cewe2pdf

A python script to turn cewe photobooks into pdf documents. The CEWE pdf export is achieved by interpreting the mcf xml-files and compiling a pdf document which looks like the cewe photo book.

There are many unsupported options, so an exact conversion cannot be guaranteed. The script is mostly based on reverse-engineering and guessing. It is not meeting any official specifications. So don't be surprised if one or another feature doesn't work. However, improvements are always appreciated.

You will need underlying Cairographics (https://www.cairographics.org/) support installed on your machine for the handling of clip art. How you get this will depend on your platform, but if you have the GTK+ toolkit installed (https://www.gtk.org/docs/installations/) that should do it.

tags: mcf2pdf, mcf_to_pdf, CEWE Fotobuch als pdf speichern, Fotobuch nach pdf exportieren, cewe Fotobuch pdf, mcf in pdf umwandeln, aus CEW-Fotobuch ein pdf machen, cewe Fotobuch pdf

Install - Windows

Download or clone this cewe2pdf repository into a folder of your choice.

The easiest way to start this Python script, is to install the latest pyhthon version. Then from the start-menu open your pyhthon promt and install the dependencies

pip install lxml reportlab pillow cairosvg

If you have installed the Anaconda Pyhton distribution, there is one catch: Currently, there is a problem with the pillow image library in Anaconda, that prevents it from loading .webp images on Windows. This will give the error: "image file could not be identified because WEBP support not installed".

To fix this, you can do the following steps.

Press Windows Start button and start the "Anaconda prompt"

Make sure you have all the dependencies installed by executing:

conda install lxml
conda uninstall reportlab pillow
pip install reportlab pillow

There does not appear to be a "binaries only" installation for GTK+ or Cairographics, which means you'll have to build it yourself.

Install - Windows (continued)

Go to the directory where cewe2pdf is installed and create a text file there with filename cewe_folder.txt and use a text editor to write the installation directory of the CEWE software into the text file. Example if you have the software branded for the company DM, called "dm-Fotowelt", then the file cewe_folder.txt should contain:

C:\Program Files\dm\dm-Fotowelt\dm-Fotowelt.exe

Save the file and close it.

Alternatively - indeed, preferably, if you want full functionality - you can move on to more extensive configuration by using cewe2pdf.ini instead of cewe_folder.txt. Here you can specify the location of the cewe folder, provide a comma separated list of locations for additional background images and define how the additional fonts you have specified (see below) are organised into families so that bold and italic texts are shown correctly. The contents can, for example, be of the form:

[DEFAULT]
cewe_folder = C:\Program Files\Elkjop fotoservice_6.3\elkjop fotoservice
extraBackgroundFolders = 
	C:/ProgramData/hps/5026/addons/447/backgrounds/v1/backgrounds
	C:/ProgramData/hps/5026/addons/448/backgrounds/v1/backgrounds
fontFamilies =
	Bodoni,Bodoni,BodoniB,BodoniI,BodoniBI

Create another text file called additional_fonts.txt; this can be left empty but to get the correct fonts in the pdf you should specify them here. The example below defines the fonts for the unit test:

Arial = C:\WINDOWS\FONTS\ARIAL.TTF
Arial Rounded MT Bold = C:\WINDOWS\FONTS\ARLRDBD.TTF
Bodoni = C:\Windows\Fonts\BOD_R.TTF
BodoniB = C:\Windows\Fonts\BOD_B.TTF
BodoniI = C:\Windows\Fonts\BOD_I.TTF
BodoniBI = C:\Windows\Fonts\BOD_BI.TTF
Stafford = C:\Windows\Fonts\times.ttf
CalligraphScript = C:\Windows\Fonts\PALSCRI.TTF
FranklinGothic = C:\Windows\Fonts\framd.ttf
Calibri = C:\Windows\Fonts\calibri.ttf

Install - Linux

Copy the script where your album is (*.mcf file)

Ensure the python dependancies are installed.

On Fedora :

sudo dnf install python2-lxml python2-reportlab cairosvg

Define the CEWE path (the directory where your CEWE album software is installed. You can recognize it by the many .so files and some subdirs like Resources). Put this directory name into a file named cewe_folder.txt.

Example with my CEWE FOTOWELT is installed in /home/username/CEWE/CEWE FOTOWELT/ :

echo "/home/username/CEWE/CEWE FOTOWELT/" > cewe_folder.txt

Example with my CEWE software in /opt/CEWE :

echo "/opt/CEWE" > cewe_folder.txt

Define some additionnal fonts (name = /path/to/file.ttf) into a file named additionnal_fonts.txt

This will create an empty file :

touch additionnal_fonts.txt

You can edit additionnal_fonts.txt and add the fonts you want.

Install - continued

At this point, you should have these files in your current directory :

• cewe2pdf.py
• cewe_folder.txt
• additional_fonts.txt
• your *.mcf file
• a directory named <album>_mcf-Datein

How to use

Just run cewe2pdf.py and you will find a new pdf file to appear in your current directory. Example:

   python cewe2pdf.py c:\path\to\my\files\my_nice_fotobook.mcf

Options

currently cewe2pdf supports the following options. They are shown if you run

python cewe2pdf.py --help

usage: cewe2pdf [-h] [--keepDoublePages] [inputFile]

Convert a foto-book from .mcf file format to .pdf

positional arguments:
  inputFile          the mcf input file. If not given, the first .mcf in the
                     current directory is used. (default: None)

optional arguments:
  -h, --help         show this help message and exit
  --keepDoublePages  Each page in the .pdf will be a double-sided page,
                     instead of a normal single page. (default: False)

Example:
   python cewe2pdf.py c:\path\to\my\files\my_nice_fotobook.mcf

Development

To create a stand-alone compiled package, you can use

pip install pyinstaller
pyinstaller cewe2pdf.py --onefile

To run the unit-test you also need to install

pip install pytest pdfrw

You can then call pytest from the working directory or use the runAllTests.py file.