Need feedback on prototype cheatsheet
Many of you have asked for, or suggested heavily in the manner of an irritated mafia boss, better vector graphics support in the cheat sheet PDFs. Until now the rendering process for each PDF has gone something like this:
- Accumulate notes on the topic
- Arrange notes into an HTML template common to all Packet Life cheat sheets
- Create any necessary drawings in Visio and save them in PNG format
- Eat a sammich (nom nom)
- Embed the PNGs in the HTML document
- Tidy up the formatting, spell check, and print it to PDF
- Upload and announce the new cheat sheet
While this works moderately well, there are two major flaws with this process: Visio's poor support for exporting raster graphics, and the inability to elegantly scale these graphics. For example, when one of the cheat sheet PDFs is zoomed beyond 100%, the graphics quickly become pixelated and distorted. While not typically a problem when printing to an 8.5x11" page, this can pose problems when viewing documents enlarged on-screen or printing to a manipulated format.
So, lately I've been experimenting with a simpler publishing workflow: do the whole thing in Visio. As an experiment, I recreated the BGP cheat sheet entirely in Visio, and printed it directly to PDF (technically it was printed to PostScript first and then converted to PDF, but whatever). I didn't begin with high expectations but the first prototype has really turned out well.
The major advantage here is that the topology drawings and other native Visio images are now fully vector; compare the two images below. At left is a crop of the original BGP cheat sheet taken at 300% zoom, with the same crop taken from the new PDF at right.
What I need now is some feedback from people using various PDF viewers and printers. Download the new BGP prototype cheat sheet attached below and play around with it. Do you notice any rendering issues when viewing the PDF? Does it print okay for you? If no major issues are reported I'll start converting the existing cheat sheets to the new format.
UPDATE: Thanks for the feedback all! I'll get to work redoing all the cheat sheets as soon as I get back from Defcon. (Which sucked, by the way. For future reference, don't book a talk titled "So You Got Arrested in Vegas..." then act surprised when attendees do stupid shit and get arrested at the conference. Never again.)
About the Author
Jeremy Stretch is a freelance networking engineer, instructor, and the maintainer of PacketLife.net. He currently lives in Fairfax, Virginia, on the edge of the Washington, DC metro area. Although primarily an R&S guy, he likes to get into everything, and runs a free network training lab out of his basement for fun. You can contact him by email or follow him on Twitter.
Comments
No issues here. Definately clearer at all zoom levels within Adobe and is very crisp when printed out.
Deacon...
works fine on OSX using Preview
looks very good with the build-in PDF-Viewer on MacOS X.
I'm using Adobe reader 9.1 and the graphics scale perfectly. Thanks for all the effort you've put into these. They're great!
the new ones flawless, can zoom as far as you want with no loss of quality, good stuff :D
huh... I had always just assumed being PDF that your cheat sheets were scalable. I never tried to zoom in on them before.
So, I guess being that they should have been vector to start with, props to you for changing it :)
Looks great on Foxit and Adobe on Vista 32 bit. Thank you very much for creating these cheat sheets. They are how I found your website and blog, and it has become my most read, and most recommended blog!
-Eric
It looks great here at 600% (which is my default zoom setting for any document, lol)
Looks nice to me. I use Foxit on XP.
Looks great through IE 7 and XP. I thank you for detailing the process (I always assumed it was a lot of work, nice to know I was right) for creating these, but you left out an important detail...
What was on the sammich, and what was it washed down with...
Looks great in Preview on OS X.
Looks fantastic on win7 + Firefox 3.5 w/ Foxit plugin. Zoomed in so close it got shy.
Looks great in CentOS 5.3 using either Adobe Reader or evince.
Works great with evince and Xpdf
Very nice and clear! I use IE 6 and Firefox, looks great in both. Kudos to you!
awesome :)
looks good on 10" EEE PC in FF and foxit reader
No comments required. It looks great as usual.
Hey Stretch,
I have a suggestion for a different approach that you may find useful. I understand that Visio has the ability to save images in multiple vector formats. In the past I have exported to EMF format to preserve the vector format in word documents. SVG is a format that Visio will export and is supported in HTML pages.
I just tried a test using an SVG image from Wikipedia and outputting a PDF. I was surprised to find it indeed maintained the vector quality of the image. This combination may result in quality diagrams without affecting your workflow much. I have not tried the entire process myself, but I imagine it should work.
Always a fan of the site btw ;)
looks great in Adobe Reader 8.1 on XP.
I zoomed in at 6400% on Acrobat PDF 6.0 pro and it looked very clean and clear. I did not get a chance to print it but I do not see any issues printing it.
Perfect image. No pixelization even at 1000% with 22 inches screen with Nuance PDF professionnal.
looks a lot better...excellent job!
spencer
Using Adobe Reader 9, the new one works without any flaws!
So much better ! Thx !
works great with preview on my osx.
.. just checked the .pdf with my Nokia E90 and the default PDF viewer Adobe ME 1.5.0. Looks great even if zoomed to 800%. Just keep on with the good work!! Br, Jani
Looks perfect..you can update these amazing cheat sheets!!!
Looks good in Mozilla. Definetly looks better than the old format but I didn't think those looked bad either. Man you are a perfectionist! Great job with the cheat sheets -- keep em coming!
They look great. Way to be a perfectionist!
No issues - Prints great !
Look good Stretch
Looks perfect in okular and kpdf. Print great too. Running opensuse 11.1.
Thanks for the terrific sheets!
Sorry to hear you didn't have a good time at Vegas, I would have liked to meet up with, but we never seemed to connect. As a rule the people that put on Defcon are not surprised at the stupid shit people do at Defcon or that they get arrested. People do dumb things. Looking forward to the new and improved cheatsheets.
I use Bullzip PDF for converting any documents to pdf. I like it, coz it free :)
Someone recommended using Visio SVG export. I do not recommend this, as it is quite buggy. I usually do the following: As I have Visio 2007, I export the drawing to PDF. Then I start Inkscape (free vector drawing tool), open the PDF, tweak it if I want, and export to the format I want.
Looks really clear. The print out looks great as well. The cheat sheets are outstanding. Hopefully we can see some new ones in the future.
This is my first visit to your site, specifically looking for a BGP cheatsheet. It took all of about 15 seconds to come to a one word summary of this site..
"Outstanding"
Thanks for the great work
No problems viewing it at home over here. Also I use Foxit Reader on Windows7, not Adobe.
Regards,
Darren