Dusty B said
"Illogical is said A.N.Other having to resort to copying BY HAND all the information published by NATS because Copy has been disabled in all their PDF files. "
On 3 October I attended a meeting at AIS Heathrow which was attended by the Project Manager, Alan Burrill of NATS IS/IT. Prior to the meeting I had prepared and submitted a paper which included:-
"UK AIP
.pdf files for the UKAIP do not permit text selection, preventing “cut and paste” which is a useful feature for anyone writing documentation or software that refers to AIP or uses the data contained within it. For example, someone wanting to write a decode program for the AIS abbreviations in GEN 2-2 would need re-type around 1,400 abbreviations and their meanings!"
In our
suggestions for improving the site we included:-
"We suggest that the .pdf files making up the AIP might be modified to allow text selection. This would allow users to "cut and paste" parts of the AIP into other documents, allowing for example a pilot to print his own ICAO encodes/decodes for his kneeboard."
This was published on 18 October.
On 16 October AIS added a new abbreviations page to the site in PDF format. It had text selection enabled and I wrote to Alan Burrill the Project Manager the following day saying:-
"Thanks for the site updates, I have updated our site to clear off those issues that have now been dealt with. I did notice that we now have text selection capability on the abbreviations extract from the AIP you put up - thanks for that as well."
I did not have a reply, but guess what - the ability to select text was removed.
NATS have a
Code of Practice for Customer Consultation which states:-
Commitment to our customers
National Air Traffic Services Limited’s aim is to be the world leader in the
provision of en-route and airport air traffic management services. To this end,
we are always looking for ways to improve by actively listening to our
customers' needs and acting upon them. We do this a number of ways
including holding regular formal and ad hoc customer consultation group
meetings on a wide range of subjects. Building on this, NATS is also keen to
develop one-to-one relationships with customers in order to enhance its
understanding of your organisation’s needs.
Gives one a nice warm feeling doesn't it.
Mike