This folder can be set to something like, say, /Users/kris/Documents/Scribus Scripts Separate from that, there is also a configurable path to a scripts folder, which can be accessed via the Scribus – Preferences – Paths (in 1.5.0) or Scribus – Preferences – General (in 1.4.5) menu item. This is unlike InDesign, where the Scripts Palette is dynamic and updates as scripts are added or modified. If you add or modify any scripts while it’s running, the menu won’t update. This list of scripts shown in the menu seems to be refreshed only on restart of Scribus. On Windows I found them here: C:\Program Files\Scribus\share\scripts On my system that’d be: /Applications/Scribus.app/Contents/share/scribus/scripts On the Mac, the scripts shown in the menu are located inside the Scribus app. For example, when you see me mention a menu item Script – Show Console, it might actually be called Scripter – Show Console. I’ll refer to the menu item as the Script menu item, even though it is called Scripter in 1.5.0. The second thing I want to know: where are the scripts? When you look at the Scribus Script (in 1.4.5) or Scripter (in 1.5.0) menu, it shows a whole range of sample scripts. It looks like I’ll need to install Ghostscript separately to enable some of the Scribus functionality relating to Postscript and EPS. Looks like the Windows versions both embed the same version of Python. Otherwise I would expect the two Python interpreter versions to be identical. This tells me that Scribus uses Python 2.x, and that it uses an embedded Python interpreter, rather than relying on the Python interpreter provided by the Mac OS. I saved this file to my desktop as Version.py, and then used the Script – Execute Script… menu item to run this script from Scribus 1.4.5 and 1.5.0. ssageBox('Python Version', sys.version, icon=scribus.ICON_NONE, button1=scribus.BUTTON_OK) Ok, let’s try to do a few ‘Hello World’ scenarios and see if we learn anything.įirst, I did a bit of snooping, stole some sample code left and right, and came up with the following script: #!/usr/bin/env python Scribus can be scripted, and the ‘native’ scripting language is Python, rather than ExtendScript. I’ll be trying that out! What about scripts?īeing in automation, this is an important point for me. According to the web page, 1.4.x is a stable version, whereas 1.5.x is a development version.ġ.5.x has some interesting things in its feature list, like IDML import. I’ll be looking at both Scribus 1.4.5 and Scribus 1.5.0. I’ll be using a Mac most of the time, but I’ll also take sneak peeks at the Windows and Linux versions along the way. What I intend to do here is keep track of my questions and the answers I found.Īnyone else in the automation game is bound to have similar questions and might find my notes useful. I just spent half an hour with Scribus and its documentation, and as far as I can tell, the available documentation is not a good resource for the kinds of questions I have as an system designer and automator. As I go, I try to map things I know from other environments onto things I discover in Scribus. I’m looking for things that I’m familiar with. Getting into Scribus will be different for everyone. And Scribus is definitely powerful enough to be useful for a range of real-life projects. I want to make sure I can help automate projects where Scribus is an option. Scribus will only improve if more people start using it it’s a chicken-and-egg situation. This time around I decided to look mainly at what it can do, rather than concentrate on what it cannot do. As far as I could tell, Scribus was nowhere near as powerful as InDesign, so it would not be an option for many people. I looked at Scribus a while back and did not get very far before I lost interest. So, after ten years of neglecting it, I’m getting back up to speed on automation with QuarkXPress 2015, and I am also looking at Scribus. The company becomes increasingly erratic and difficult to work with for a third-party developer. As far as I can tell, Adobe is ‘doing a Quark’ on a large subset of its users. I bit the bullet – I am going to dig into Scribus, and add it to my toolkit.Īdobe is not what it used to be.
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