The Digital Gen and Macintosh OS and PDFs

[mrgoat]

Mr K and Eric Mead seemed to have some difficulties viewing the PDF format that The Digital Gen is produced with.

PDF is platform independant and will work in exactly the same way on mac, windows or linux boxes.

I suspect the fault is with the user, (with the greatest of respect) than the product.

Maybe it's an old version of acrobat? Maybe its a badly configured non-OSX mac?

It's technically impossible for a PDF to produce different results on different operating systems using the most recent version of the reader software. As far as I know.

Just wanted to make sure Mac users (all three of us) are not put off by the comments in the review.

Regards

Goatlad

[El Mystico]

My only plea for this is - avoid copying this work!!!
It's great that someone is making this stuff available - so however easy it is to make copies - please respect the copyright owner, who is, after all, making these things available at a reasonable cost.

[Guest]

Believe me there are more than three intellegent, intuitive magicians on this line -- who use macs. It is just we have so little to complain about.

As far as Digital GEN -- I found it great, eqasy to use, and Acrobat 6 reader even scrolls well.....5 was still jumping page lengths per click.

As far as pirating -- if must say that if you try to purchase a used DISC SET AND ARE

[Guest]

Somehow was cut off in middle of sentence there --

IF YOU ORDER A USED SET OF DISKS - AND RECEIVE A PDF you are probably receiving an illegal copy of the work. This is illegal and can be proscecuted under criminal law -- both seller (who also has civil liability) and buyer (for stupidity.)

[Bill Mullins]

Originally posted by C.H.Mara:
This is illegal and can be proscecuted under criminal law

Are you sure about the criminal part? I thought the only recourse for copyright violation was for the owner to go after the violator in civil court (to sue).

[John Signa]

Originally posted by mrgoat:
PDF is platform independant and will work in exactly the same way on mac, windows or linux boxes.
...
It's technically impossible for a PDF to produce different results on different operating systems using the most recent version of the reader software. As far as I know.

I wouldn't be so quick to blame the problem as user error. It is very possible to create PDFs that display correctly on one operating system and not on another; not all PDF-generating applications produce correct-to-specification PDF files.

Also, applications, such as Acrobat Reader, that are written for multiple operating systems running on very different processors will have bugs that appear on one OS and not on another due to programming differences between the different platforms. It is possible that Mr. K & Mr. M experienced a bug in the Macintosh version of Reader.

The point is that without additional information, I would not be so quick to point to the user as the cause of the problem.

[mrgoat]

Originally posted by John Signa:
I wouldn't be so quick to blame the problem as user error.

It is possible that Mr. K & Mr. M experienced a bug in the Macintosh version of Reader.

The point is that without additional information, I would not be so quick to point to the user as the cause of the problem.

There is no such graphics bug in the OS9 or OSX versions of Acrobat. This is why I suspected it was the set up of the machines, or a old and incompatible version of the app. This is naturally 'User Error'. They way you write makes it sound as if my post was some personal attack.

Quite the contrary, I was merely trying to make sure the few Mac users there are are not put off by a review of a product that mentions a fault I do not believe is with the product.

That is all. :D

[Bill Mullins]

Originally posted by mrgoat:
Just wanted to make sure Mac users (all three of us) are not put off by the comments in the review.

The Mac users in my office aren't put off by anything us PC users say. They generally don't even acknowledge our existence.

[Guest]

I wanted to address to the question of copyright violation as a criminal offense.

Copyright infringement in certain cases can now be treated as a criminal offense. There is a dollar amount attached to whether the infringement can be prosecuted in criminal court. What is unclear at this point is if, for example, the value of the Digital Gen is determined solely by the discs thenselves, or the overall "worth" of the original work.

In addition there is a percentage involved. You can LEGALLY reproduce up to 15% of a work and remain within the legal parameters of copyright.

You may NOT however reproduce more than two articles from the same issue of a given periodical. So, using The Gen as an example, you could not reproduce say, a Vernon effect and a Ken Brooke article appearing in the same issue. While the TOTAL may be under 15% you still cannot use two articles from a given periodical.

The stiffening of penalties for copyright infringement is being driven largely by the film and music industries. There are many who believe that copyright imfringement penalties will soon be as tough as Trademark infringement.

If anyone is interested I will send some URLs dealing with the US guidelines and regulation regarding copyright, as well as those of the Bern Convention which makes clear international regulations.

As a sideline bit of trivia: Dracula by Bram Stoker is in the public domain.... but translations of the the Bible are NOT!! An interesting slant on copyright if you think on it: "Dracula" was published in 1897, and the Bible (including the Deuterocanonical books) was not made canon by the Catholic Church until the late 4th century with the Book of Revelation being the last book made canon.

You can, for example, post the whole text of Stoker's classic on the WWW, but you cannot post the complete text of the New Jerusalem Bible without permission from the Catholic Church, or the NKJV from whatever Protestant denomination "owns" it.

Sorry for the tangent(s) but I thought they would be somewhat useful in showing the vagaries of copyright.

Regards,
Vlad

[CHRIS]

Originally posted by mrgoat:
Mr K and Eric Mead seemed to have some difficulties viewing the PDF format that The Digital Gen is produced with.

Can you be more specific about what kind of difficulties they had?

Chris Wasshuber
preserving magic one book at a time

[John Signa]

Originally posted by mrgoat:
They way you write makes it sound as if my post was some personal attack.

I'm sorry for coming across as harsh. Since I just completed development of a Troubleshooting training course for a large computer company, I was a little sensitive to quickly pointing to user error with out more info.

Again, my apologies.

[Richard Kaufman]

Chris, you need to go and read the issue of Genii in which it was reviewed.
Vlad, I have requested additional information about your statement about copyright law and 15% allowable use without permission. It's simply not true. An extremely knowledgeable copyright attorney shares the following information:
"There is no percentage allowable. This is a myth favoured by people who want use other people's work without paying. Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act provides for fair use exceptions. How much is used is just one of the considerations (and no exact percentage is specified). Who is the user, what the purpose of the use and what the financial impact is on the work copied are other considerations. There are some percentages and word counts in agreements between private groups (e.g., say schools and textbook publishers), but these are guidelines only between those parties and do not have any legal effect on others."
So, Vlad, please tell us exactly which law you are referring to?

[Guest]

Richard,

I should have been more specific... I was referring to fair-use exceptions. Academic institutions for instance use the fair use exception when preparing electronic reserve material for students. The proviso of course is that the information is used for educational purposes, only accessible by students and staff of said university, and that it (the material) may remain availble for two consecutive semesters without obtaining permission from copyright holder.

My apologies for my lack of specificity regarding this.

Vlad