Hi all. I am a technical artist for an aviation company in the US that has presented me with a task I need guidance on.

The project is:
One of the products this company creates is custom aircraft maintenance manuals (as well as other documents for our clients). They want to be able to provide our clients with digital versions of these manuals that can be downloaded and read on iPad and Android tablets. Their ultimate goal is to create portals where the clients can get and download the manuals for their specific aircraft. Also, they want to explore the possibility of creating ebook files instead of using the PDF files.

Problems I am encountering:
1. I have downloaded various trial versions of software to create .epub documents for the Mac, but they do not translate the PDF properly. I don't know if this is a factor of how the PDF is written or how it is being translated by the software.

2. I have been researching how to copy the manuals over to the iPad and having local document access instead of accessing the documents via the internet. I am a PC user, so I do not know enough about the inner workings of the iPad environment to know the best route for persuing this without help from others.

Thanks in advance for all your help.

To answer the first question I am not sure on how that works so I cannot help you on that. As for the second question all the person has to do is download the PDF to the iPad and use the open in feature to open it in iBooks. This will give them the document on the device. Or you can email them the document and they again use the open in feature to open it in iBooks. Hope that helps.

Office jd is good also

Sent from my iPad using iPF

Originally Posted by ooney

Office hd is good also

Sent from my iPad using iPF

Sent from my iPad using iPF

I've utilized a new technology called CloudOn. You can use it for free until such time as your requirements exceed the free access parameters.

You do not say in what format the original documents are produced.

If they are in Microsoft word or an equivalent program why not try ACT Printer from the app store. This, together with a Windows/Mac program (free download) will enable your to transfer documents from the computer using the print facility. Choose to print to ACT Printer and select the iPad as the target.

I use this all the time, and have well over 150 PDF's on my iPad, all perfectly formatted and readable.

Once on the iPad it is possible to print (using the curly arrow icon) an individual PDF either as an email or to a Dropbox account.

Well worth investigating.

Another option would be to load a MS Word source file into iBooks Author and publish as a iBook.

This, of course, will require plugging your customer's iPads into your development Mac to load a "Proof" copy of the iBook.

I have used this method to show clients how things will really look and function on an iPad and to deliver content to small groups of users (like at a conference)