New manuals released
I’ve replaced all the manuals on this site with new prints. These prints correct the “Page 14″ typo, as well as that last minute “Arch Mage” to “Archmage” fix. This is the last time I will correct the manuals.
I spent a lot of time fine tuning the PDF settings, so if you are using Adobe Acrobat Read 8.0 (maybe 7.0 too), you should get a nice surprise. The PDFs are fully bookmarked, and clicking a page name will jump you to the target page. They are also configured to open at Actual Size instead of Best Fit, are flagged as English so blind Der Langrisser players like aerdan can read them with screen reader software and a bunch of pageflow options have been tweaked too.
If you are using Acrobat 8, it is better to download the printable manual. It will look the same as the high resolution one for you, but will have better page jumping due to its split nature. Users of open source PDF readers should stick with the default file or the high resolution one.
For anyone curious about the manual, it was designed in QuarkXpress 7.0 for PC, the best layout software around: period. No matter what Adobe InDesign people will insist, Quark will always be their daddy.
The manual was printed as 4,000dpi output onto a 127mmx127mm paper. The color feed is Composite RGB rather than CMYK, because these are more vibrant for screen readers. The color frequency went out at 200, which means zero angle on the yellow channel. Pictures were fed as Binary using full-resolution TIFFs. All fonts were optimized and embedded, and transparency flattening occurred at 600dpi.
The manual is primarily set in Bitstream Vera Sans and Serif–I selected these fonts because I had never laid anything out with free fonts, and I wanted a challenge. The black stripe Der Langrisser text is set in Georgia. I think nine style sheets were used for the whole manual.
As for the PDFs themselves, they were generated used Acrobat Distiller 8.0.0 for Windows XP, which creates using PScript5 Version 5.2. The high resolution and print manuals are printed as a High Quality Print PDF, and the pack-in manual is Standard quality.