I have a manual procedure that I use to combine and manipulate images, and I'd like to automate it so that others can do it easily. It involves things such as embedding bitmaps, tracing and subtracting paths, clipping, applying filters and running extensions.

Rather than try to port selected parts of Inkscape's inner workings over to Python altogether, I'm wondering if there's a way I can "drive" Inkscape through Python or the command line without needing the GUI.

The man page lists the --verb option, but doesn't really say how to specify options eg. I can do --verb=org.ekips.filter.embedimage to embed an image... but how do I specify the image? How do I then get the ID of that object so I can, say, trace the bitmap with --verb=SelectionTrace, and how do I specify the tracing options to use? Also it doesn't seem possible to create a new image from scratch, so eg.:



...complains that Specified document test.svg cannot be opened (does not exist or not a valid SVG file).

Or maybe command-line usage isn't really the best way to do this. If not, what is?

Inkscape's verbs do not take arguments (a known limitation). Many of the internal commands accessible via verbs on the command line cannot be fully automated - i.e. run without interaction in the GUI, solely based on arguments specified via CLI: importing images, tracing bitmap images, saving under a new name, … .

try Macro Express - it can automate all sorts of things - including processing text files - I often use a script to generate a text file then send a keystroke to activate a macro that uses that text file - it's so useful - and fairly easy to use

http://www.macros.com/