Thank you — I learned a lot from ppt-master's approach

[Nero1688]

Hi Hugo and everyone working on ppt-master,

I maintain a small set of Claude Skills for my own academic research, and one of
them generates the boxes-and-arrows diagrams that go into research papers. I
recently found that its PowerPoint export had been quietly dropping every arrow
and label — ten elements in the SVG, five boxes in the PPTX. It never raised an
error, so I had simply never noticed. That was my own oversight in testing.

While looking for a way to fix it, I spent some time reading through ppt-master,
and I came away having learned more than I expected. Three things in particular:

Using SVG as an intermediate step and then converting it deterministically,
rather than driving the PowerPoint library call by call — once I saw it done
that way, the duplicated layout code in my own project became obvious.

Keeping text as normal editable text by default, and only outlining glyphs in
the narrow case that actually needs it. I had assumed complex vector output and
"still editable in PowerPoint" were a trade-off. Reading your source showed me
they aren't, and that is really what made me willing to attempt the fix at all.

And the habit of failing loudly rather than degrading silently. Honestly this
was the most useful part for me — my bug existed precisely because the export
stayed quiet instead of saying it couldn't represent something. I've adopted the
same rule.

I should be clear that I didn't copy any of your code, and I didn't take
skia-pathops or uharfbuzz either — my diagrams are simple enough that I
could get away with a much smaller subset, so those would have been more
dependency than my narrow use case justifies. I wrote a minimal version myself
and credited ppt-master in my project's attribution file as the source of the
approach. If you'd prefer that credit worded differently, please just say so and
I'll change it.

The export now keeps its arrows, and someone can still adjust the wording in
PowerPoint the night before a thesis defence. Small thing, but a real one.

Thanks for building this in the open, and for documenting the reasoning clearly
enough that someone could learn from it without taking anything.

---

---

中文

Hugo 與 ppt-master 的各位好，

我維護一組自己研究用的 Claude Skills，其中一支負責產生論文裡那種
方框加箭頭的研究架構圖。我最近才發現，它的 PowerPoint 匯出一直在
默默丟掉所有箭頭與標籤——SVG 有十個元素，PPTX 只剩五個方框。
因為它從來不報錯，我就一直沒注意到。這是我自己測試上的疏忽。

在找解法的過程中讀了 ppt-master 一陣子，學到的比我預期的多。
特別是三件事：

用 SVG 當中介、再確定性地轉換，而不是逐一驅動 PowerPoint 函式庫的呼叫。
看到可以這樣做之後，我自己專案裡重複的版面程式碼就變得很刺眼了。

文字預設保持一般可編輯的形式，只有在真正需要的窄情況才做字形外框化。
我原本以為「複雜向量輸出」跟「在 PowerPoint 裡還能編輯」是必須取捨的，
讀了原始碼才知道並不是——這其實才是讓我敢動手修的原因。

還有「明確報錯、不靜默劣化」這個習慣。老實說這對我最有用：
我那個問題之所以存在，正是因為匯出器選擇安靜地失敗，
而不是說一句「我表達不了這個東西」。我也採用了同樣的規則。

我想說清楚，我沒有複製任何程式碼，也沒有採用 skia-pathops 與 uharfbuzz
——我的圖形夠單純，用小很多的子集就夠了，那兩個對我這麼窄的用途來說
是多餘的負擔。我自己寫了一個最小版本，並在專案的 attribution 檔中
標明作法來自 ppt-master。如果你們希望這個標示換個寫法，跟我說一聲就好，
我會改。

現在那個匯出會保留箭頭了，研究者在口試前一晚還能用 PowerPoint 改文字。
是小事，但是真的有幫助。

謝謝你們把它開源，也謝謝把設計理由寫得夠清楚，
讓人可以在不拿走任何東西的情況下學到東西。

[hugohe3]

Thanks for writing this — but genuinely, none of it needs clearing with me.

The project is MIT. Use anything you find useful: the code, the prompts, the design notes, the whole approach. Copying it verbatim would have been fine too, if that were easier than writing your own minimal version. In practice a fair number of people don't follow the license terms at all, and I've never minded that either. Publishing it was the decision; I don't keep score afterwards.

The attribution in your project is already more than enough — please don't change a word on my account.

For what it's worth, this project is just a tool to me. I built the tool I wanted to use and left it in the open in case it was useful to someone else. Your export keeping its arrows is a better outcome than any credit.

Good luck with the research.

---

繁體中文

謝謝你特地寫這一篇，不過這些事情真的都不需要跟我確認。

這個專案採用 MIT 授權。任何你覺得有用的東西都可以直接拿去用：程式碼、提示詞、設計說明，整套作法都可以。就算你直接照抄、而不是自己另寫一個最小版本，也完全沒問題。事實上有不少人根本沒有遵循授權條款，我一樣從來不介意。既然選擇公開，那就是決定本身，之後我不會再去計較。

你專案裡現有的標示已經綽綽有餘，不必為了我改任何一個字。

對我來說，這個專案本質上就是一個工具。我做了自己想用的工具，順手放在公開的地方，看看對別人是不是也有用。你的匯出現在能保留箭頭了，這比任何署名都更有價值。

祝研究順利。