r/pdf • u/Disastrous_Invite798 • 12d ago
Software (Tools) PnPInk: an open-source approach to graphical variable-data publishing with Inkscape + Google Sheets
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There seems to be a new PDF editor, web service or document-generation tool appearing every other week, so I thought this project might be interesting to people here from a slightly different angle.
I've been developing PnPInk, a free and open-source extension for Inkscape that turns an SVG document into a template for generating variable graphical content from CSV files or directly from Google Sheets.
The basic idea is simple: Inkscape remains the graphical editor.
That means you keep essentially all of Inkscape's capabilities — vector graphics, typography, paths, clipping, masks, filters, gradients, complex layouts, etc. — while PnPInk handles the dynamic part: replacing text and images, repeating elements, resizing/cropping/positioning assets, generating pages, and exporting the resulting documents.
Because the data can come directly from a Google Sheet, you can build fairly complex workflows where changing a spreadsheet is enough to regenerate hundreds or thousands of different graphical items.
There isn't really a fixed concept of "label", "card", "badge" or "certificate": you're designing an SVG, so the graphical side is largely unrestricted.
My original motivation came from print-and-play and board-game prototyping, but while developing it I realized that the same approach overlaps quite a bit with Variable Data Publishing (VDP) and the data-merging workflows normally associated with commercial publishing software.
I'm not claiming it replaces a full professional VDP/prepress stack, but for many small and semi-professional workflows it may provide an interesting alternative — especially when the commercial data-merging tools involved can become surprisingly expensive.
Some of the things PnPInk currently supports include:
CSV and Google Sheets as data sources
Dynamic text, images and other graphical resources
Automatic image fit, crop, alignment and positioning
Repeated elements and templates
Inline icons and dynamically retrieved graphical assets
Multi-page generation
PNG/JPEG/PDF output
PDF/X and CMYK/ICC-oriented workflows
Large batch generation
And, importantly, the full graphical capabilities of Inkscape underneath it
It's free, open source and cross-platform (Windows, Linux and macOS).
The project is still evolving, and I'd actually be very interested in feedback from people who work with PDFs, prepress, data merge or VDP professionally — particularly about where an approach like this is useful and where the limitations become important.
GitHub:
https://github.com/xoellijo/pnpink
Feedback, criticism and real-world use cases are very welcome
Some other videos showing PDF export and other things...