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I'm looking for a nice way to generate either a Keynote file from XML or a Powerpoint file that I can then import to Keynote. Basically, I'm looking for a simple human-writable markup format (for easy scripting) that can be exported into slides.

I volunteer with a local nonprofit, where anything remotely technical falls to me. On a fairly regular basis, I'm sent information for events and produce a nice looking printed program in Word, though much of the same material also goes into slides in Keynote. (Keynote is used rather than PowerPoint so that Keynote Remote can be used.)

Anyway, there's a large volume of text I work with that I'm sent via email, and it has to go in both a Keynote presentation and a Word document, and requires all sorts of odd manual formatting to not break pages or slides at odd times, also requiring a good deal of manual restyling, since I'm not going to allow something I do to come out looking like something sloppy from the 1990s.

My hope is to write up a Ruby script that I can feed the source text to, and it'll go do all the processing for me, at least for Powerpoint or Keynote. I've normally had fantastic luck finding a gem for just about any format or service I've wanted to work with, but I haven't found anything that works with Powerpoint or Keynote.

My next thought was to have the Ruby code generate appropriate XML since both Office and I Work allegedly open the Office XML format, but I couldn't find any actual friendly documentation for human-writable XML code.

Is it wishful thinking to want to be able to do something like the following?

<SLIDE FORMAT="Title & Bullets">
  <SLIDE_TITLE>
    Lorem Ipsum
  </SLIDE_TITLE>
<PARAGRAPH>
    [etc.]

All I can find as far as converter scripts is all related to charts and tables and such which is of zero use here), usually revolves around opening or converting FROM Powerpoint or Keynote rather than creating, and furthermore generally seems to be for Windows using OLE or VBScript. This needs to run on the Macs they have there, so no Visual Studio stuff, Windows related scripting, etc will work. I don't HAVE to do it in Ruby, but that's what I'd be most comfortable with on the Mac end of things.

So is there documentation out there on a marginally friendly XML format for Powerpoint or Keynote, or even better, a Ruby gem for either?

Balanivash
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UtopiaLtd
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1 Answers1

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If all you need to do is title + bullet point slides, you simply need to create an ascii text file. Each line of text will become the title of a new slide. But if the first character in a line of text is a tab, the line will become a first level bullet point on the same slide as the previous title. If two tabs, it indents the text to a second level bullet point and so on.

This becomes the title on slide one
This becomes the title on slide two
<tab>This is a bullet point, first level
<tab><tab>And this is a bullet point, second level
<tab>Back to first level bullet point
And another new slide

Once you have the text file, you can do File Open in PPT and force files of type to all files . and select your .TXT file. Or you can use Insert Slide From File to bring the .TXT file into an existing presentation.

There's a limit to the number of slides you can create at one go like this; 100 perhaps?

Note also that VBA disappeared in Mac Ofice 2008 but is back in Mac Office 2011, so if you can find examples of VB/VBA code that do what you want, you can use them on Mac, so long as it doesn't have to happen in Office 2008.

Steve Rindsberg
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  • Thanks! That'll work just fine for the Ruby script's purposes. I was about to say that it didn't work correctly when I made a test file. Everything all loaded as lines in the title area of the slide. But then I resaved the file to end with Carriage Return AND Line Feed instead of just Line Feed and that did the trick. Thanks again. Now that this roadblock is out of my way I can code the rest of the way through, I think! – UtopiaLtd Jul 03 '11 at 19:20