The people who need this feature are used to applying hundreds of command line options. The complexity wouldn't be a problem IMHO (at least on the side of the user) since it is mostly required in automation/scripting.
#Scribus manual pdf
to provide maximum flexibility, *all* of scribus' PDF options should be available. saving PDF settings separately and using them with the CLI would be *very* useful. default preferences might be useful as well (-print, -web, -presentation. if the new file format allows for storing all PDF settings, a command like scribus -pdf input.sla output.pdf would simply produce a PDF with the settings of the sla file many options mentioned here don't seem mutually exclusive to me: since FUP is willing to financially support the development of this feature, it might be useful to ask them what they need.
I realise the isssue is already assigned to subik and probably under development, but here are some random thoughts on the issue: The command line option could have "-exportwithsavedprint", "-exportwithsavedweb", "-exportwithsavedpresentation" type options that would use the saved values if they existed. There would of course be the possiblity of have nice defaults or shortcut options that group some standard options, eg max image quality, least compression etc. PDF export IS complex and if there ever were the ability to export from commandline it only makes sense to present all of these options to the user. In the end if you look at a program like ghostscript you have a myriad of options for conversion etc. You could have a print, web and presentation storage sections in the PDF export namespace if it was to be stored in the SLA to keep it seperate. Storing this in the SLA file is probably not a good idea on first glance, although the idea of a namespace to keep it seperate would be the most appropriate. you will always export either option in varying orders depending on the day. And what if the document has a print and web destination.