Which is the Best manual to Buy? Not Greens!

[Eckhard]

Hi. I have the Green Manual version of the CAN AM manual for my 2011 RT. I find it hard to read as the text and images are a shade of grey on white. Is there a manual that whose font is like this forum, black on white.??

Or can I change the font color to give better contrast?

[IdahoMtnSpyder]

Hi. I have the Green Manual version of the CAN AM manual for my 2011 RT. I find it hard to read as the text and images are a shade of grey on white. Is there a manual that whose font is like this forum, black on white.??

Or can I change the font color to give better contrast?

How long ago did you buy it? The early versions of the manual were scans but I don't know if the guy who does them has produced your manual from factory PDFs or not like he has since about 2013. If he hasn't then you're pretty much stuck with what you have. Green Manuals, Midwest Manuals, Best Manuals, and I don't know what else, are all the same production by the same guy, just sold under different names. I don't know if you can do a text search on yours or not, but 2013 on you could. But that is the only thing you can do with the manual other than send pages to your printer. So changing font color is out. I just looked at my 2014 RT manual and I see the font is kind of gray, not dense black. I guess it's never bothered me. The guy that does them has the PDF so tightly locked up even a PDF editor can't change it, or copy text from it. I really think they are pirate copies. BRP either doesn't want to spend the money to track him down and shut him down, or there is so little money in providing them to the public it's less headache to let him distribute pirate copies, or the guy and/or his server is in a country where Canadian and American authorities can't reach him. Maybe the Chinese company that prints the paper version is the source of the PDFs we get.

There was another manual producer a few years ago who did a page flip version like so many online magazines use, but I haven't seen any link or mention of him for the past few years.

Your only other choice, AFAIK, is to buy a paper version through the dealer for two or three hundred bucks, or maybe luck out and find a used one on eBay.

So anyway, the ones we mortals can get our hands on may be pirate or counterfeit, but they're the only electronic ones we can get. As an aside, Helms, who publishes many vehicle service manuals, stopped selling electronic versions years ago. I got a 2005 Goldwing service manual from them back in 2006 but they aren't available any more.

[Eckhard]

Had it for a couple of years. I can do a text search. It is just hard to read like a lot of web pages now-a-days.

Getting old sucks.

[IdahoMtnSpyder]

Had it for a couple of years. I can do a text search. It is just hard to read like a lot of web pages now-a-days.

I trust you have had an eye exam to rule out something like cataracts. We all get them eventually. Are you up to date as far as glasses are concerned? If you have had a recent exam and can rule out vision problems caused by aging eyes then the only other thing I can suggest is to zoom in on the page when you view it with Adobe Reader. I had cataract surgery almost 20 years ago and am quite demanding that the optometrist gets my glasses prescription dead on. I can see the type in the manuals quite clearly. Also, as we age the lens in our eyes stiffens and we lose the capability to focus clearly. That's why almost every senior person uses reading glasses.

I don't know if it is directly applicable to your 2012 manual, but since you say you can search for text I think it is, but when I zoom in really close on the Green Manuals copies of my 2013 RT and 2014 RT manuals the font is pure black, not gray. It is a fairly thin font which adds to difficulty reading it when the page is zoomed to 100% or smaller.

[Eckhard]

I do have vision problems which are being followed and I have no problem seeing on this website even though my prescription for my glasses isn't spot on.

The problem with the manual is that the text is gray and not black and neither are the images. It seems that you can look thru the image. It reminds me of the old onion skin paper from many years ago. It is not that I cannot see but a question of degree of difficulty. It is just easier to look at more contrasty text and images.

[IdahoMtnSpyder]

It reminds me of the old onion skin paper from many years ago. It is not that I cannot see but a question of degree of difficulty. It is just easier to look at more contrasty text and images.

I understand and appreciate your frustration.

One of my pet peeves with people who prepare all sorts of documents such as posters, PowerPoint slides, etc. is they do not understand or appreciate the impact of combination of colors on legibility. That situation really began to deteriorate 30+ years ago with the advent of computer document preparation. Every secretary who could type suddenly became a typesetter and graphic artist! I had a print shop in the late 70s and learned by trial and error about document preparation. Being an engineer helped tremendously. One huge mistake I made one time was printing a business card with red letters on black background, per the customer's request. They were basically unreadable! Yellow on green is a great combination for legibility. Why do you think chalk boards in schools were green and yellow chalk was the mainstay?

Here's a recent example of a challenge I dealt with in finding a color combination that would make the title easy to see against the background. This is the cover of a 2021 calendar I produced.

0 - Cover reduced.jpg