apastuszak Pillar Of The Community

United States 2956 Posts

Posted 07/06/2012 12:05 pm Posted 07/06/2012 12:05 pm



But my Tryzub Ukrainian Stamp Album is designed in Scribus, and I didn't want to redo everything in MS Publisher..



Then I learned that Scribus was scriptable!



The most time consuming part for me is to get the box set up, with the image inside, the title on top and the description in the bottom, and make sure the distance between the title, the description, and the stamp box is the same between all the stamp layouts.



See this picture:







So, I created a REALLY CRUDE script to do that part for me.



Scribus' scripting engine is Python, which I had some familiarity with. I decided to use an XML file for storing the stamp data.



What the script does is:



1. It reads the stamp data for multiple stamps

2. It automatically generates the frame with the stamp image inside, along with the title, first day of issue and description, lines them up consistently and groups them to easy moving.



Right now the script dumps all the grouped stamp layouts on top of each other on one page and you need to move them around and lay them out the way you want.



There's no GUI for the settings. You need to edit the script and change it yourself. I added comments to the script to hopefully tell what to do.



If you just want to try it out really fast, you will need to do the following:



1. Download the zip file from here:

2. Get a copy of Scribus from

3. Install the two fonts found in the zip file

4. Edit the script, stampalbum2.py with a text editor and change imagePath to point to where you put the image files in the zip file and save it. (Windows users need to use double blackslashes in the path. Mac and Linux users just need to use one forward slash)

4. Load Scribus and make a new document and make sure that the page is set to use MILIMETERS.



5. Go to Script->Execute Script and browse to the script file stampalbum2.py. Click on the script and click OK.

6. You should now have 4 stamps with descriptions on the page waiting to be moved.



You can edit the 2012_Stamps.xml file to add more stamps, if you want to. I've been tinkering with the solution PostmasterGS designed using MS Publisher and Access to crank out album pages. I have to say, if you to have descriptoins on your album pages, his solution is absolutely awesome and saved me a TON of time.But my Tryzub Ukrainian Stamp Album is designed in Scribus, and I didn't want to redo everything in MS Publisher..Then I learned that Scribus was scriptable!The most time consuming part for me is to get the box set up, with the image inside, the title on top and the description in the bottom, and make sure the distance between the title, the description, and the stamp box is the same between all the stamp layouts.See this picture:So, I created a REALLY CRUDE script to do that part for me.Scribus' scripting engine is Python, which I had some familiarity with. I decided to use an XML file for storing the stamp data.What the script does is:1. It reads the stamp data for multiple stamps2. It automatically generates the frame with the stamp image inside, along with the title, first day of issue and description, lines them up consistently and groups them to easy moving.Right now the script dumps all the grouped stamp layouts on top of each other on one page and you need to move them around and lay them out the way you want.There's no GUI for the settings. You need to edit the script and change it yourself. I added comments to the script to hopefully tell what to do.If you just want to try it out really fast, you will need to do the following:1. Download the zip file from here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5...NUUwtc1ZycVk 2. Get a copy of Scribus from http://www.scribus.net (Mac, Windows and Linux available)3. Install the two fonts found in the zip file4. Edit the script, stampalbum2.py with a text editor and change imagePath to point to where you put the image files in the zip file and save it. (Windows users need to use double blackslashes in the path. Mac and Linux users just need to use one forward slash)4. Load Scribus and make a new document and make sure that the page is set to use MILIMETERS.5. Go to Script->Execute Script and browse to the script file stampalbum2.py. Click on the script and click OK.6. You should now have 4 stamps with descriptions on the page waiting to be moved.You can edit the 2012_Stamps.xml file to add more stamps, if you want to. Send note to Staff

