Some People Shouldn't Be Allowed to Use a Computer
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You've taken a screen shot, printed it out, scanned the print out, embedded it into a PDF, and then emailed it? Screen shots I get, but this was way out there. And it couldn't even simply be the computer had no internet connection and they didn't have a portable storage device either, because this was a web app.
At least he didn't print it out and Fedex it to you.
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lewax00 wrote:
vs. nearly 700 for PDF v1.3 (I think it's on v1.7 now, so that's probably even longer).
Got a couple of the spec docs sitting around here, PDFReference15_v6.pdf - 1172 pages, 8,975kb (pdfreference12.pdf - 394 pages, 1,478kb) Not exactly the most interesting reading I've had the luck of being tasked with. :^)
"Science adjusts its views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation, so that belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin
Yeah, PDF is kind of the bane of my existence right now. On the upside, I figured out how to manually edit the files tripping up the system enough to get them through. Adobe still thinks they're ugly and tries to fix them, but I don't care as long as all the info is preserved and they don't put our PDF library into an infinite loop! :-D The sooner this whole episode is behind me the better.
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Yeah, PDF is kind of the bane of my existence right now. On the upside, I figured out how to manually edit the files tripping up the system enough to get them through. Adobe still thinks they're ugly and tries to fix them, but I don't care as long as all the info is preserved and they don't put our PDF library into an infinite loop! :-D The sooner this whole episode is behind me the better.
Commiserations my friend. I (still) feel your pain a couple of years after the fact. ;P But I do have self-written implementations in c++ and php, so that's kinda nice. Even using the hello-world examples in the docs verbatim, Acrobat 9 Pro still insists on 'fixing' them. :doh: PDF is the only reason the word Adobe ever crosses my mind these days. 1/2 way tempted to look into LaTex, to be honest.
"Science adjusts its views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation, so that belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin
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At least he didn't print it out and Fedex it to you.
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At least he didn't print it out and Fedex it to you.
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You can cross it off twice! I also work where lots of paper is scanned, and TIFF rules the roost 'round here. Over the years I've written lots of code to do various interesting things with them (mostly because the company I work for has a serious Not Invented Here syndrome). When much of the development work involves manipulating multi-page scans at a low level from many different sources, any sane person* would take TIFF any day of the week over PDF! *not to imply that I fit that description
The funny part is that today I was researching a bug with the webgrid control we use and getting out of memory error when someone tries to export too much data to tiff format. I was thinking to myself why in the world is .tiff even there. You have answered it. :)
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Richard Deeming wrote:
user's taken a picture of the screen with their phone
Don't knock it. One of the most useful error reports I've received in recent memory included a two minute video taken with the service engineer's phone that demonstrated what the customer was doing to cause the problem. Without the video I wouldn't have had a clue what was going on. With it, it was straightforward to find and fix.
Software Zen:
delete this;Gary Wheeler wrote:
service engineer'
I think those are the relevant word there!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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We just received an email, with an attached PDF, containing a black & white scan, of a printout, of a screenshot of an error message that was in a copyable text box. W. T. E. :doh: :confused:
Teach them that the PDF can be OCR'ed :)
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We just received an email, with an attached PDF, containing a black & white scan, of a printout, of a screenshot of an error message that was in a copyable text box. W. T. E. :doh: :confused:
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That really annoys me. Just send me the image, that way I can make it big enough to read, and if you could learn to crop... A screen shot of two large, widescreen monitors reduced to the size of a portrait word doc is impossible to read.
“I believe that there is an equality to all humanity. We all suck.” Bill Hicks
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You're lucky it was a screenshot. I've had error messages sent through where the user's taken a picture of the screen with their phone. X|
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
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We just received an email, with an attached PDF, containing a black & white scan, of a printout, of a screenshot of an error message that was in a copyable text box. W. T. E. :doh: :confused:
The explanation is obvious: the guy has no network access and can only send mail from the neighboring cybercafé, using Papernet for transfers.
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I've had tickets like that before. I had one where someone took a screenshot, then pasted it into Word, then (mystifyingly) took a screenshot of Word and attached that to the ticket. By that point, the original screenshot was shrunk to the point of uselessness. One wonders the thought process behind something like that.
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We just received an email, with an attached PDF, containing a black & white scan, of a printout, of a screenshot of an error message that was in a copyable text box. W. T. E. :doh: :confused:
It's because people know that us nerdy types go all round Robin Hood's barn to achieve simple things (I mean, even sort algorithms look ridiculously complex and difficult, to the un-nerdified), so they think they have to emulate that complexity when they communicate with us. So it's a courtesy, and you should be more appreciative.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Hmm, I just ignore such reports.... I'm blind and my screen reader cannot read graphics! ;P
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Richard Deeming wrote:
user's taken a picture of the screen with their phone
Don't knock it. One of the most useful error reports I've received in recent memory included a two minute video taken with the service engineer's phone that demonstrated what the customer was doing to cause the problem. Without the video I wouldn't have had a clue what was going on. With it, it was straightforward to find and fix.
Software Zen:
delete this;Video sounds cool. As long as they don't try to print it that is ;)
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:laugh: That is funny! At least my customers have figured out the 'Print Screen' key and how to paste into a word doc. It's actually not a bad way to report an error, as the context is usually revealed in the image.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
Weeeeell, I remember a project where I ran the calculation of a ray tracing image on one computer (the one with the high performance), copied the results to another (the one with lots of space), stored this on a tape, physically brought that tape over to a reader in the next room, then read it into the memory of a workstation (the one with the fancy screen and graphics). At least, when viewing the image you couldn't see any signs of the individual travel stages. Also, I did have access to a terminal for typing the program, I didn't need to print it onto punch cards :cool: Ok, that was 30 years ago - I really hope no customer of yours is required to work like that anymore...
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That really annoys me. Just send me the image, that way I can make it big enough to read, and if you could learn to crop... A screen shot of two large, widescreen monitors reduced to the size of a portrait word doc is impossible to read.
“I believe that there is an equality to all humanity. We all suck.” Bill Hicks
I'll let you know that yesterday i received a print on a e-mail that showed paint with a print of paint showing a print of paint showing 1/4 of the systems screen, not the 1/4 that had the error in it. you're luck if you just receive a doc with a print inside.
I'm brazilian and english (well, human languages in general) aren't my best skill, so, sorry by my english. (if you want we can speak in C# or VB.Net =p) "Given the chance I'd rather work smart than work hard." - PHS241 "'Sophisticated platform' typically means 'I have no idea how it works.'"
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We just received an email, with an attached PDF, containing a black & white scan, of a printout, of a screenshot of an error message that was in a copyable text box. W. T. E. :doh: :confused:
Most of my users at least know to use a PrtScn. It's real annoying for those who have dual monitors. Many seem to have difficulty with the Alt-PrtScn. I also have a copyable error message that has not yet been used. But I have another avenue that works most of the time. I log the error in a database.
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Video sounds cool. As long as they don't try to print it that is ;)
