v3.7.0

[3.7.0] - 2026-08-30

groupObjects() has always addressed objects by objectName, and there has never been a
way to learn those names. That is fine while one caller authored everything and useless
the moment a slide is assembled by independent renderers, which is exactly the case
groupObjects() was added for: nobody kept the descriptors, so the only handle on what is
on the slide is a name nothing reports. The two ways out were both bad — make every
renderer surrender its internals, or keep a parallel ledger that is wrong the first time a
renderer adds an object it did not announce. slide.objects is the accessor that was
missing, and it reports the groupable-kinds rule alongside each object so a consumer does
not pin a second copy of it.

This is also the first release to go out under two names. pptx-ts is the same build
published a second time, for people who cannot or will not type a scope; @shbernal/ts-pptx
stays canonical, and installing both at once is the one thing not to do.

Added

• The package is published under a second, unscoped name: pptx-ts. npm has one
  package per name and no notion of a redirect, so an alias on the registry is not a
  pointer at another package: it is a second publish of the same content under a second
  name. That is what this is. scripts/alias-package.mjs stages a copy of the build the
  release gates just proved, and .github/workflows/publish.yml publishes that copy after
  the canonical publish has succeeded. Three things differ from @shbernal/ts-pptx at
  the same version, and nothing else does: package.json#name, a README.md banner
  naming the scoped package as the canonical one, and the absence of the scripts block,
  which is dev-only metadata in a published manifest and whose prepack would delete the
  staged dist/ if a publish ever ran without --ignore-scripts. version, exports,
  files, dependencies and the dist/ and skills/ payloads are the same bytes, so
  the alias is the package the gates measured rather than a near-copy of it.

  Install one or the other, never both. Two copies of this library in one dependency
  tree are two module registries, and per-copy state such as the diagnostic handler stops
  behaving as one library. The scoped name stays canonical: the issue tracker, this
  changelog and every example in the docs use it, and nothing about cutting a release
  changes because the second name exists.

  The name is reversed rather than scope-stripped because ts-pptx on npm belongs to an
  unrelated project.

• slide.objects: the authored objects on a slide, bottom-to-top in z-order. The
  read-back half of groupObjects(). Each entry is a SlideObjectInfo carrying type,
  objectName, isPlaceholder, canGroup, and children (a group's members, nested to
  any depth). It is a snapshot rather than a live handle: a fresh array on every access,
  inert, and the way to act on it is to call the authoring API with the names it reports.

  objectName comes back in the caller's spelling, not the stored one. Every
  add*Definition stores the name attribute-escaped and groupObjects() escapes the
  caller's spelling before comparing, so reporting the stored form would hand back a name
  that escapes a second time on the way in and resolves to nothing — the same mismatch
  1.0.0 fixed on the input side, arriving from the other direction. A shape named Q&A
  reads back as Q&A. The promise is the round trip rather than invertibility, and it
  holds even where decoding is not a true inverse: a name authored as the literal string
  & decodes to & and re-encodes to the stored &.

  objectName is always a string. An object authored without one still carries the
  generated Shape 3 / Text 1 / Group 2 identity PowerPoint shows in the Selection
  Pane, and that name addresses it as well as an authored one does — reporting null there
  would have withheld a usable handle to signal a distinction nothing downstream of
  authoring records anyway.

  canGroup is the predicate groupObjects() throws on, not a restatement of it.
  GROUPABLE_TYPES and the placeholder exclusion now live behind one isGroupableObject
  that both the accessor and the throw path call. A consumer that had to re-state the rule
  would be pinning a copy of a list it does not own: it would keep refusing the day
  grouping learns a new kind and go on offering the day one is withdrawn, with nothing
  failing in either direction. It answers about the object and not the call — an
  unresolved, duplicated or ambiguous name still throws, and no single object can speak
  for a selection.

Changed

• The publish workflow is re-runnable when only one of the two names went out.
  Publishing two packages is not atomic, so the canonical publish can succeed and the
  alias fail after it. The unpublished-version guard therefore fails only when both
  names already carry the version, and each publish step is skipped when its own name
  already does. Re-dispatching the workflow on the same tag finishes the missing half and
  touches nothing else. Previously the guard failed whenever the version existed under the
  one name it knew about, which would have made workflow_dispatch useless in precisely
  the state it exists for. The alias is published last for the same reason: a failure in
  it costs a re-dispatch, never the release that already went out.

[3.6.0] - 2026-08-28