[scribus] How to personalize a booklet?

[John Culleton]

On Monday 29 June 2009 11:52:11 pm Ronald Wiplinger (Lists) wrote:
> I have a pdf booklet - some are created with Scribus, some are
> made with Acrobat 9Pro.
> These booklets should be sold on a hosted web server (apache with
> php).
>
> We would be thrilled if we could personalize the booklet during
> selling, like:
>
> 1. add a remark on each page, like    Teacher <name> uses <title>
> booklet
> (the buyer is the teacher)
>
> 2. a personalized additional page (welcome page number 3)
>
> 3. the booklets should be THEN copy and print protected
>
> All these should be done during the sales.
>
>
> Is it possible? or What is possible? Please guide me to the right
> place.
>
> bye
>
> Ronald

I have already answered the side issue of whether it is legitimate 
to charge for books or booklets on Open Source software. My advice 
here is free and worth every penny :<)

If I wanted to customize an e-book to discourage piracy I would 
probably  create the book in TeX. Then I would put the buyer name 
in a one-line file via the online process.  The delivery mechanism 
would include a recompilation of the book in TeX, which book would 
include macros which used the person's name as loaded from the 
file. 

I have the whole process laid out conceptually except for one 
problem; most web hosts don't support TeX. Thus I would need to 
send the information to my home computer which is on 24/7, trap the 
particular mail, auto execute the compilation routine and email the 
results to the customer.  Kmail can auto execute a program when 
email arrives to a certain address, but extracting the contents of 
the email for further processing I have not yet figured out. 

Why TeX and not Scribus? TeX is inherently a batch process and 
Scribus is an interactive process. I might be able to make it work 
as a command line program with no interaction but I haven't tested 
it yet. And the need to use my own computer still remains.  Hosts 
don't support Scribus either. 

I may test out bits and pieces of the process just for curiosity, 
with Scribus for starters.  

-- 
John Culleton
Create Book Covers with Scribus/e-book $5.95
http://www.booklocker.com/books/4055.html