online NEC 2008: a printing tip

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rerickson

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If you're on a budget like me, and haven't yet bought a printed copy of NEC 2008, hopefully you know about the free online edition: http://www.nfpa.org/onlinepreview/online_preview_document.asp?id=7008SB

The awkward part, however, is that they won't let you save, search, or print; NFPA legally has to provide access now that NEC 2008 is incorporated into the law, but they don't have to make it at all convenient!
However, I stumbled across a way to print individual pages. You'll need photo manipulation software and a display that can show the entire NEC page at once.

Display the desired page in the NFPA program.
Expand your window to full size, and scroll to show all the page contents.
Take a snapshot of your display (PC: find the rarely-used PrtScrn button; Mac: Command/Shift/3).
Open your photo software, and place the snapshot into a new image. (PC: open a new file however your software does it, and control-v paste. Mac: a file was created on your desktop.)
Crop this down to just the NEC page, and configure it to zoom to fit one printed page.
At least on my system, the result prints about as clearly as the paperback.

Still can't search, but it's nice to be able to flip between pages.

Disclaimer: This probably would violate NFPA's copyright. This posting does not advocate you breaking their online access agreement or depriving them of cash, nor did I actually print any of their copyrighted material. :eek: Just observing what's possible.
 
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Hey, wait a minute.

This is awkward, but...

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