IBM BookManager book - Revision history

Polluks at 13:48, 28 March 2025

2025-03-28T13:48:13Z

Polluks: /* Notes on file format */

2025-03-28T13:46:45Z

‎Notes on file format

SJK: /* External links */

2023-05-04T22:46:32Z

‎External links

SJK at 22:45, 4 May 2023

2023-05-04T22:45:17Z

SJK at 14:12, 4 May 2023

2023-05-04T14:12:55Z

SJK at 14:06, 4 May 2023

2023-05-04T14:06:11Z

SJK at 13:22, 4 May 2023

2023-05-04T13:22:41Z

SJK at 13:20, 4 May 2023

2023-05-04T13:20:54Z

SJK: Created page with "{{FormatInfo |formattype=electronic |subcat=Document |extensions={{ext|boo}} }} IBM BookManager is IBM's legacy online documentation system, historically used mostly on mainfr..."

2023-05-04T13:19:50Z

Created page with "{{FormatInfo |formattype=electronic |subcat=Document |extensions={{ext|boo}} }} IBM BookManager is IBM's legacy online documentation system, historically used mostly on mainfr..."

New page

{{FormatInfo
|formattype=electronic
|subcat=Document
|extensions={{ext|boo}}
}}
IBM BookManager is IBM's legacy online documentation system, historically used mostly on mainframes, midrange (AS/400) and OS/2, although it also saw some use in other areas including AIX. IBM no longer uses it for documenting current versions of its products, but there is an immense quantity of surviving electronic documentation from the period when IBM actively used it (from the 1990s thru 2010s), particularly documentation CD-ROMs/DVD-ROMs and images thereof.

The standard extension is BOO. No public documentation is known to be available for it. The header of BOO files commonly contains an EBCDIC copyright notice (this is true even for books for ASCII-based platforms such as OS/2). The file contents is almost certainly also in EBCDIC, but it is compressed with unknown compression algorithms (likely a relative of IBM's well-known proprietary algorithms such as TERSE, but that's speculation).

https://github.com/kev009/boo2pdf is code to convert BOO files to PDF. However, it relies on using the IBM SoftCopy Reader (for 32-bit Linux)'s JAR files and native code libraries (.so files) to actually read the file. Versions of IBM's SoftCopy Reader (previously known as IBM Library Reader) also existed for Windows, AIX (any other commercial Unix systems?), OS/2, DOS (meaning PC-DOS/MS-DOS, not mainframe DOS), MVS (later known as OS/390 then z/OS), VM/CMS (later known as z/VM), and OS/400 (later IBM i5/OS and then IBM i)–but apparently *not* mainframe DOS (DOS/360, DOS/VS, DOS/VSE, z/VSE).

"application/book" is sometimes used as a MIME type but was never officially registered

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 IBM BookManager is IBM's legacy online documentation system, historically used mostly on mainframes, midrange (AS/400) and OS/2, although it also saw some use in other areas including AIX. IBM no longer uses it for documenting current versions of its products, but there is an immense quantity of surviving electronic documentation from the period when IBM actively used it (from the 1990s thru 2010s), particularly documentation CD-ROMs/DVD-ROMs and images thereof.
-The standard extension is BOO. No public documentation is known to be available for it. The header of BOO files commonly contains an EBCDIC copyright notice (this is true even for books for ASCII-based platforms such as OS/2). The file contents is almost certainly also in EBCDIC, but is not readable beyond the header. Maybe it is compressed with unknown compression algorithms (a relative of IBM's well-known proprietary algorithms such as TERSE?). However, the data seems too repetitive to be compressed–possibly it is just some obfuscation mechanism then?
+The standard extension is BOO. No public documentation is known to be available for it. The header of BOO files commonly contains an [[EBCDIC]] copyright notice (this is true even for books for ASCII-based platforms such as OS/2). The file contents is almost certainly also in EBCDIC, but is not readable beyond the header. Maybe it is compressed with unknown compression algorithms (a relative of IBM's well-known proprietary algorithms such as TERSE?). However, the data seems too repetitive to be compressed–possibly it is just some obfuscation mechanism then?
 https://github.com/kev009/boo2pdf is code to convert BOO files to PDF. However, it relies on using the IBM SoftCopy Reader (for 32-bit Linux)'s JAR files and native code libraries (.so files) to actually read the file. The author of that code previously hosted a free public web service for that conversion, but discontinued it.

@@ Line 19: / Line 19: @@
 * Bytes 3-6: these 4 bytes appear to always be zero
 * Bytes 7: unknown, can be zero, probably more flags???
-Bytes 8+: EBCDIC copyright string. Can start with one or more EBCDIC spaces (0x40), sometimes also (0xB4) (some kind of control character?)
+* Bytes 8+: EBCDIC copyright string. Can start with one or more EBCDIC spaces (0x40), sometimes also (0xB4) (some kind of control character?)
 The header is 256 bytes long. The copyright string is padded to the end of the header with 0x40 (EBCDIC space). However, it seems to have a null terminator (0x00) at the end of the actual text, before the space padding.

