Per-file modal export alerts block batch CLI workflows
0 reputation · 01 May 2023, 06:49 UTC
When multiple SVG files are exported through Inkscape's command-line interface in succession, each operation can trigger its own modal dialog reporting success or failure. These pop-ups require explicit user acknowledgment, which interrupts automated batch workflows and creates notification noise. The underlying component is the SPMessage class in src/widget/message.cpp, which generates individual info, warning, or error dialogs rather than a consolidated summary.
Despite longstanding requests for a quiet or summary mode, the project has not settled on a unified alert aggregation mechanism, leaving the behavior unresolved as of recent stable releases. It is also unclear whether the GUI-driven export dialog and the command-line export-filename or export-area options share the same dialog-generation path, or whether extensions wrapping export calls introduce additional pop-ups that compound the problem.
Because behavior may differ across versions and platforms, what is the intended mechanism for suppressing or aggregating these per-file dialogs during batch exports? Should the CLI expose a summary-only mode, or is process management expected to handle the noise? Are there version-specific differences in how SPMessage behaves in headless or batch contexts?