Peter Linnell wrote: > > You probably would be better off using the Python Scripter, plug-in to > automate much of this. Steve Calcott has done a masterful job with his > font sampler script, which calls Tkinter and creates a GUI to allow user > font selection. His python script is *very* well commented. > > The Scribus scripter plug-in exposes many Scribus commands to create > pages, create text frames, set colors and more. The Scripter handbook > docs have been recently updated as well. > > I have created a number of Scribus presentation PDF and do not find > working with text terribly difficult, especially with the Story Editor. > What I find is important is to have your desired paragraph styles in > place *before* bringing in text. Then, you can apply the formatting as > the text is placed on the page. > > My hesitation is trying to recreate Scribus docs with Perl is not > trivial. The file format, tho text XML based is rather complicated and > has a great number of tags. The plan for Scribus 1.2+ is to re-write the > format in more conforming XML with DTD. > > The 0.8 version of the Scribus format is available for download on > Scribus.net. >
Yes, I suppose you may be right. The thing is, I know some Perl but not Python. What I have seen of the Scripter I can't make heads or tails out of as a utility (my problem, not the Scripter's). I'm already to the point that I can generate a one page presentation in which I can enter the text I want in the frame and it's done. There are a large number of tags, but most are of no interest to me. Adding pages, frames, text within frames, changing fonts, colors and so forth looks quite trivial. I mostly just have to settle on an overall architecture regarding how many subroutines and how generic to make it. I want to make sure I leave the jobs for Scribus that are really more dependent on visual feedback and mouse-oriented. This is supposed to be a bulk-slide generator for later tweaking with Scribus. Aside from that, it's an intellectual puzzle -- programming fun. I had thought that it would be tricky to get Perl to insert the Scribus carriage return (Ctrl-E), but it turns out you just hold down Ctrl and press E (duh!). I briefly considered writing in XML with a DTD to create the .sla file, but I don't know enough about XML yet. Thanks for the info about the Scribus format -- even if I don't need it I *must* find out what IRENDER is! Gregory Pittman