← Older revision		Revision as of 22:46, 4 May 2023
Line 29:		Line 29:
	== External links ==		== External links ==
	* http://www.edm2.com/index.php/BookManager – contains history of IBM BookManager releases		* http://www.edm2.com/index.php/BookManager – contains history of IBM BookManager releases
		+
		+	[[Category:IBM mainframe]]
		+	[[Category:OS/2]]

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 IBM BookManager is IBM's legacy online documentation system, historically used mostly on mainframes, midrange (AS/400) and OS/2, although it also saw some use in other areas including AIX. IBM no longer uses it for documenting current versions of its products, but there is an immense quantity of surviving electronic documentation from the period when IBM actively used it (from the 1990s thru 2010s), particularly documentation CD-ROMs/DVD-ROMs and images thereof.
-The standard extension is BOO. No public documentation is known to be available for it. The header of BOO files commonly contains an EBCDIC copyright notice (this is true even for books for ASCII-based platforms such as OS/2). The file contents is almost certainly also in EBCDIC, but is not readable beyond the header. Maybe it is compressed with unknown compression algorithms (a relative of IBM's well-known proprietary algorithms such as TERSE?). However, the data seems to repetitive to be compressed–possibly it is just some obfuscation mechanism then?
+The standard extension is BOO. No public documentation is known to be available for it. The header of BOO files commonly contains an EBCDIC copyright notice (this is true even for books for ASCII-based platforms such as OS/2). The file contents is almost certainly also in EBCDIC, but is not readable beyond the header. Maybe it is compressed with unknown compression algorithms (a relative of IBM's well-known proprietary algorithms such as TERSE?). However, the data seems too repetitive to be compressed–possibly it is just some obfuscation mechanism then?
 https://github.com/kev009/boo2pdf is code to convert BOO files to PDF. However, it relies on using the IBM SoftCopy Reader (for 32-bit Linux)'s JAR files and native code libraries (.so files) to actually read the file. The author of that code previously hosted a free public web service for that conversion, but discontinued it.

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 IBM BookManager is IBM's legacy online documentation system, historically used mostly on mainframes, midrange (AS/400) and OS/2, although it also saw some use in other areas including AIX. IBM no longer uses it for documenting current versions of its products, but there is an immense quantity of surviving electronic documentation from the period when IBM actively used it (from the 1990s thru 2010s), particularly documentation CD-ROMs/DVD-ROMs and images thereof.
-The standard extension is BOO. No public documentation is known to be available for it. The header of BOO files commonly contains an EBCDIC copyright notice (this is true even for books for ASCII-based platforms such as OS/2). The file contents is almost certainly also in EBCDIC, but it is compressed with unknown compression algorithms (likely a relative of IBM's well-known proprietary algorithms such as TERSE, but that's speculation).
+The standard extension is BOO. No public documentation is known to be available for it. The header of BOO files commonly contains an EBCDIC copyright notice (this is true even for books for ASCII-based platforms such as OS/2). The file contents is almost certainly also in EBCDIC, but is not readable beyond the header. Maybe it is compressed with unknown compression algorithms (a relative of IBM's well-known proprietary algorithms such as TERSE?). However, the data seems to repetitive to be compressed–possibly it is just some obfuscation mechanism then?
 https://github.com/kev009/boo2pdf is code to convert BOO files to PDF. However, it relies on using the IBM SoftCopy Reader (for 32-bit Linux)'s JAR files and native code libraries (.so files) to actually read the file. The author of that code previously hosted a free public web service for that conversion, but discontinued it.

@@ Line 13: / Line 13: @@
 "application/book" is sometimes used as a MIME type but was never officially registered
 == External links ==
 * http://www.edm2.com/index.php/BookManager – contains history of IBM BookManager releases

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 The standard extension is BOO. No public documentation is known to be available for it. The header of BOO files commonly contains an EBCDIC copyright notice (this is true even for books for ASCII-based platforms such as OS/2). The file contents is almost certainly also in EBCDIC, but it is compressed with unknown compression algorithms (likely a relative of IBM's well-known proprietary algorithms such as TERSE, but that's speculation).
-https://github.com/kev009/boo2pdf is code to convert BOO files to PDF. However, it relies on using the IBM SoftCopy Reader (for 32-bit Linux)'s JAR files and native code libraries (.so files) to actually read the file. Versions of IBM's SoftCopy Reader (previously known as IBM Library Reader) also existed for Windows, AIX (any other commercial Unix systems?), OS/2, DOS (meaning PC-DOS/MS-DOS, not mainframe DOS), MVS (later known as OS/390 then z/OS), VM/CMS (later known as z/VM), and OS/400 (later IBM i5/OS and then IBM i)–but apparently *not* mainframe DOS (DOS/360, DOS/VS, DOS/VSE, z/VSE).
+https://github.com/kev009/boo2pdf is code to convert BOO files to PDF. However, it relies on using the IBM SoftCopy Reader (for 32-bit Linux)'s JAR files and native code libraries (.so files) to actually read the file. Versions of IBM's SoftCopy Reader (previously known as IBM Library Reader and before that IBM BookManager READ) also existed for Windows, AIX (any other commercial Unix systems?), OS/2, DOS (meaning PC-DOS/MS-DOS, not mainframe DOS), MVS (later known as OS/390 then z/OS), VM/CMS (later known as z/VM), and OS/400 (later IBM i5/OS and then IBM i)–but apparently *not* mainframe DOS (DOS/360, DOS/VS, DOS/VSE, z/VSE).
 "application/book" is sometimes used as a MIME type but was never officially registered