[scribus] save to PDF from CLI

[Juraj Fedel]

Hi,
since this feature is in constant demand I will try again to present
my approach to enable saving to PDF from command line.

Have in mind that this is just a demonstration of one possible solution
and as such is very minimalistic and crude. It is only for showing how
can it be done - not for production use.

Anyway attached are several patches that enable running python script
from command line. In that script you can for example save an opened
document to PDF. Use it like this:

$ scribus mydoc.sla -s script.py

if script.py is:

import scribus
pdf = scribus.PDFfile()
pdf.save()

than you will save mydoc.sla to mydoc.pdf and scribus will exit.
Of course while starting scribus will show GIU interface but it will
need not your interaction.

There are patches for saving and reading PDF options from scripter too.
To use them you first need to set desired PDF option in GUI
(in Save As PDF dialog), open scripter console and run command:
saveAsPDFOptions('myoptions.xml')

Then you can edit exported myoptions.xml in any editor and use that
settings in other python script with:
readPDFOptions('myoptions.xml')
when needed. Be warned that exact format of exported file is not yet
documented anywhere. Your best chance is to issue command
help(PDFfile)
in python console and use that to find out accepted values for desired
attribute in exported options xml file.

Have fun!

For those interested what the patch do to source code:
For enabling to run python script from CLI only the first patch is needed.
When scriptplugin is initialized it create a new action in
ScCore->primaryMainWindow()->scrActions.
It also create a new slot that is called when this
action is triggered. This action is triggered from mainApp function if
it detect that script file is passed in command line.
Also there is added code to support new -s (--script) switch and
that is basically all it do.

Second patch adds 'savePDFOptions' and 'readPDFOptions' to scripter.
Third patch fix small typo that prevented reading options from file.
Last patch fix small omission and produce error strings as intended.

This patch does not try to hide GIU from popping up or to clean the code
in the way that it does not need GUI code at all (if this possible with
the curent codebase). I made a mistake last time when I produced a patch
and mixed all above patches and lot more in one big diff and the result
was that nobody was able to decipher what is going on. I Hope this time I
will avoid the same mistake :)

And last note: patch is against 1.3.9 version of scribus. So use it with
caution with newer releases.

Juraj Fedel
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 01-scripterRunFile.diff
Type: text/x-diff
Size: 6077 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.scribus.net/pipermail/scribus/attachments/20110621/c0fdf54c/attachment.bin>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 02-pdfoptionsio-read-save-python.diff
Type: text/x-diff
Size: 4932 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.scribus.net/pipermail/scribus/attachments/20110621/c0fdf54c/attachment-0001.bin>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 03-read-pdfotions-work.diff
Type: text/x-diff
Size: 1264 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.scribus.net/pipermail/scribus/attachments/20110621/c0fdf54c/attachment-0002.bin>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 04-pdfoptions-errors.diff
Type: text/x-diff
Size: 3658 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.scribus.net/pipermail/scribus/attachments/20110621/c0fdf54c/attachment-0003.bin>