Anne (as always) offers excellent points on the ibook files. However,
I have found that it's possible to simply use the unzip program (in
terminal) to uncompress the ibook files. They are indeed simply epub
books, but as with any other epub formatted ebooks, if they are
encrypted, (and many of the ibooks are) you will not be able to make
any sense out of them even after unzipping them, because their content
will be encrypted by a method that is both complex and (slightly)
nonstandard. (at least based on some poking around I've done). There
is an iso standards document for epub formats, and it allows for
encryption of content. I have been unable to reconcile the apple
ibooks with said iso documents, though it's possible my understanding
of the encryption/decryption method is incomplete, as that part of the
document wasn't the easiest to follow. Most epub readers use
prewritten libraries released by different manufacturers to do all the
heavy lifting, and don't really write their own routines for this. My
attempts to do so meat with very little success, and since it was more
of a curiosity thing for me than anything else, I gave up on it and
moved on to other more interesting reading. :)
But, then again, I've rarely had much luck trying to write code to do
things based on iso documentation, though I do have to say, the rfc
documents are much better in this regard, I've had no trouble in many
cases turning internet protocol documents into operational code.
But anyway, I just wanted to let folks know they can unzip ibooks, and
examine their contents, just don't expect to get usable results most
of the time. :)
hth.
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