Nermander,
Many thanks again. If the script that you are referring to is the one from the Formatxml page, then that script didn't work and I was given another by one of the developers which did.
However, I am thinking of trying another approach. Since there does not seem to be any documentation on <ITEXT CAB="2" CCOLOR="Black" CBASE="0" CSTW="-0.1" CSIZE="12" etc., I had decided to create a Scribus document manually, making small incremental changes, saving the document each time, and inspecting the underlying .sla file to see how it has changed. I won't find all the definitions this way, but I should find enough for my immediate needs. This may take a little while, but, for instance, I have already found that <ITEXT ch="Sample text."/>, without any of the above attributes is how Scribus saves simple standard text, so, for the moment, I don't need to understand the above options.
I think therefore that, rather than generate a .xml file, I should be able to generate a .sla file from my database without too much difficulty. My only concern is the header part of the .sla file, and for the time being I may just copy this into my generated .sla file in Notepad before I open it in Scribus. I will document what I learn and in due course post it if anyone is interested.
I have found that if you create a new document in Scribus with multiple pages and Automatic Text Frames set on, you can copy multiple pages of text from a .doc or other document in one go and paste it into the text frame on the first page, and it will automatically flow the text from page to page, without any problem. I think that this means that I won't have to do my own pagination, unless I want a mandatory page break.
If I generate my own .sla file, I will then be able to open it in Scribus and won't have to worry about importing it. I know that my version of a .sla file will have limitations and, to save time now, I will have to make compromises, but at least it will get me going. Once I have opened my .sla file in Scribus, I can make refinements to the layout in Scribus and then generate the PDF I need.
Are there any obvious flaws in this approach? I have moved to Scribus 1.5.2