Would you like to write a PIC book with me?

I've downloaded and installed Open Office, nice program suite and since it's multi-platform and freely available I'll use it for the book.

I'll put a sample page or two here in the next day or two to get it started.

Here's a list of software (all free or unexpiring demo / student versions)

MPLAB IDE 8.0 (MPASM, simulator)
Open Office (word, calc, draw, etc)
Just BASIC (handy and free)
C18 SE
Swordfish BASIC SE (18F only, 200variable limit free version)

Special PICkit2 standalone software

Opinions? am I missing something?

blueroomelectronics said:

Opinions? am I missing something?

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Debugger, maybe?

blueroomelectronics said:

I've downloaded and installed Open Office, nice program suite and since it's multi-platform and freely available I'll use it for the book.

I'll put a sample page or two here in the next day or two to get it started.

Here's a list of software (all free or unexpiring demo / student versions)

MPLAB IDE 8.0 (MPASM, simulator)
Open Office (word, calc, draw, etc)
Just BASIC (handy and free)
C18 SE
Swordfish BASIC SE (18F only, 200variable limit free version)

Special PICkit2 standalone software

Opinions? am I missing something?

Click to expand...

Generally we use "wordpad" for typing in the assembly or C language files and thereafter save them with extension .asm or .c
Is there a file comparable in Open office? i use open office now and then but didnot come across one like wordpad.

.c and .asm are plain text files and OpenOffice can edit them with no trouble.

blueroomelectronics said:

Open office is fine, are the documents Word compatible?

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Yes it is but not 100% compatible, it can get some of the more complex formatting wrong.

OpenOffice is good but let's not forget ABIWord.

Also I'd recommend you use open format such as ODF to do all the editing and archiving it in as it can be read by free programs, it doesn't matter that it can't be read by MS Word, people can always download OpenOffice for free and we could always distribute a Word or PDF version if we wanted.

EDIT:
There's also an ODF converter for Word but I don't know how good it is as I don't have Word to test it on.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter

I'd also prefer recommending multiplatform software in general to keep everyone happy regardless of whether they use Windows, Mac OS or Linux.

blueroomelectronics said:

It's a book that can be downloaded free for personal use, commercial use would be asked to make a donation.

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I'd rather it be totally free, preferably under something like the free documentation licence?

Of course we should offer the option of them giving us money but I don't think we should force it, the more people who use it, the better.

Thanks Hero, I like the free documention licence idea.

I've started using Open Office and it appears to have everything one would need for document creation. The only people required to use it would be anyone writing or editing the book itself. For now I'll assume the roll of editior and would prefer to accept submissions in the Office writer format.

As for the published version I would think the best format would be .PDF as the reader is free and available to almost every platform.

Submissions can be posted here or to an email I'll create just for the book.

One more thing, I would like to use the "Crystal.ttf" font for listings, it can be found in the download section of my site.

I'm looking for a good screen capture program (I use Snagit but it's not free) and a free keycaps font.
<ctrl> <F10> kind of thing.

I would also include lots of side diagrams of examples and pictures, like a box beside the text, so that the reader can quickly reference to that part if they need to look at something again. I would include those on a lot of the pages, so that the reader doesnt have to search the entire document looking for a single sentence.

carnt you use the built in one that comes with windows ?

matk95 said:

carnt you use the built in one that comes with windows ?

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Wordpad is not cross platform and somewhat limited.

Although not part of the book I used Open Office Write to create this One Page MPLAB Programming Guide.
**broken link removed**

blueroomelectronics said:

I'm looking for PIC enthusiasts who would like to assist in writing yet another PIC book.

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If you want, I can do proofreading (spelling & grammar). I don't need no steenking spellchecker. I'm faster than any spellchecker I've ever tried, and more accurate. I just disable the annoying things.

blueroomelectronics said:

One more thing, I would like to use the "Crystal.ttf" font for listings, it can be found in the download section of my site.

Click to expand...

Actually you don't need to dowload it to edit documents containing the said font, OpenOffice.org embeds it in the document so anyone can edit it, even if they don't have the font on their PC! MS Word also does this but it has a DRM (Digital Rights Management) feature that only allows the document to be viewed but not edited if it contains fonts that you don't have installed on your PC.

I'm looking for a good screen capture program (I use Snagit but it's not free)

Click to expand...

What's wrong with print screen?

and a free keycaps font.
<ctrl> <F10> kind of thing.

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What do you mean?

Oh and just another thing, for a consistant look and feel the book really should use OpenOffice's styles feature for headings, program listings etc. which also makes contents pages fully automatic.

hi Bill,

>>> I'm looking for a good screen capture program (I use Snagit but it's not free)

Try 'screenhunter1.1' its freeware...

https://www.wisdom-soft.com/products/screenhunter.htm

Bill,
I have been using capture from analogx for many years.

https://www.analogx.com/CONTENTS/download/system/capture.htm

Well I can stick with Snagit as it's paid for and includes a nice editor and a printer to .png capture.
But submitters can use whatever's handy.

I'll look at those templates in Open Office.

Did you read my previous post?

Hero999 said:

Did you read my previous post?

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Of course, print screen works but is very basic and has no edit facility, a simple paint like Open Office draw works.

The embedding font in Open Office is excellent, I have a keycaps font (looks nicer than <CTRL> <S> IMO) see above MPLAB example.

And I will look into open office styles, a good template would take alot of the work out of the edits.

I really like the old Parallax layout for documents, here's an old sample.

I'm with Hero999 on this. With PrintScreen or ALT-PrintScreen you can paste into any graphics program and edit to your hearts content. Why have another program running in the tray?

Since the screen cap has so many possible solutions use whatever you see fit.

blueroomelectronics said:

but the real fun begins when you flash your first LED.

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The first program I ever wrote on my own was a program to flash an LED. Even that didn't work properly first time, because I'd neglected to consider how fast the PIC would run my program - the LED lit continuously!

After I had slowed the PIC down the LED could be seen to flash, and the interesting part was that it stayed off a lot longer than it was on. That was because of the length of time taken to run the code to setup the TRISA register and output the data etc. After the LED had been turned on, turning it off was the very next instruction in my program so it didn't stay on very long at all!!! After that I modified the program so that the LED would flash with a 50/50 duty cycle and I included some delay routines that allowed me to run it on it's standard clock frequency. Learning PIC programming is probably the most fun I've had with Electronics.

I'd love to help out with the book but I'm very much learning myself at the moment. I'm currently tackling my first "real" PIC project, and that may be of interest to you - I'll get in touch when it's finished.
Other than that I'm more than happy to proof-read your documents. Because I'm still a "beginner", I haven't forgotten what it was once like not to know how to program MicroControllers. That's quite important because once you've become quite experienced you forget this and you take some things for granted that a beginner would not. For this reason it can be hard for an experienced person to write a book aimed at an inexperienced person. So I think proof reading would help you.

Brian.

Care to share what your "real" PIC project is? Of course we're curious.

Yeah it's no big secret or anything. Basically I'm writing some software for a PIC which will allow the use of the RC-5 protocol for infra-red communication. Not a new thing, and I know you can get dedicated ICs for communicating with infra-red, but I just wanted the experience of writing a program to communicate data using an existing protocol. I've got loads of RC-5 remote controls around my house so I can use them to test my design with (I'm doing the receive side first).

Brian