🚀 go-pugleaf

On Oct 20, 2:28 am, Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Please take this for a spin and let me know the results.http://ps-2.kev009.com:8081/boo2pdf/

I've fixed handling of file names with whitespace.  Also made the web
service locking and recovery more robust.

Please keep the reports coming.

> 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.
>
> 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
> (http://www.htmldoc.org/) for PDF conversion.
>
> 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.
>
> The whole app as it stands now is an exercise in inefficiency.  I
> think I have enough data to bitbang a clean C implementation but would
> need a lot of help in doing so.
>
> Documentation, help, or words of encouragement welcome.  This has been
> a fun and interesting project this weekend.