[scribus] Automating Scribus

[a.l.e]

hi fredat,

> I currently create documents in Word 2003 which are saved in XML
> (WordML) format.  The documents typically have 4 pages and contain
> multiple sections with variable numbers of columns, figures and
> tables.  I upload the XML to my server where it is converted into a
> simpler XML format which I then use to generate customized PDF
> documents using mPDF.
> 
> The weak link in all of this is Word - it is a mere document
> processor and the process of creating precise document layouts,
> placing figures correctly etc is well nigh impossible.  Enter
> Scribus.  I have looked at what it can do and also checked out the
> Scribus XML format.  I should be able to convert the Scribus XML to
> my native, GSNML, format and then feed that to mPDF and things will
> work just fine.
> 
> However, I am wondering if there is an alternative along these lines
> 
> a, Take the SLA file.
> b. Replace the text and figures taht I need to customize.
> c. Finally use sla2pdf to convert the SLA to a PDF.
> 
> If this is doable I can handle all of the programming.  However, I
> would appreciate some pointers on where to look etc.  Naively
> changing text, images in the SLA does not work - it ends up in
> Scribus reporting a bad format.
> 
> I'd much appreciate any help.
> 
> p.s. - I need to do all of the above on my webserver which runs
> Apache under CentOS.

not yet possible with scribus:

- there is no sla2pdf
- you can't run scribus headless
- it's hard to mess with the sla files

scribus has first been built for humans... one day, robots will probably be able to use it, but there is much work to do until that time!

ciao
a.l.e