magazines on CD??

[Jesse Tutterrow]

I subscribe to various paper magazines. When I find a project I want to make I photocopy the article onto 11x17 paper and take the paper into the shop. That way when I spill, tear, or otherwise damage the article I can always go back to the original magazine and make another copy.

I am considering purchasing the Wood, Popular Woodworking and Woodsmith / Shop Notes back issues on CD.

Never having seen or used a magazine on CD I was wondering about it's practically. Please share your knowledge, by answering the following questions:

1. Can you print an article, or a range of pages?
2. If you can print, can you zoom to a larger size paper?
3. For articles that give 1:1 scale plans when you print does it come out at exactly the correct size?
4. For articles that give you a scaled down plan, say 1/4 inch = 1 inch, can you tell the CD to print and zoom to produce the correct full size pattern?
5. How is searchability? Can I ask for all coffee tables in the Arts and Crafts style and find them?
What about looking for helpful hints involving circular saws?

Finally, would you consider switching from keeping all of those back issues to having them on CD?

Thanks in Advance

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Looking forward to some of the replies....

The few that I have purchased contain PDFs on the disk and they could all be printed. In fact, I printed them and then read them at my leasure.

I cannot comment on proper sizing for parts with a 1-to-1 sizing, but from a PDF I would expect that to work as expected (unless errors were made creatig the PDF).

I use Linux, not Windows, so if they provide extra functionality on the disk, I would have no idea about that.

I have never tried to print my PDF books, but I have some that require a password to view. ..... I just tried a book that I published where the publisher created the PDF. It is not password protected, and it does allow me to print. I have had PDFs from other sources that officially prevented printing; as is the case with anything DRM related, there are still ways to print. Off hand, it would seem that a magazine on CD with to-scale items intended to be printed for use would allow printing.

[David Hostetler]

While I do not own the magazines on DVD (yet) I DO have plans to get them. Just hasn't been a huge priority.

As I understand it, the magazines are simply .pdf files organized in a menu system. Anything you can do with a .pdf you can do with these.

I seriously doubt that the .pdfs are all that searchable, however the menu system may be searchable... Wish I could answer that one for you...

[Larry Browning]

I think the answer to all your questions will depend on the CD itself. I highly doubt that they all are produced using the same software. Some may be just a series of files (more than likely pdf files, but they don't have to be) while others will have a dedicated program that allow you to search, print, etc, with a specialized interface. These are questions you must ask the individual publisher. The answer will be different for each one.

Up to this point I have never been a fan of electronic magazines. I find them much less interesting having to view them on a PC screen. Plus, I like to read in places where there is no access to a PC, or at least very inconvenient. (If you know what I mean!) I think one of those tablet PCs or something like a Kindle Fire would help with that issue, but still I am unconvinced about readability, thumbing thru pages, skipping back and forth between 2 pages, etc. For me there is just no substitute for good ole paper!
Of course I am old and set in my ways.

[Andrew Kertesz]

I have the FWW Complete on DVD. It is searchable, printable, shows the cover picture of each issue. I bought this after selling my hard copies, from what I have done with it I like. There was a comment before by somebody that had another magazine (don't remember which one) but they weren't impressed with the interface and performance. Try searching some of the different forums here, I'm sure you will find some threads about these.

[Bob Lang]

The ones from us (Popular Woodworking Magazine) are in PDF format, and from Abobe Reader you can print the entire issue or selected pages. Getting full-size plans from the PDF would involve jumping through some hoops. When we put illustrations in the magazine we size them to fit the available space, so you would have to figure out how big it is now and the ratio you would want to scale to. It would be easier to download the SketchUp Models (free and most projects from the last five years or so are available, earlier than that some are online and some aren't).

The search function in Abode Reader works pretty well. You can limit the search to the folder containing the PDFs and it will pop up the references with links to the articles. Personally I find it much easier to find what I'm looking for on the discs than paper issues.

Bob Lang

[Van Huskey]

I have the FWW and Wood CDs, I don't think WS and Shop Notes are on CD yet, if they are they need to go on my family "gift" list. I love the FWW interface and hate the Wood version. You can zoom and print but I have never checked if 1:1 stays perfect, I can't remember when I have used a 1:1 plan. The search is very good on the FWW and not quite as good on the Wood CDROM. I don't care much for Wood so even though the CD wasn't perfect it was more than good enough to get rid of the hard copies, I have kept my FWW hard copies BUT I would feel comfortable getting rid of them, I just haven't felt the need for the extra room yet and they do prevent me from having to print, which saves money and more trees.

[Keith Hankins]

I can only speak to woodsmith as I bought that cd. It's nice very nice. You can key word search, you can view by year (vol), or by issue. The issues are pdf's so you can look at issues and print just like you can any pdf. It's a folder structure so just copy the folder to a thumbdrive and I run it from that. It's chrome based browser is sweet. I think it has been worth it to have all those issues and key word searchable or just browse by year or thumbnails of the covers. Really cool. It was not cheap but totally worth it in my opinion. Can't speak to the others.

[Alan Schwabacher]

I would definitely check and only get CDs if the files were standard pdf format. You will likely continue to be able to read those files, even a few computer generations from now.

I don't remember which magazine tried another format, probably to avoid unauthorized copying, that was incredibly annoying to look at. You needed to use a proprietary program and put up with very slow navigation and page turn animations. Any zoom in on one page was lost on turning the page. It was awful.

[Van Huskey]

I see Shop Notes is on CDROM now, absolutely on my list after someone confirms PDF format!

[Bill Huber]

I have both Shop Notes and WS on CD and I love them, I transferred all the PDF files to my tablet and now read though them when ever I want.

I had to go to the Dr. office for my checkup awhile back and took the tablet with me and read them while waiting for 2 hours to see the Dr. much better then anything they had there to read. I will come in and set down in the living room to watch a little TV and get the tablet out and read them then, don't see much of what is on TV but then there is not much on it anyway.

I do not have a way to print 11x17 but what I did awhile back was to screen capture the part of the plan I wanted and then put it in Visio and scaled it to the correct size and printed it on 4 sheets then taped them together. That way I had a template with the right curve on it and just spray glued it to some MDF and made a template.

[Mark Welte]

I have both the Woodsmith and Shop Notes DVD's and so far I am impressed. They are all in PDF format and are searchable and actually quite easy to read. I have always been a paper person even though I work in IT as I like to have the physical piece of paper in front of me. But I can say that reading these on my laptop has been pleasurable and I don't have the Mrs. complaining about a stack of magazines in the way.