[V8] Complications: Bentley Type 44 manual discs

[Karl Middlebrooks]

Yeah, this annoys me quite a bit.

The best technical solution would be to break the storage format that Bentley uses; I assume with all the crazy pirated software around on the net that there's someone with the skills to break that open. However, the best technical solution probably violates the license agreement against reverse engineering or decompiling.

The other option, which is tedious given the interface of the Bentley software, would be to print each page off as a PDF file. As the end, you're left with a bunch of PDF files which can be viewed anywhere, which is handy. However, they're not indexable, because the text of the manuals the way Bentley scanned them isn't actually stored as PDF text.

I've thought about trying to track down a hardcopy of the V8 service manual(s) (in English, please!) and running them through a high-quality scanner/OCR program, so V8 owners could have a more robust, easily searchable service manual. Tracking down the hardcopy of the V8 manual would probably be the tricky part.

> From: rmwoodbury at roadrunner.com
> To: V8 at audifans.com
> Date: Wed, 21 May 2008 17:45:50 -0400
> Subject: [V8] Complications:  Bentley Type 44 manual discs
> 
> They won't run apparently.  My wrench bought a complete set including the V8
> files.  Now they won't run on computers using IE 7 and require at most Adobe
> Acrobat 4.
> 
> So, we are seeking a solution, since Bentley is NOT upgrading their files to
> run on the new OS.
> 
> Does anyone have an old laptop that runs IE4 and has Adobe Acrobat 4 already
> installed that they would like to get out of the garage?
> 
> Any other comments or solutions?  
> 
> Incidentally, it seems to me that this is an issue with potential societal
> ramifications.  If important documents or data is stored on discs that are
> no longer readable because of basic changes in soft ware and operating
> systems, what could actually be lost?  Quite a lot it seems, and presumably
> opens the door for an entirely new type of archivist profession.
> 
> Roger
> 
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