Export Powerpoint slides

[ErichDonGubler]

This project looks absolutely fantastic. I'd be interested in contributing, and wanted to know more details about how it would interoperate with Powerpoint slides. At the very least, it seems very interesting to be able to export Powerpoint slides. Most organizations and conferences I know expect Powerpoint slides, and it'd be handy to send them to somebody who doesn't use Marp.

Is Marp's roadmap open to this?

[amilajack]

This seems too ambitions. Exporting to PDF's seems more feasible.

[ErichDonGubler]

@amilajack: Why? There are nodejs libraries that can produce PowerPoint XML -- the only question after that is how to generate styles, right?

[amilajack]

Wow that's pretty cool! Didn't know about them. Should be relatively straightforward then.

[ghost]

OOXML seems possible. It would also be nice to export as ODF…

[nyaray]

Sounds like the first step would be to internally generate an intermediate representation (IR) of slides. That way, you could write plugins and feed the IR into transformation plugins or something, to create whatever output (or other fun modifications) you can come up with.

Basically, my suggestion implies creating a light-weight compiler of sorts. It would add complexity, but simplify things a little since you'd have a saner framework for exporting instead of throwing if PPT mode else if OpenOffice else if LibreOffice else if ... all over the export code.

[yhatt]

Hmm, I'm thinking it seems still ambitious in terms of the Marp's implement. 😕

I guess the project of developing converter for slide formats will launched as another project If we will process this issue.
And that approach is similar to Pandoc. The converter might create with it...

[nyaray]

Would it make sense to export using Pandoc and create a simple UI for that instead of having the PDF-export? Just throwing the idea out for anyone who's disappointed by this being a wontfix (though I agree with your decision :)

[yhatt]

Of course I don't think it is not worth. I was concerned whether be able to keep the quality of looks same as PDF, and I guessed it's too hard.

If we decided that it were just exported semantic elements, I guess Marp had possibility to add export to some format in this project. I have to apologize my smug decision with less discussed...

I'll remove tagged wontfix. Then I also would like to hear conceptor's consideration.

[ErichDonGubler]

@yhatt: Examining alternatives now. An initial glance shows some tools that could be used:

• Pandoc (mentioned before) -- can convert from MD to PPT. This might be the best bet for a solution, since it's complete and mature.
• odpdown -- Python library that converts to the OpenOffice Presenter format, which can be used for PPTs. Adding Python to the toolchain doesn't sound desirable, though.
• officegen -- do a lot of code-rolling for this project, but it matches the Electron toolchain. CBA: Yuck!

The recurring theme I see is that, as you said, the tool to use might already be developed. I'll examine some options (at least what I've listed here) and come back with the results of my research.

[yhatt]

Now PPTX export is available in Marp Next tools (#267) such as Marp CLI and Marp for VS Code.