[scribus] Variable Data Printing (VDP) for Scribus?

[John Culleton]

On Tuesday 25 May 2010 17:56:14 Alexander Gomez wrote:
> Submitted on 05/25/2010
> Submitted by anonymous user: [10.1.6.26]
>
> Submitted values are:
>
>    Name: Alexander Gomez
>    Email Address: alexcar45 at gmail.com
>    Subject: Variable Data Printing (VDP) for Scribus?
>    Message:
> Hello,
>
> I was wondering if there is any plug-in for Scribus that would 
allow me to
> work with Variable Data Printing.
>
> I would really appreciate any help with this.
>
> Thank you
>
Not a plug in AFAIK but a standard feature in the newer Scribus 
versions.

TeX/LaTeX has variable input covered with the use of the \input 
statement. On more recent versions of Scribus it is possible to 
open up a TeX(LaTeX) frame and change the default text to what 
you want.Draw the TeX frame, right click on it, edit the source and 
delete the content.
This frame will take a statement like:
\input foo.txt
or more realistically a fully qualified name like
\input /home/safe/foo.txt.
Then on each Scribus run the contents of the frame will be 
whatever is in foo.txt. 

You can also enter some text to be used verbatim.

When you use this feature you are now in the world of LaTeX. If you 
want an end of line you need to enter some LaTeX code like
\linebreak
and so on

In short you need to know a bit about LaTeX, and some plain TeX 
knowledge helps too.

The font selection is very limited.  The normal Scribus font 
manipulation won't work for this inserted text. 

But just to insert a name and address one could use:

\begin{verbatim}
\input /home/myfile/address.txt
\end{verbatim}

This only works on recent versions of Scribus, and not the stable 
1.3.3.x series that you use. I use 1.5.0 on Linux and I update 
nightly.  In the world of  Scribus "unstable" means "pretty stable".
Occasionally something wierd happens but if I complain somehow 
it gets fixed in the next day or two.   You might want to upgrade to
something beyond the 1.3.3.x series if this feature is important to 
you. 

Frankly if variable input was a big deal to me I would do it in TeX to 
start with.

-- 
John Culleton
Wexford Press
"Create Book Covers with Scribus"
Printable E-book 38 pages $5.95
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24676863/
http://www.booklocker.com/books/4055.html