The Great Apple PDF Update

[MongooseMatt]

Hey everyone,

We are currently in the process of going through all our past PDFs and updating them so they display properly on Apple devices. There is rather a lot of them (!), but we will be steadily working through every PDF with this problem. We will update this post as new ones are added on both our website and DrivethruRPG, listing all the revisions. Simply re-download and you will be good to go!

Updated so far:

Aliens of Charted Space Vol. 3
Aliens of Charted Space Vol. 4
Central Supply Catalogue Update 2023
Companion Update 2024
Core Rulebook Update 2022
Explorer's Edition
Fifth Frontier War
High Guard Update 2022
Mysteries of the Ancients
Order of Prometheus
Robot Handbook
Secrets of the Ancients
Small Craft Catalogue
The Deep and the Dark
The Imperial Navy
The Spinward Extrents
The Third Imperium
The Trailing Frontier
This is Free Trader Beowulf
Whispers on the Abyss
Wrath of the Ancients

And we have already started work updating the new Paranoia and Shield Maidens books

 

[ThornPlutonius]

Thank you!

 

[Geir]

Sometimes... I can just be a giant pain in the behind. I know this, and yet:

"The_Imperial_Navy_23-04-23.pdf"
Is what Drivethru calls it.
Day-month-year ? Or year-month-day (yes, the year is wrong either way). Ironically this file downloads as just:
The_Imperial_Navy.pdf

Now, the next one is "Third_Impeium_23-04-24.pdf" which implies year is intended to be last.
And here's where the pain in the butt comes in: You know, this will sort by day of the month, so if it was to sort chronologically , it should be year first and day last.
Or I could just rename the files to whatever I want...

And now, on to the next file...

 

[Yatima]

Hey everyone,

We are currently in the process of going through all our past PDFs and updating them so they display properly on Apple devices. There is rather a lot of them (!), but we will be steadily working through every PDF with this problem. We will update this post as new ones are added on both our website and DrivethruRPG, listing all the revisions. Simply re-download and you will be good to go!

Updated so far:

Central Supply Catalogue Update 2023
Companion Update 2024
Core Rulebook Update 2022
Fifth Frontier War
High Guard Update 2022
Robot Handbook
The Imperial Navy
The Third Imperium
This is Free Trader Beowulf
Wrath of the Ancients

Thanks so much, Matt and team!

J

 

[CordwainerFish]

Day-month-year ? Or year-month-day (yes, the year is wrong either way).

Guess I gotta tap the XKCD sign again...

Or I could just rename the files to whatever I want...

Which is what I do, alongside creating a fairly involved directory structure to keep things grouped by sector or theme or whim.

(Hm, maybe I need a directory just for hard links of sector map posters...)

 

[BangsNaughtyBits]

Does The Imperial Navy have the correct date in the filename? It's dated 23-4-23.

!

 

[23Weasels]

Hooray! Thank you!

 

[Galadrion]

I was going to post up a comment about someone coming back from vacation or something; when I checked my email I saw what felt like a dozen update posts from Mongoose (and a few from some other companies too). Maybe someone just remembered to turn on the internet...

 

[TrippyHippy]

This is truly appreciated.

Also, if you are doing this can you either leave the files unlocked for editing or insert a blank page immediately after the cover page? This ensures that the page alignment is correct on a 2-page spread.

 

[BangsNaughtyBits]

This is truly appreciated.

Also, if you are doing this can you either leave the files unlocked for editing or insert a blank page immediately after the cover page? This ensures that the page alignment is correct on a 2-page spread.

The Mongoose PDFs are unlocked. I just opened The Imperial Navy with Preview and inserted a blank page after the cover page. Closed it and saved with the additional page and now displays with the default two-page view. Preview cannot edit locked PDFs like from FriveThru.

