The BookManager format (on z/OS at least) is a special output format from the DCF (Document Composition Facility) SCRIPT command. With OS/390 Softcopy Print you could print from the BookManager books but I never thought the results were really great. If you have the original source text which will be in BookMaster, Starter GML, or just Script commands format, I would start from there.
If it were me, and I had the original source for the documents I would reformat them with DCF using the BookMaster profile and macro library (if you still have it around), or the Starter Set GML profile and macro library. I would output to a DEV(AFPA) or DEV(AFP2A) format and then use the afpxpdf transform that comes with the "IBM Print Transforms from AFP" product that works with the Infoprint Server component of z/OS to transform the AFP format to PDF. If going from the BookManager format is your only option, the results are going to be not as nice and more work. If you can only convert a topic at a time to PDF then maybe you could assemble them back into a PDF book with Adobe Acrobat. I don't have any experience with that. --Roger On Fri, Mar 3, 2023 at 2:04 PM Dave Wade <dave.g4...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, 28 Feb 2023 18:59:09 +0100, Bernd Oppolzer < > bernd.oppol...@t-online.de> wrote: > > >What is the preferred way to convert BookMgr books to PDF? > > > >My customer has some home-written BookMgr books, which they cannot access > >after the z/OS migration (BookMgr support was dropped with z/OS 2.4). > > > >We managed to transfer the books to Windows (and OS/2, BTW), where we can > >at least look at the books. Now I would like to convert the books to PDFs. > >But the free Softcopy Reader refuses to print more than one (selected) > >topic > >or ranges of topics; if you try to do this using the print menu > >(selected or range), > >the output is always empty. > > > >Is this a bug - or: is printing larger portions of text not allowed in > >the free version? > >What are the options? > > > > The old "ILRWIN" product will let you print an entire book, but I think > its a16 bit application.. > So:- > > 1. Find a machine with a 32-bit copy of Windows installed and the 16-bit > DVM installed. > <If you only have 64-bit windows there is a modified wine which will let > you run 16-bit app in 64-bit windows here:- > https://github.com/otya128/winevdm/releases/tag/v0.8.0 > > > 2. Find an old documentation CD or similar with the old "Book Manager Read > for Windows". > I found a copy on the PCOMMS 5.4 CD in the \win\install\ilrwin folder. > > 3. Open the book and print using a PDF print driver. Microsoft include one > with recent Windows. > FOXIT PDF viewer has one for older windows. > > I hope this is helpfull > > Dave > > >Thanks for all suggestions, > >kind regards > > > >Bernd > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
