'Invalid Verb' error only when Calling Inkscape as a subprocess

Question

When I call the following in the command line it works like a charm:

inkscape --with-gui --batch-process --export-filename=- \ --actions="select-all;ObjectToPath" \ /full/path/to/example.svg

But when I open Node.js and make the same call in a subprocess like so:

const cp = require("child_process"); var child = cp.spawn( "/usr/bin/inkscape", [ "--with-gui", "--batch-process", "--export-filename=-", '--actions="select-all;ObjectToPath"', "/full/path/to/example.svg", ], { cwd: process.cwd(), detached: true, stdio: "inherit", } );

I get the following error:

Unable to find: "select-all verbs_action: Invalid verb: "select-all Unable to find: ObjectToPath" verbs_action: Invalid verb: ObjectToPath"

and the file is returned (printed to stdout) unchanged. Any Idea why the verbs are not found when running Inkscape as a subprocess but not calling it directly from the terminal? I get this same error on ubuntu (20.04) and OSX using the latest Inkscape (1.0.1+r73).

AKX · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-17 19:13:25Z

When you use cp.spawn with an array of arguments, you don't need to internally quote "select-all;ObjectToPath" like you would with a shell. (In a shell, the quotes prevent the shell from tokenizing the command line into two lines. Due to the same mechanism - or lack thereof - attempting to use shell variables such as $$ or environment variables such as $PATH would fail when you use cp.spawn, since there's nothing to parse that.)

I would imagine

const cp = require("child_process"); var child = cp.spawn( "/usr/bin/inkscape", [ "--with-gui", "--batch-process", "--export-filename=-", "--actions=select-all;ObjectToPath", "/full/path/to/example.svg", ], { cwd: process.cwd(), detached: true, stdio: "inherit", }, );

would do the trick for you.

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