boo2pdf

WARNING: This program is a kludge :)

There's an web service version available at http://ps-2.kev009.com/boo2pdf/ that's easier if you just need to convert some documents.

Questions?

Contact Kevin Bowling, info at http://www.kev009.com/

Running boo2pdf

The bulk of the app is in the Java code, using IBM's SoftCopy Reader(SCR) libraries to do the heavy lifting. boo2pdf.java is a small replacement main class that makes it easy to script against SCR. It outputs really ugly HTML and .gif and .jpg images in SCR's preset cache directory (~/.IBM/)

Example Run Script

Note: This script requires Xvfb, xvfb-run, htmldoc

Take a look at convert.sh for an example run script. You will want to customize this to your system and take into account the notes below.

This script takes two parameters: <name>.boo <name>. <name> is the root file name. It will output an intermediate <name>.html and then <name>.pdf once htmldoc is run.

Notes

This repo is Linux only. By using the Windows SCR and editing boo2pdf.java to load the correct .dll files (in place of the .so files) it is possible to get the same effect on Windows. You might want to use Cygwin, PowerShell, Perl, or similar for your run script.

There are a lot of things to be aware of:

Only one instance can run at a time due to the paths SCR assumes
- I use lock files to ensure this in my run scripts
SCR creates a Swing JFrame (GUI) and assumes it is present for most methods. I used Xvfb to essentially pipe the graphics to null.
Classpath must be set when running
LD_LIBRARY_PATH must be set to sys/ for native libraries
In my run scripts, I clean up after the PDF is generated, removing the lock file and .html.
The Linux SCR does not support some of the early graphics formats.
Use the IBM TransMogrifier program (in transmogrifier/) to preprocess older BookManager files. It runs in wine on Linux, but the output is hit or miss and many images invalid. Best to preprocess on Windows.

Build Instructions

cd src
javac -cp ../sys/hlccommon.jar boo2pdf.java
mv boo2pdf.class ../bin/

Patches or help with a C/C++ port welcome.

We'd need docs or reversing of the file formats.

kev009 / boo2pdf