[scribus] Funding budget for allowing export from command line

[Craig Bradney]

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Hi David and Farid


You are both suggesting paid work for the development of these
features.. (attached below, as I was not sure if my message would be
seen in this case and wanted to include both emails).

I think the team can support this, however I think I would suggest to
contact each other to align directions and goals.. and then ping us.

I would also suggest contacting us via IRC as the most effective
method, at #scribus on freenode. Emailing to the
scribus-dev at lists.scribus.net mailing list might also be useful for
future discussions.

Regards
Craig






not sure whether this mail got through so trying again.


Hi all,

I saw that there is a long standing feature request for a command line
version of Scribus to be able to create pdf's in a batch mode
(http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=238). Our company now has a
student that
could invest a couple of months development time in such a feature.
What we
are thinking of is something like gimp's script-fu-server.
see:
http://www.linux-mag.com/id/973
http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-filters-script-fu.html
and
  http://net-fu.sourceforge.net/

In short: with script-fu-server you can write command's to a unix port
which
is read by gimp and executed.
The idea is to extend scribus such that it can read (python?) commands
from a
port which will be executed. Scribus should be started with a new command
line option:
scribus --batch 10008

the integer is the port number from where the commands are read.
Additionally we could add a "--no-interface" option to stop the gui from
being shown and also switch of rendering of the document to speed up
things.
(An alternative would be to start scribus with the display set to a
virtual
display using Xvfb.)

I would appreciate it if someone from the development team could give us
hints about :
- -would such a modification be possible within a couple of weeks
time-frame?
- -where in the code we should make these modifications.?
- -what are the pitfalls? (thread safety etc. although we would be happy if
scripts could be executed one at a time)
- -could someone from the development team be reachable in case of
questions?
(i'll be the mentor of the student myself but need someone for complex
questions to contact)

Thanks in advance,
Farid




On 8/29/10 12:43 AM, David Marin wrote:
> Submitted on 08/28/2010
> Submitted by anonymous user: [10.1.5.224]
>
> Submitted values are:
>
>   Name: David Marin
>   Email Address: dmarin at stylomate.com
>   Subject: Funding budget for allowing export from command line
>   Message:
> Hi, all.
>
> In a new business I am working on, we are using Inkscape for
> generate PDF files from XML templates (SVG, actually). As we want to
> generate more complex documents (with paragraphs, multiple pages,
> etc) we have found that Inkscape is not enough for us, so we are
> evaluating Scribus.
>
> The problem is that some features existing in Inkscape are missing
> in Scribus (at least, I have not found them in the 1.3.3.14 version,
> and bugs related to them are still opened):
>
>     * Exporting to PDF from command line using already generated
> Scribus files.
>     * A server-mode, in which Scribus keeps launched and listen for
> export orders.
>
> The project really need these features from Scribus, so we'd like to
> provide funds for the project so they can be included as soon as
> possible.
>
> Is there any developer available for this contracted support? As we
> are currently in the process of getting funds from investors, I'd
> like to know what would be the approximated budget for implementing
> these features, and how log it would take (approximately).
>
> Thank you very much for your kind support, and for creating this
> great software.
>
> Best regards
> --
> David Marín Carreño
> 


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