I am having problems with something that is normally simple in other commandline apps. Basically i am just trying to load in a file, modify and save to a brand new file instead of replacing the old file. It opens inkscape tells me the output file cannot be found etc however and does not save to the path i set but instead wants me to manually set one. Normally the output files not going to exist until after it saves anyway so i am confused by inkscapes commandline system.

Why is this wrong with this for example?

" \"C:\Program Files\Inkscape\inkscape.exe\" --verb=FileOpen \"Input.svg\" (Use of --select and some --verb etc to modify things go here) --verb=FileSaveAs \"Output.svg\" --verb=FileClose "

Modifying with verbs works ok if i use the same file and a regular save but the FileOpen and FileSaveAs part seems broken. In my mind this commandline exec should open a file, modify it and save to a new file without showing dialogs since i specify a path but it does not work that way.

Due to the fact no file dialogs are required this however seems to work fine:

" \"C:\Program Files\Inkscape\inkscape.exe\" (Use of --select and some --verb etc to modify things go here) --verb FileSave --verb=FileClose Output.svg"

But then you need to open and modify the same file which is not what i want. I also noticed that inkscape must always be visible for the --verb commands etc to actually work, so if the GUI is hidden with --without-gui then it is broken?

Am i doing this wrong or is the commandline just a bit buggy/incomplete?

James777 wrote:Am i doing this wrong or is the commandline just a bit buggy/incomplete?

Whatever you prefer to call it (buggy, incomplete, …) - the current implementation of verbs in Inkscape does not support arguments (i.e. you cannot call a verb with a file name as argument to 'save as' with a new name - as workaround you can use a batch script, copy the file to a new name in the script first, and then launch the inkscape command with the copied & renamed version of the original file). The corresponding feature request for an enhanced scripting method with verbs is tracked here.

Thanks for your reply. What i ended up doing was a workaround where i copy the original SVG, rename it and then modify that with a direct save so no dialog options need to be set. It seems to be working great using this method.