Reference pages distributed as PDFs?

There are several reference pages in the Arduino editor, in the Help menu. They are distributed as HTML pages and stored locally. Should these be distributed as PDFs?

  • Images in the HTML do not show if you don't have an internet connection, and have to be fetched; they are included in a PDF
  • Links do not show in a PDF (see below) but cannot be used in HTML with no connection
  • A script (create_reference.pl) is used to extract and manipulate the pages from arduino.cc to 'fix' them for the reference documentation. I have not checked this, but it may have to be modified when pages change

CSS layout allows for formatting depending on screen or print view. Creating the pages on arduino.cc using this CSS may help to simplify the conversion to the reference pages and improve the layout; by using a Print Preview the page can be verified. The print can be sent to a PDF creator printer (e.g. CutePDF). Sections of the page seen on the screen view can be hidden for the print view. The URLs for links can be added as text after the link text, which could be selected and copied to a browser.

The page names would have to be changed in the code, but PDFs can be opened from the editor (I have checked this bit). I have not checked how this affects the Reference page, which would need the links but don't have images. There are currently 279 pages, and I am not sure how the extraction would be automated.

Perhaps we just need the create reference script to do more.