Python script to combine objects defined .blend files

Coding Python Support
1

I am new to blender and using 2.53 and new to python but I find learning curve very steep.
So I am posting here to make progress faster. Hope this helps.

I have 3d models of main scene ( main.blend) and of chair ( chair.blend).
I want to write a script (gen.py) which would place chair in the main scene at location (x,y,z) specified in the script. I want to run this script so that I get output blend file ( out.blend) in which chair is positioned in the main scene and also get out.png rendered image.

Please write 3 or 4 (?) python lines how would I achieve above goal from which I would pickup the rest. I looked at sample scripts but could not find how to access object defined in one blend file and access another blend file ( main.blend) to put the object there.

I need to run the script from command line in which blender runs in background without UI. Is this possible and what the command line would look like?

What is the fastest renderer given that there is no GPU (graphics card) on the machine running above script ? yafaray luxrender or povray or ?

2

How longs a piece of string? Without knowing what your scene is and what effects you have, and what quality you want this is impossible to give a definitive answer. Also include the blender internal in your list which can be much quicker than the above.