Hi

First off, thanks for the new on-line manual for BIAB MAC 2018. It looks great...

BUT

PLEASE PLEASE put a search facility on it. Without a search it is near useless when it comes to a quick 'how do I do this'.

Just a thought....
Cheers
Mark

I can't speak about the online manual but PG Music was able to quickly add hyperlinks to the
Windows Band-in-a-Box pdf file. All items in the Table of Contents (TOC) and Index are hyperlinked which makes it very easy to search.

I downloaded and opened the Mac BiaB manual and the TOC and Index do not have hyperlinks as the Windows manual do. Luckily all pdf creation programs I've seen have hyperlink capability and obviously the program PG Music uses does. I'm sure the oversight will be quickly corrected once they realize it was made.

Also I'll point out to you that the Adobe PDF Reader program has a built-in search feature. You can use the search bar at the top of the reader window or activate a pop-up search bar by using Command + F (I think).

Again, I have bare bones knowledge of building webpages so I'm not sure what it will take to add search to the online manual.

Nearly all web pages can be searched using Command F. This includes pdf files with embedded text (those that are picture snapshots of pages will not work this way—done so that you can't copy the text either).


One should look at the Finale 25 help files. This is the best example I know of how not to do this. It is ridiculous. They refuse to upload a searchable pdf.

Hi
Thanks for the info. Yes I realise you can search a web page but that only searches the page you are on. If what you need is on another linked page it won't find anything. Thats why a proper search of the whole file is needed.
For example, I was looking to try and find how the various 'Bar Settings' options work, in particular the volume adjustments. It is not in the index and not searchable form the index page. So I simple could not find it.

I agree that not having a fully fleshed out help system is pretty poor for a product that has been around longer than Windows! (Yes I do still have my original 51/4 floppy discs with Band in a Box for Dos on them.) The world has moved on but we dont have a searchable Help file.... hmmmmmm.

(stands back and waits for the flames to come in )


Cheers
Mark

I'm not going to flame you. I'm just trying to help so I try to ignore flaming comments and keep on subject.

It appears the online manual stretches across many web pages so the online manual will be restricted to one page. That is why they added the navigation bar on the left side of the webpage.

I believe the best way to overcome this search restriction is to download the pdf file so Command-F and the Adobe Reader built-in search feature can search the complete manual.

I'm guessing PG Music limited the online manual search feature to one page to minimize bandwidth. I've seen multiple forum members post comments that their website access is limited due to bandwidth constraints.

Has anyone here actually tried this or is everyone just guessing?

Click on the pdf manual for Mac.

Mac PFD Manual 2018

In the Chrome browser (my default) it opens up 438 pages—not quickly but it does. Command f lets you search all 438 pages just like it's supposed to.

I click Print (to pdf) and it saves the manual to my folder of choice. You may have to right-click and Save As depending on your browser and preferences. Ok... I open it up—it defaults to Preview. Type in the search term and it will display all pages on the right.

It behaves exactly like every PDF file I know.


I work with, download and/or generate 10–50 .pdf files a day. The 2018 BIAB manual for the Mac behaves no differently. The reason I use Chrome is because, in the past, I could search 800 page pdf files from a certain state web site in the time it took to type in the search term. While Chrome took a few seconds, with FireFox, the same file could take a half hour or more. Safari and Internet Explorer were ridiculously slow.

Just for kicks, I tried downloading the manual in Safari and FireFox. Much, much better than the old days but still slower than Chrome.

On my 2010 iMac i7 running High Sierra 10.13.3, from clicking on the manual till the full 438 document loads:

Chrome: 2 seconds

FireFox: 10 seconds

Safari: 12 seconds

Once you have done it the first time, subsequent attempts will load faster due to browser caching. Chrome is now under 2 seconds while Safari and FireFox are 3–4.

I like downloading a pdf manual and exporting it to my iPad or have it displayed on one of my monitors when trying to figure something out. I dislike accessing Help files from inside an application.

Hey Mike

Thanks for the info, all good. Yes I did use the PDF in the end. Th only issue with PDF files, especially large ones like this, is that they get out of date and can be cumbersome for the developer to update. On-line HTML is so much easier to manage and update. As an owner of a software development company for 20 years I can vouch for that. And there are plenty of readily available authoring tools for HTML based help files that allow the generation of search indexes. But for now, searching the PDF is OK.

Cheers
Mark

Mike,

It still surprises me how different the times are for different browsers to perform the same task. There are a lot of tasks where Chrome handily beats the competition. Thanks for running that test and providing the results.

The search feature does not work as well with the online manual as it does with the pdf file as the online manual is divided into many small segments. That was why my first post suggested downloading the pdf file and using the Command + F or Adobe Reader search feature.

However the original comment in the initial post is correct that TOC and Index hyperlinks are not available in the Mac online manual. After checking I confirmed the same was true for both the Mac and Windows online manuals. However, the Windows pdf file does include hyperlinks in the TOC and index.

Hopefully this message thread will highlight the discrepancy enough for the issue to be resolved.