boo2pdf Web Service

NOTICE

This service has been discontinued. The source code is available at http://ps-2.kev009.com/boo2pdf/

This is the boo2pdf web service.

Upload an IBM BookManager (.boo) file and you will be prompted to download a converted PDF version.

About

This is a beta of boo2pdf, an IBM BookManager to PDF conversion app & web service. I'm currently experimenting with the HTML to PDF backends and would like feedback with book files I haven't tried. Once the code is cleaned up, I will dump it on my site.

Known Limitations

• Currently, internal hyperlinks and headings are not parsed, indexed, or otherwise handled.
• The Linux SoftCopy Reader does not convert some of the older embedded image formats. Possible formats are: GIF, PNG. JPG, MET, GDF, WMF. I'm guessing it is one of the later that does not have a Linux filter. You will know an image did not convert by red text indicating such in your PDF. I've seen this in a few .boo files from the early to mid '90s. Use the download below and preprocess these books for proper conversion.

Motivation

I have a large collection of old IBM machines and documentation. I want this documentation indexed by my own search facilities and Google for easy retrieval. PDF is widely read, while BookManager requires proprietary software and no search engines I know of parse it. This will probably be useful to Mainframers as well.

Technical Details

I am using the JAR files from IBM SoftCopy Reader for Linux. I've decompiled these and written my own main class and and a wrapper script to take care of setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH, Java classpath, and other such glue code. I use SoftCopy Reader's API to output HTML and images from the BookManager files. I then pass this to htmldoc for PDF conversion.

At some point it would be nice to do a native version. Some format info I have discovered below.

Vector Graphics: ADMGDF, CGM, MET or METBIN (OS/2 metafile), Encapsulated PostScript (EPS)

Raster Images: ADMIMG, page segment (PSEG), CCITT G4