Does anybody know how I can get the Blender 2.8 reference manual as a PDF? Or as EPUB? Basically, for offline viewing on an ipad.
Not sure about a PDF or EPUBā¦ But you can download the html files, I assume that will still work on an Ipad.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/
Hi Avery, Iām not sure how I could do this offline though. I downloaded the 250mb worth of files to access by html, but notsure how i would store or access this locally on an iPad.
As you can maybe guess, Iām not an expert in the HTML languageā¦
Thatās the thing though, you donāt need to know html language in order to read through the files. On a pc, I can just open up the html files, and itāll open up in my browser. And I can move through the files like I was on online. I donāt have an ipad, so I donāt if it would work their.
Perhaps their is a quick way to export the html files to a pdf? Iāll take a look.
Yeah itās easy to use the html files on the PC. I canāt find a PDF export. Sounds like itās only an issue to me.
Yeah, sorry, I tried to see if I could convert the manual myself, but itās just too big of a file to do that. Perhaps you could request whoever is in charge of the Blender manual for a another export type? Not sure where you would go to do that, OR who youād be asking but just a thought.
Iām sure their are others whoād like other file options.
Iām in the process of doing this right now - becomes a 110Meg PDF, and currently just needs some tidying up and a bit more organising.
Personally, a huge mass of HTML docs doesnāt do it for me, if I want to zip around in the manual of some new software package, to get a feeling of whatās in it - a good PDF viewer makes light work of following a train of thought, I find. Which is why I did it - I noted there are a couple of earlier attempts around, but they are too old, or lacking.
Any interest in this? Depending upon how fussy people are, I could put more time into getting rid of any loose ends ā¦
Cheers!
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Hey fas42,
Yeah Iād be interested. Is it going to be an interactve PDF then? (so the links work ismilar to bookmarks).
Are there no official people from Blender looking to do this?
Yes, the links would all work ā¦ sorry I didnāt reply earlier, I got caught up in other stuff. Thereās a bit of handwork in getting some images to scale correctly, so I left off doing more until I noticed some feedback. Since youāre interested, Iāll get back to the sorting out, 
.
As far as I know, thereās no official intention of doing this ā¦ it seems thereās a problem with the mechanism which outputs the help into different formats, as far as PDF is concerned.
Any closer to a result?
This would be perfect for me as well I would love to hear if there is an update!
Also interested 
For me is OK even without the bookmarks of the hyperlinks.
Thank you for the great effort and thank you again @fas42
+1 please please please yes @fas42 . Iād be super interested in a copy. I tried downloading the zipped site for offline reading on my ipad, but it doesnāt work (I guess too complex). It doesnāt have to be pixel-perfect; Iām stuck on trains with no wifi for 2 hours a day and would love to be able to read the blender docs.
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I downloaded the zipped html user manual files - V2.8 (300MB) for off-line use on my W10 laptop, but I could not get it to work and it would not open from within the Blender App (opening from Blender goes to the online manual which requires internet access)
No idea if it needs to be in a specific directory or not?
Anyway, hope this idea helps someoneā¦
I unzipped the html manual files into a new folder called āUser Manualā which I created in my Blender program folder (not in the install files folder) but just the first folder which contains the install files folder called 2.80
Open this new user manual folder and scroll down towards the bottom and look for; index.html (about an 18KB html file)
Right click on index.html for the popup menu and select ācreate shortcutā
It should appear just below the original file.
You can then cut and paste this shortcut to anywhere (eg: desktop), you can even rename it.
When you double mouse click this new shortcut it should then open the off-line manual youāve downloaded.
Bump - any chance of a PDF/EPUB of the manual for 2.83?
Hey guys!
Just surch in your browser for āHTML to PDF onlineā, or to EPUB, or whatever. There are many free converters for all kind and formats of files on the web. Only use that converters online, because theyĀ“re spreading shi+ware and use a one time email adress. How said. It works for the most music/picture/website/video/reader-files.
The other way to convert your html to any reader file is to install a free software like calibre. Then u can do it on your system directly.
Cheerz!
The Blender source for the manual actually has a āmake pdfā option, though the Blender documentation doesnāt tell you that. I tried it and it did the first step OK, but then you need to run latex to actually generate the PDF and that step failed for me (in different ways) on bot the Mac and Linux. Maybe Iāll look into why some day, but someone else on this thread who actually wants the pdf version of the manual may have more motivation than me to do this.
Where is that Make PDF link?
Then I can try on windows. The HTML to PDF is a nice idea but I donāt fancy doing the whole thing. Essentially I just want a cached version of the site with all links working. Not scrolling through each page in a linear order.
Ideally as web apps - although that depends on the site construction itself. These can be sen on ipads.
If you follow the directions on the link I gave to download the manual source from the svn repository, then in the root directory of that there is a build.bat file. Just run
build.bat pdf
(I think this works on Windows; I havenāt tried it. On linux or MacOs, one does āmake pdfā ).
P.S. But if you only want a cached version of the site with all the links working, then you shouldnāt make the pdf version, but rather the html version, in my opinion. Then you just do ābuild.batā; when the build finishes it shows you the command and/or link you can use to view the local copy you just built.)
Hi, thanks for these tips, I really appreciate the time. Not really what I had in mind though - Iām not seeing anything different having ābuiltā it to just purely downloading all the html in the advertised zip folder (https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.83/index.html?highlight=download) Instead it just took me 15 minutes to get to the same pointā¦ But I feel like this is on the right tracks somehow, and that there must be something Iāve missed?
The above isnāt something portable I can just do on an ipad, exactly 
Think, iBooks style.
I have however done the make pdf inside blender_docs. I havenāt done build.bat ā¦ Iām not sure I can now since Iāve already done a make. the make pdf populated the build\latex folder, but no PDFs around. This isnāt something I would be able to debug.
current issue with the pdf command, whether this causes the PDF to not write Iām unsure. The command prompt does complete and says the PDF is available however, in error. (Windows):
WARNING: convert exited with error:
[stderr]
bāInvalid drive specification.\r\nā
[stdout]
bāā