[scribus-dev] Add-In Development Documentation

[Owen]

> Dear Scribus Users,
>
> At the moment, I'm putting together some material for a blog post
> about
> creating eBooks (ePub and Kindle) from Scribus and LyX. This blog post
> is based on a talk I was going to give last year and never had time to
> finish. (I got really interested in the whole thing again after
> playing
> around with iBooks Author and wondering how hard it would be to create
> similar books with open tools.)
>
> Right now, I'm pretty psyched because it seems like all of the bits
> are
> present to really make beautiful things. However, they need some
> gluing
> together.
>
> To that end, I'm going to write Python code so that Scribus can export
> its styles as CSS and import an eBook style-sheet for editing. The
> inability to design (rather than code) style sheets is one of the
> biggest weaknesses in open eBook tools. Scribus already has a
> fantastic
> styles editor, which I think can be adapted nicely to this purpose. As
> I've started to experiment with options, I had a couple of questions:
>
>  1. Is there a guide to scripting with Scribus1.4? The only guide I
> was
>     able to find was quite old.
>  2. What about up to date documentation about render frames? I'm
> hopeful
>     that these can be used to create and insert dynamic content (like
>     HTML gallery widgets, models, and such).
>  3. Is there any way to access the Qt UI controls in Scribus via the
>     ScriptingNG interface? I know that this can be done on Linux,
>     because I experimented with it a while ago
>     (http://blog.oak-tree.us/index.php/2010/08/25/scribus-dockwidgets).
>     But, as I understand it, Python ships its own interpreter on Mac
> and
>     Windows.
>  4. If you there isn't currently a way, would it be possible to have
> you
>     incorporate either PyQt or PySide so that it is possible? This
> would
>     allow for robust extensions to be created that use the same UI
>     components as Scribus does, instead of TCL/TK.
>
> If the experiments with CSS go well, my next step is to experiment
> with
> exporting material  to ePub3 documents (which offer much of the
> HTML5/CSS3 goodness that Apple is borrowing for iBooks Author). After
> looking at everything, I think it may be possible to create templates
> for iPad, Kindle, Nook, etc. that are every bit as nice as what iBooks
> Author puts out.
>
> But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Any input you can offer regarding
> the
> questions above would be very welcome.

With regard to scripting queries, have you perused;

Help->Manual->For Developers

If you get stuck trying to understand the API, have a look at some of
the examples in http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Category:Scripts

All the html for the help, Help->Manual->Documentation, is in the
share directory, share/doc/scribus/en/ of your Scribus installation

As for render frames, see Help->Manual->Documentation->Scribus
basics->Working with Render frames

I also draw your attention to Help->manual->other
information->Documentation Copyright


Wish you well with the project, with the plethora of iPhones, tablets,
eBook readers as well as mundane monitors, I often think the way to go
is HTML5 + css(3?)


Sorry if you knew all this in the first place




 --
Owen