Scribus remote templating server.

This small server can be started within the Scribus pre-printing application (scfibus.net) to serve as automation connector for templating of texts and colours.

Upon command, service will effectively look all text fields that contain code like {{TEXT}} and all colors with codes such as {{COLOUR}} and consequently replace them with values provided via simple TCP connection.

Text and colour values are sent to the server via TCP with simple dialog.

Is best started with xvfb-run under Linux. Aort number option may be provided.

xvfb-run -n 2 scribus-ng -g  -py ./scribserv3.py 22025 -- template.sla

Note: chances are the -g option does not work on Win and OSx, and even though it's a documented one and works in the native Linux environment

Valid commands upon connection :

• EXIT:

  exits (please note the ':' sign)

• CONVERT:location:PARAMS

  process the currently open template. the location is a path in the server FS, and PARAMS is urlencoded JSON

  for example :

CONVERT:DBG-color.pdf:%7B%22NAME%22%3A%20%22THE%20FUCKMAN%22%2C%22BABA%22%3A%20%22cmyk%28100%2C%2020%2C%2050%2C%2010%29%22%7D

• EXPORT:location

  repeat export

• OPEN:location

  loads new file from a designated location. please note that the script should have access

Note: one typically issues a series of CONVERT/OPEN operations.

You can easily generate template param strings for testing purposes with the following snippet:

import urllib

arg = {
  "NAME": "THE DUCKMAN",
  "COLOR": "cmyk(100, 20, 50, 10)"}

print urllib.quote(json.dumps(arg)

The config params are at the top. Defaults are:

CONNECTION_TIMEOUT = 60
INACTIVE_TIMEOUT = 120
DEFAULT_PORT = 22022
LOGFILE = 'scribserv.log'

The service was developed in VSCode and can be debugged standalone. In case the import scribus expression fails, all calls divert to a 'mock' version of the object.

The service can also be debugged with winpdbg (http://winpdb.org) by uncommenting the lines:

# import rpdb2;
# rpdb2.start_embedded_debugger('slivi4smet')

• UNKNOWN CMD
• ERR_BAD_CMD
• ERR_BAD_JSON
• ERR_BAD_ARG

• This uses the old Scribus v1 API.

• Code was tested to be running with Scribus 1.5.3 on Windows 10, Mint 18, and OS/X 10.6

• A missing replaceText() API was added to workaround loss of styles with setText()

  (there's one very unfortunate currItem->invalidateLayout(); call at the end of scribus_setboxtext() in Scribus/scribus/plugins/scriptplugin/cmdtext.cpp).

• implement the OPEN command without closing the running instance

• maybe strip the network handler class off static methods and make them procedures