SVG Template Mail Merge to PDF

Features

• CSV data input.
• Parses SVG properly: no nasty hacked search and replacing.
• Supports multiple data rows per page (just set up your SVG page appropriately).
• Multiple page PDF output.
• QR code support.

Limitations

• Text fields, and up to one QR code only per record.
• An individual text field must be on a single line (we modify just the tspan tag).
• Cannot combine with other uses of the class attribute due to dumb XPath query (pull requests welcome).

Instructions

1. Create text fields using Inkscape. Populate them with a single line of text.
2. For QR codes, create a rectangle instead.
3. Go to "Edit->XML Editor" in Inkscape.
4. Select a field. For text fields, open it up to find the tspan tag. For rectangles, just the rectangle itself is fine.
5. Name this object by adding an attribute of key class. The value of the attribute can be a field name of your choice.
6. Group the fields and any other design elements together.
7. Select the group.
8. In the XML Editor, add an attribute of key class with a value of template.
9. Use "Edit->Clone->Create Tiled Clones" or similar to create multiple instances if required.
10. Save this file as your master template.
11. Before passing this through the mail merge program, you must use "Edit->Clone->Unlink clone" on any clones that are used for templates. This is so that each template can be changed independently in the merge. Save this as a different temporary file to feed to the merge. This way you can continue to use your master template's linked clones to make later changes if necessary.
12. Prepare a CSV file. There must be a heading row with fields that match your field names (the class attributes you added earlier).
13. Run python3 generate.py input.svg input.csv output.pdf

Installing

This program requires Inkscape, Ghostscript, Python 3 and the Python lxml module. On Ubuntu, you can install these with sudo apt install inkscape ghostscript python3 python3-lxml.