Blender 2.8 reference manual as a PDF/EPUB

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I understand your desire for a nice iBooks-like app that feels like a single item you can just click, but wondered whether it is possible to package this up as something that puts the html files somewhere on the ipad and a command that opens your browser pointing at the index page? But I guess you would rather just have one big file, like a PDF.

Now that you mention it, it is indeed a bit pointless to just make the html files locally because you can download the zip of them.

When I did the “make pdf”, it did not make a pdf file, as you noted. After you make it, I think it printed instructions to change into the build/latex folder and run make there, which runs latexmk to make the pdf. You have to have installed latex. I did this on MacOS and Linux and neither worked for me (as I reported above). On MacOS there was a problem finding a font. On Linux, it printed some weird conversion errors. With enough energy I could track down and fix these problems on my machines, but I don’t have the energy to do that right now.

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Hey it was worth a try - I figured the ‘build’ aspect would be building one file . Although once I saw it referencing index.html then I figured its still going to be just wanting all the html bundled together.

I had a statement printed towards the end of building, something like latexmk doesn’t have the make command I think. So presumably at that point it was expecting Latex/lAtEx to be installed. At this point though… I wouldn’t really know what I’m downloading. Or doing for that matter.

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Hi, I was searching for a pdf of the blender 2.9 manual and that search led me to this conversation, and to the “make pdf” approach. It took a little bit of hacking but I was able to create a pdf of Blender 2.92 user manual. As a thank you I’ve uploaded the resultant pdf’s to the following URL:

http://www.fusionunchained.com/blender-docs/

The total manual was 157MB, so I broke it up into 6 pieces to make downloads easier. The splits are roughly on section breaks:

p1-p562 [Blender3dManualR2_92_P1_P562.pdf]
+ s2.1 Getting Started
+ s2.2 User Interface
+ s2.3 Editors

p563-p1128 [Blender3dManualR2_92_P563_P1128.pdf]
+ s2.4 Scenes & Objects
+ s2.5 Modelling

p1129-p1212 [Blender3dManualR2_92_P1129_P1212.pdf]
+ s2.6 Sculpting & Painting

p1213-p1493 [Blender3dManualR2_92_P1213_P1493.pdf]
+ s2.7 Grease Pencil
+ s2.8 Animation & Rigging

p1494-p1939 [Blender3dManualR2_92_P1494_P1939.pdf]
+ s2.9 Physics
+ s2.10 Rendering
+ s2.11 Tracking & Masking
+ s2.12 Files & Data System

p1940-p2750 [Blender3dManualR2_92_P1940_P2750.pdf]
+ s2.13 Add-ons
+ s2.14 Advanced
+ s2.15 Troubleshooting
+ s2.16 Glossary
+ s3.1 Contribute Documentation

I still got a few error messages from the latex to pdf conversion, but I think everything is there and the formatting turned out quite well. Except for the contents section, the latex module (or whatever its called) wasn’t compatible with the version of linux I was running.

I don’t believe I’m violating any copyright or distribution restrictions by posting this, the CC BY-SA 4.0 Intl referenced on the Blender document pages says “you are free to: share - copy and distribute the material in an medium or format”, however if I am violating anything let me know and I’ll remove the files from my webserver ASAP.

Its great having a printed copy on my desk while trying to learn how to use the tool (I’m a complete beginner coming from a completely different day job). So, thanks again for the pointer to the “make pdf” option.

Enjoy!!

3 Likes
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You are a hero.

I’ve been trying to troubleshoot error messages from latexmk for the last hour.

Thank you SO MUCH !

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Well I’ll be damned Look at that. So all those headers and footers etc were auto generated from the program you installed and ran? How long was that process?

Best,

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Wow, what an effort… all the best to you!