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Introduction
BookSmart is a bookmaking application developed by Blurb, Inc. It allows users to design and publish books.
Although Blurb do not offer or support a Linux version of BookSmart, it is a Java application which will run on Linux with a bit of fiddling.
Website: http://www.blurb.com/
Installation Instructions
These instructions are heavily based on the hard work done by Blurb forum member Cedric Lecuret. His original instructions are here.
Download and mount install disc
Firstly, download the latest version of BookSmart from here. Make sure you get the Mac version, not the Windows version. Alternatively, download it from the command line. The following will get v3.0.3, (newest pr. april 2011) which may not be the latest version so check first:
wget http://downloads.blurb.com/booksmart/BookSmart_3.0.3.dmg
Now install some software to convert the DMG file into something that Linux can mount, such as dmg2img. Follow these DMG2IMG instructions. Then, convert the file using:
dmg2img BookSmart_3.0.3.dmg
Next mount the disc image (Karmic seems to have HFS module loaded by default. If not, "sudo modprobe hfsplus"):
sudo mkdir /macbooksmart sudo mount -t hfsplus -o loop BookSmart_3.0.3.img /macbooksmart
Install files
Install the BookSmart files in a folder where you have right to write :
mkdir ~/booksmart/ sudo cp -r /macbooksmart/BookSmart.app/Contents/Resources/Java/lib/ ~/booksmart/ sudo cp -r /macbooksmart/BookSmart.app/Contents/Resources/Java/resources/ ~/booksmart/ sudo cp /macbooksmart/BookSmart.app/Contents/Resources/booksmart.icns ~/booksmart/
The 3.0.3 Mac version of BookSmart seems to run okay under Java 1.6 - previous versions needed 1.5. Make sure 1.6 is installed:
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre
Create startup script
Create a script that can start BookSmart:
echo '#! /bin/sh cd ~/booksmart classpath="" # Build classpath with all jars in the lib directory for jar in lib/*.jar do classpath=$classpath:$jar done java -Xincgc -ea -Xms256m -Xmx1024m -classpath $classpath com.blurb.booksmart.application.BookSmart exit $? ' > ~/booksmart/booksmart.sh sudo chmod a+x ~/booksmart/booksmart.sh
Set up menu
Finally, create a menu item to run BookSmart. Right-click on the Applications menu and select Edit Menus. Add a new entry under the Graphics menu called BookSmart which runs the following command:
~/booksmart/booksmart.sh
You can set the icon to use the following file:
~/booksmart/booksmart.icns
Tidying up
You can now tidy up the files used during installation:
sudo umount /macbooksmart sudo rmdir /macbooksmart rm BookSmart_3.0.3.*
Getting Started With BookSmart
You can now run BookSmart by selecting Applications > Graphics > BookSmart from the menu.
<< I can assert that this method works equally good on Mint 12, sep 2012 GijsH >>
Known Issues
None
Additional Notes
This procedure worked fine with BookSmart 3.4.4_de and Ubuntu 13.10 (32bit). There was no need to install Sun Java 1.6, so just skip this step. The HFS module was loaded by default in Ubuntu 13.10. (this note added by dl1dby)
November 2013 (Peter Brewer) - Attempts to run v3.4.4 with OpenJDK-7 failed for me because BookSmart appears to be using a deprecated Java 6 class. Running with OpenJDK-6 worked fine though.