[scribus] scribus file format / python

[Gregory Pittman]

On 07/04/2011 02:45 PM, wibr wrote:
> Am 04.07.2011 20:22, schrieb Gregory Pittman:
>> On 07/04/2011 01:41 PM, wibr wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> so I would like to use Scribus to create some flashcards. It should work
>>> like this:
>>> 1. I have a .txt file with my flashcards
>>> 2. I create two pages in Scribus how they will look like, one for each
>>> side of the flashcards
>>> 3. I will do some python magic, load the .txt and create many pages with
>>> flashcards.
>>> 4. I can edit the cards if I want or just export them to pdf.
>>>
>>> So here is my question: Should I manipulate the xml or let the script
>>> run in Scribus?
>>>
>>> I think editing the xml shouldn't be too hard, but I don't completely
>>> understand the file format, is there any recent documentation available?
>>> Especially I would like to know how I could duplicate pages.
>>> I had a look at it: <PAGE> is a page and it gets a number NUM, and
>>> <PAGEOBJECT> is something on a page and it has an attribute "OwnPage".
>>> So I tried to move pageobjects between pages by editing the "OwnPage"
>>> number, but that didn't work...so how does Scribus know, which object
>>> belongs to which page?
>>>
>>> Or maybe using python in Scribus would be easier? I am more familiar
>>> with xml editing, though...
>>>
>>
>> Hi Wilhelm,
>>
>> I would start by manually making a few cards, so that you can work out
>> document page size, what sort of font, font size and style, spacing,
>> etc., you want to use.
>>
>> After that, I would be inclined to use a script inside Scribus to make a
>> document from a text file, so that you can create pages as needed, with
>> frames, paragraph styles and so on.
>> You might make it less demanding on the scripting end by just putting
>> text into new frames on as many pages as needed, then applying the
>> styles in Scribus later.
>> Here is a simple script showing some of the methods:
>> http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Importing_addresses_from_a_text_file
>>
>> Having said that, it's worth making a 2-page document, then looking at
>> the SLA file to see how much work it would be to generate a file using
>> python outside of Scribus. I sense that you have a long way to go to
>> understand what parts of the file are used for various aspects of the
>> document. Even if you know xml, I think you'll find an SLA file
>> challenging.
>>
>> Another approach /might/ come from using text filters, but then I think
>> you would need to deal with the problem of making new pages and frames...
>>
>> Greg
>>
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>
> Hi Greg,
>
> thanks for the quick reply.
>
> To be a bit more specific:
> I don't want to create the whole document in python. Let's say I want 8
> flashcards on each DinA4 page. So I create two pages in Scribus, instead
> of the flashcard text I use dummy text like $def1 and $def2, everything
> formatted nicely like I want.
> The only thing I want to do with python is opening the xml, knowing
> exactly where the two pages are. Then I will just copy those pages as
> many times as needed, always replacing the dummy text with the real
> flashcards.
> I did something like that with svg and Inkscape once and it worked out
> very well. So I don't need or want to understand the whole Scribus xml,
> I would just need to know how the pages work.
> However, I will also look at the scripter API.

I think this is going to be problematic, now that I look at the SLA 
files. The page parameters happen one after another as <PAGE ..../> 
tags, and contain some elements that relate to their position in the 
document, PAGEYPOS for one.
After this comes a series of <PAGEOBJECT .../> tags, assigned to a 
particular ordered page, but also having some elements that are absolute 
distances from the top of the first page. You also may get conflicts 
with naming the frames the same as you copy.

How about this instead:
Make your 2 pages. Select all the objects on each page and save in the 
Scrapbook as 2 separate objects, named so you remember which is which 
for even-odd pages.
Now insert as many blank pages as you want. For each odd page, 
right-click the odd-object in the Scrapbook, and one option will be 
Paste to Page, and it will be pasted at the same coordinates as the 
original. Do the same for the even pages/even-object.

This shouldn't be so much work.

Greg