I normally use PDF Expert as it has an almost passable darkmode (just inverted) and also does interesting things with locked and watermarked PDFs. It lets you specify a Cover and also where to start counting I, ii, iii, iv ...etc and where to start 1,2, 3 and so on. It solves the page numbers corresponding to PDF pages. It also lets you toggle two page view to get facing pages correct. Not cheap, though.

!

 

[CordwainerFish]

Here's something interesting: some - not all - of the fixed files are byte for byte identical to the ones I made with Ghostscript. (The old version, the one that didn't make humongous files and take forever doing it.)

 

[Takei]

Thanks for updating the files. Much appreciated. However...

I agree with previous posters that you should follow ISO 8601 (yr/mo/da) when it comes to adding dates.

CSC compressed won't open in MS Edge or Adobe Acrobat Reader on my Windows machine.

 

[BangsNaughtyBits]

The CSC Compressed PDF also fails to load on Mac via Preview or Foxit Reader. They use different PDF rendering engines. Reports not PDF or corrupt.

!

 

[MongooseBella]

Thanks for updating the files. Much appreciated. However...

I agree with previous posters that you should follow ISO 8601 (yr/mo/da) when it comes to adding dates.

CSC compressed won't open in MS Edge or Adobe Acrobat Reader on my Windows machine.

View attachment 1780

This should be fixed now. It looks like the file didn't compress properly (and wasn't necessary with the non-compressed version). The non-compressed version is working on Edge, Acrobat, and iOS. I'm very sorry about that!

 

[Timolution]

Very nice that the issue is rectified! Two small questions though:

1) For those of us original Companion owners that received the updated 2024 Companion as a complementary gesture, will that latter one be updated too (here and at DTRPG)?

2) Not sure if you are also planning to update the JTAS magazines (not sure those are needed as I never noticed any issues with those), but in case you do: will you not forget to also update the kickstarter versions at DTRPG? We never received the actual public versions for the second set of volumes 7-12 (as far as I know, or I must have missed that) and the ones we have in our DT libraries are separate to the ones available to the public there.

 

[TrippyHippy]

The Mongoose PDFs are unlocked. I just opened The Imperial Navy with Preview and inserted a blank page after the cover page. Closed it and saved with the additional page and now displays with the default two-page view. Preview cannot edit locked PDFs like from FriveThru.

I normally use PDF Expert as it has an almost passable darkmode (just inverted) and also does interesting things with locked and watermarked PDFs. It lets you specify a Cover and also where to start counting I, ii, iii, iv ...etc and where to start 1,2, 3 and so on. It solves the page numbers corresponding to PDF pages. It also lets you toggle two page view to get facing pages correct. Not cheap, though.

!

Still finding a few pages - mainly on updated Paranoia books - are still locked.

I just checked the PDF Expert app and it costs $250NZ. I just want to read my PDFs as the files were intended, not turn into a professional editor.

 

[Surge]

I commend your efforts in this, but you really really REALLY should also use this as an opportunity to add real dates of the updates to all of the pdfs.

YYYYMMDD at the front of EVERY pdf, and in the filename of EVERY file.

Stop ignoring everyone suggesting this. It is in your interest Mongoose!

 

[BangsNaughtyBits]

Or a revision/printing version in the text. Another publisher just hard implemented a consistent versioning system in their releases and though their core rules went from a Version Six to 5.0, they are now doing proper increments in both their PDF and physical releases. Much easier than scouring eratta revisions to figure out what a file/book is.

 

[apastuszak]

Will Humble Bundle and Bundle of Holding files also get these updates?

 

[apastuszak]

I commend your efforts in this, but you really really REALLY should also use this as an opportunity to add real dates of the updates to all of the pdfs.

YYYYMMDD at the front of EVERY pdf, and in the filename of EVERY file.

Stop ignoring everyone suggesting this. It is in your interest Mongoose!

Also release notes of what's changed. I know this time around, it's only Apple updates. But if something newer drops, it would be nice to get another file that lists the "version number" of the PDF and what's changed in it.