How long does it take for a course to appear on the USATF site?

Gene - Would creating electronic versions of the cert and map sometime before step 1 reduce the cycle time?

When I was briefly registrar a few folks were sending stuff electronically. It was a pain getting the formats straight, and I wound up spending more time at the job, not less. Until that great-getting-up morning when we are all perfect performers, doing things two ways will always make more work for the vice chairs, and more work for the registrar - and the payoff is small. What we are doing may seem prehistoric, but it works. The paper maps are a uniform product from a processing point of view.

Electronic could work too, but not until every certifier and every vice-chair has the knowledge and equipment to produce a uniform product.

Those who seek change should reflect that when you are asking the next guy down the line to do more work to suit your desire for change, you had better be able to show that the extra work carries an extra benefit.

Pete - Not to challenge the experience or to cause or suggest more work, I'm just curious about your format comment. If everything was received in .pdf would there still be different appearances on different computers? I thought that the purpose of .pdf was to allow documents to be readable universally.

If PDF was the format USATF uses to post the maps perhaps there would be no problem. However, if the registrar receives PDF documents, it's necessary to convert each one individually into the .png format used by USATF. This takes time.

There's another dimension to this. The vice chairs presently receive the maps as paper copies, in a mailed envelope. It's a matter of a few minutes to check the documents and put them in a stack for the later weekly mailing to the registrar.

Electronic copies, however, will come from each certifier, requiring the computer to be opened and the files stored in a folder for later transmission to the registrar. This is not as simple as examining the paper copies and putting them in a stack. It's especially tough if the received electronic material is not in the proper format.

At present adding electronic copies to the paper copies requires more work by both the vice chairs and the registrar, and the end benefit is unclear.

Could we ask the USATF if the posting format could be changed to PDF for future maps? This would be an important step in eventually moving to an all electronic system.

One of the big advantages of PDF is that (as far as I understand) there is only one PDF format. If your system is set up to handle PDF format, then it will work for any PDF file someone sends you. For PNG there are numerous settings that people have to get right in order for the format to be compatible.

We could ask, but I suspect that the .png format is favored by USATF because of the small file size of each map. I don't know how big the .pdf files would be, but I suspect much larger.

I think you're right about the file size. I have a map I'm working on. I saved is as .pdf ;1.2M, .png; 84K. A little more hacking quickly shows that there are a plethora of combinations of ways to produce a .png file and they don't all appear the same. While I like the idea of paperless submittal of certification requests, I agree that the certifiers and vice chairs would be forced to play computer games with these submittals (maps) to get them into a uniform, acceptable appearance. I hate to sound old fashioned, but, for now submitting paper and creating .png as the last step seems to require the least work.

I just saved a couple of my maps in PDF and they were 60K and 64K. If a measurer can't manage to get his PDF file size below a certain limit, then he would have to submit a paper map.

I use Adobe Acrobat 5.0 for sending electronic maps to measurers. I also send paper.

Here's an example of the resulting PDF file sizes:

Original map prepared in MS Word: 5676 kb
Acrobat format "press": 1675 kb
Acrobat format "print": 1159 kb
Acrobat format "ebook": 312 kb
Acrobat format "screen": 92 kb

The smaller the file, the lower the clarity.

The map may be seen on the USATF site as OH09049PR

I do not attempt to send electronic copies to anyone but the measurer, or, if I'm measuring for someone, to my client.

I have been using PDF files for maps for some time. While the PDF format may appear standardized, it is not so simple. For example, PDF files may contain vector as well as raster based maps. The PDF files may have different resolutions, print sizes, colors and may contain multiple layers, and even videos and music. PDF files may display in modern browsers, but so will PNG files.

I would recommend, at least for now, we stick to the standard PNG files. We can work toward a solution to submit the PNG files electronically along with the certificate form. I would imagine the solution will require some function that will check that the PNG file is in a standard format.

Thank you. -- Justin

I just downloaded a demo version of an image converter called Image to PDF 2009

http://www.softpedia.com/get/O...ge-to-PDF-2009.shtml


I used it convert a couple PNG files to PDF.

B&W 3300x2550 PNG file (252K)
http://www.dukerdog.com/MI08047SH_bw.png

After conversion to 300dpi PDF (456K)
http://www.dukerdog.com/MI08047SH_bw.pdf

3300x2550 PNG file with race route shown in red(820K)
http://www.dukerdog.com/MI08047SH.png

After conversion to 300dpi PDF (492K)
http://www.dukerdog.com/MI08047SH.pdf

I don't know about all the technical responses, but the format for USATF is clear(300dpi - 8.5 x 11 - 2550 x 3300 - less than 300kb - and as a png). I have found several people try, but there was little success to get it correct. Hence, I will not accept any others to try this at this point in time. Mark's png is 3300 x 2550 and I don't know if this would be acceptable as I have been told that it should be 2550 x 3300.

As Pete has explained, the time saved is small and our system of check and balances must be maintained. At the convention, I will ask about formats.

Justin,

The big difference is that if you are in an application working on a file with a page size of 8.5x11, and save or export to PDF, the result will be a file that displays on a browser, and prints, as an 8.5x11 sheet (regardless of whether it is a raster image, vectors, or whatever). If you save as PNG, how the resulting file displays and prints depends on HOW you saved as PNG.

The main disadvantage of PDF is that for simple B&W maps the file size would be about 40% larger. But there are many advantages, the biggest one for this group being that if a measurer manages to save his map as PDF, there is virtually no chance that the format of that file would be wrong.
If the plan is to eventually move to an electronic process, then the way it's going to happen is through a series of small steps. Changing to PDF format would be an important first step. It wouldn't mean you would suddenly start accepting electronic submissions. It would only mean that the files would be saved on the website as PDFs rather than PNGs.