> I am wondering how difficult it would be for IBM to publish their > manuals in .mobi or .epub format. This would make them much more > readable on cell phones or other media such a the newer Kindles or Nook > ebook reader. It would even help on netbooks, laptops, and desktop as it > wouldn't force the letter sized pages onto a device which cannot render > them nicely.
No brainer for the manuals still maintained with Bookmaster. Just need to postprocess the DCF output, and/or modify LP3820 to emit mobi or epub output. It's just XML with some extra taqs, so it shouldn't be too hard to do. Of course, that would mean that IBM would have to release the source for LP3820...*sigh*. Another thought: LP3820 already produces HTML output (albeit incredibly ugly HTML -- think 1980's HTML). The Docbook html2epub tools will eat HTML (obviously), so at least you'd have the text. Big hassle: the illustrations in the older manuals are in APF format, which isn't documented anywhere. You could probably transcode the PDFs with some of the Docbook .mobi support tools if you run them through pdf2ps, then through ps2mobi. Would totally break images and hyperlinks, though, and see above. Wouldn't be nearly as useful as the PDF books. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
