Machine-state-based display of documentation

A method for displaying documentation about a printing press on a display device, which comprises the steps of:

• installing reproduction software on the display device;
• configuring the documentation to contain operating instructions, a spare parts catalog, maintenance instructions and video film having a number of video clips;
• communicating, via the display device being a portable display device, with the printing press via a data link, the documentation being subdivided into partial items of documentation;
• registering states of the printing press by means of a computer of the printing press resulting in registered machine states, wherein suitable machine states are allocated to the partial items of the documentation;
• selecting automatically the partial items of documentation matching the registered machine states via the reproduction software selecting suitable parts of the documentation by using the registered machine states transmitted by the computer of the printing press;
• transmitting the registered machine states to servlets on the computer, and each of the partial items of documentation is assigned one of the servlets, and before the documentation is played by the reproduction software, a respective one of the registered machine states is interrogated in the servlet and thus a suitable part of the documentation is selected automatically;
• and
• displaying the partial items of documentation on the display device.