookups. That said, can't beat the search feature in PDFs for finding the random nitpicky hard-to-find rules.

At my table, I usually use a GM's screen, a physical copy of SR4a, and a laptop close at hand with open PDFs of all the other core books.

I get liking the print over the PDF. I'm just hoping eventually the PDF's will become as convenient as the dead trees are for me. Now admittedly I'm so technologically deficient that it's not your fault Adam...

I have to agree with Paul. As much as I like PDFs, I can't see myself buying the SR4a PDF and prining it all out. I think it would be easier for me just to buy the hardcopy.
But I seriously doubt that the 'conveinience' of woodpulp will ever quite go out of use. I'd LOVE to get an e-reader and load it up with EVERYTHING on SR, but that's just a dream of mine for now.

If you buy the PDF just to print it out ... frankly, you're missing out some of the major benefits of it, and you probably SHOULD just buy the print edition.

PDFs and print books are different _products_. Same book, same content, different product.

Books you can take in the tub with you; PDFs you can re-print if you drop your printouts in the tub.

Books look great on your shelf; The entire game line of PDFs can fit on your thumb drive.

You can fold the corners of the page with your favorite artwork in the book; you can quickly search a PDF for all instances of the word "Halloweeners."

One isn't objectively better than the other. Figure out which works best for your gaming style and, ahem, "run" with it.

The only problem I have with PDFs is the lack of the perfect PDF reader. Once a company can create a PDF reader that has the same DPI ratings of paperback in full colour (e-readers are getting close but are not quite there yet) then I will switch 100% to PDF and never touch paper ever again.

Ulterior motives. I'm a huge proponent of Foxit over Acrobat Reader, so I will use whatever reasons I can to push the usage of open source software over the proprietary Adobe Reader.

Currently I purchase both. I use my PDFs for my GMing stuff, mainly because I do everything electronically and being able to use Search for a particular ruling is really handy. Thankfully I have a fairly powerful laptop that is light enough for me to haul about everywhere I go, so I have everything stored on that.

But when I am actually playing at a table, as a player, I much prefer to have my hardcopies. Its much less distracting not having my laptop with me (Other people taking there turns for too long? Must. Resist. Minesweeper.) Plus I like having hardcopies for when I am reading them in bed or something. Laptop is a bit too clumsy for that. Plus I love the smell of new RP books.

Well then, just to be nitpicky, FoxIt is not Open Source. It's available for free, but it's not OSS.

I'm finding myself using PDFs more and more. Comes from having a PC at hand pretty much anywhere. My wife would complain about the netbook being next tot he bed, but she brought hers over first.

That said I don't really feel like I've purchased anything without getting a book with my order, so I buy both. Plus they look great on the shelf.

Pity, it's still vastly superior to Adobe's product. Which is enough reason for me to push it.

I downloaded a copy of Foxit after glancing through this thread, and I have to say it is noticeably faster than Adobe. Paging through the Master Index in SR4A on my laptop with a bazillion other apps running is smooth as silk now, whereas before it was slower than a Troll on Bliss.

You should see the design files on that one. They use a ton of GREP styles in InDesign, and my G5 desktop bogs down like crazy in that chapter. I had to copy it over to my intel-based laptop to do the nitpicky editing/widow correction in it.

Success.

That must be a proplem with you mac, as i have no problems even when i have all of those+few other open at the same time on adobe reader.

Adobe work fairly well on Ubuntu and it is a pain in the but to get Foxit to load on Linux (I hate having to use a shell script to install a program, just make a dam .deb and .rpm already), so I will stick with Adobe for now.

I've got a 2ghz macbook pro purchased 2006, so it's a little old. It also has heat problems. All I know is, Adobe stutters when I scroll through SR PDFs, Skim goes totally smoothly. YMMV.

How much RAM do you have in that comp, Shinxy?

1 gig... recently upgraded to 2 but i was already using Skim regularly by then.

For the record, I FUCKING HEARTLOVE WITH MY GROIN STUCK OUT IN FRONT OF ME some PDFs in which I can turn the damn background graphics off.

Pinnacle has their "2 version" approach, with one being pretty with graphics and one being "printer friendly". I prefer the layers. LOVE. LAYERS.

I'd have to clean up if all the sudden I could turn pictures off (the page background, at least) in my SR420A PDF. There would be a mess.

My lappy is Core2Duo 2.0GHz, 2GB RAM, nVidia somethingorother GT with 512 onboard, WinXP Pro, and it stutters in between pages in most of my SR4 PDFs, especially SR420A.

It does that on my Core2Quad 2.4GHz 4GB RAM Vista machine that runs a 8800 GeForce video card, when I'm using Acrobat Reader.
It does that on my Dell Precision M4300 Laptop (which is specced identically to your laptop), when I'm using Acrobat Reader.

When I migrated to Foxit, it was smooth. Very smooth. The images didn't impact performance at all. Seriously, try Foxit it, you will see a difference.