Re: Print from command line

[Hans Breuer <hans breuer org>]

Am 14.08.2014 um 00:43 schrieb Martin Metzker:
> Hello!
>
> I would like to run dia from the command line and have it print the diagram
> provided as command line argument.
>
> I found an old post form 2010 [1], which describes an acceptable method for
> having dia run python scripts on startup automatically. Assuming this still
> works, what does a python script, that has dia print the one opened
> diagram, look like?
Maybe there is a similar hack like the one form [1] but I don't know.

> Is printing functionality even exposed to dia's pythonconsole?
The only Dia Python console I know is a GUI. It has nothing to do with 
running Dia from command line.

> This is why I want the print-with-python approach:
>
> Apparently, when dia exports (especially) to svg and eps, it converts all
> text to paths.
Actually only one of three SVG exporters does this. Also the PostScript 
exporter has a variant keeping text as text.

> This is problematic in some ways:
> * no embedded fonts (not directly problematic)
> * files about 20 times the size they need to be (sometimes problematic,
> because diagrams tend to account for 50-80% of the final PDFs sizes)
Huh? You are creating SVG or EPS to create PDF with another program?
Why not go to PDF with Dia directly? Like:

        dia ..\samples\render-test.dia -e rt.pdf

> * diagrams look ugly on paper (very bad!)
>
> However, when I print my diagrams using the cups pdf-file-printer, I end up
> with PDFs I like much better:
> * embedded fonts (one can copy&paste name/text; i am still hoping I
>    will be able to replace all those subsets with just one embedding of
>    the entire font ... or at least the superset of all subsets to avoid
>    redundancy)
> * small files (load/print/mail faster)
> * the print out looks as good as the PDF promises (want!)
I think all this is also available with PDF created directly by Dia.

> [1] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/dia-list/2010-June/msg00017.html

-------- Hans "at" Breuer "dot" Org -----------
Tell me what you need, and I'll tell you how to
get along without it.                -- Dilbert