[scribus] Using scribus to create PDFs from the commandline

[Gregory Pittman]

On 07/20/2014 01:26 PM, Marc Balmer wrote:
> Currently we use LaTeX to produce PDF from the commandline (or rather, from within our applications).  We run a scrip that creates a LaTeX sourcefile, fires up latex, and returns the resulting PDF.
>
> I am now trying to find out if that would be possible with Scribus somehow.  E.g. we would fire up scribus with the name of a Python script and the name of document.  The script would then populate the document with data and output it to PDF.
>
> Is that possible?  Can we run a Python script at startup, or, can we run python and start Scribus from within?  Or, in other words, are there ways to automate Scribus without user interaction, i.e. from the commandline?
>
>
>
Though perhaps not as automated as you are suggesting, you can certainly 
create documents from scratch following some preset pattern.

One example is this one:

http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Automatic_import_of_images:_Versions_not_requiring_Tkinter

which is some years old, and others have made their own versions for 
their own needs.

There is also this:

http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/A_Standard_Form_with_Barcodes_and_Custom_Entries

a version of which I use almost every day.
Each of these makes a document from scratch, the first makes as many 
pages as needed, the second only a single page.

As far as I know PDF export in Scripter has not been implemented. There 
is a long-standing request to have Scribus run from the command line to 
perhaps do some of what you are suggesting.

Greg