The theme part converts nothing. It reads a deck and writes a theme directory — a first draft of a theme, meant to be edited. The other parts are on For word and For presentations.

mdoffice theme init deck.pptx          # writes deck/
mdoffice theme deck.pptx                # the same run: init is the default

Options for init

The directory is the deck's own name without its extension, so deck.pptx gives deck/ and talks/talk.pptx gives talks/talk/.

A theme that is already there is not replaced without being asked. A theme is a directory of files somebody has edited, and replacing one is how an afternoon of work goes missing:

mdoffice theme: There is already a theme in "deck".
mdoffice theme:   Pass --force to replace it.

What is written

Three files go into the directory.

The theme is read back before the command reports success. The library's own reader reads it and the library's own geometry reads the boxes of the template, so a theme this command cannot read is a failure here rather than a theme nobody can use.

What is read out of the deck

The colours come from the deck's own theme part where the deck is drawn in that theme, and from the deck's slides where it is not. A deck made in a tool that does not do themes carries Office's palette without ever drawing in it, and that palette describes nothing on the page.

The type scale is read off the deck's text, because a deck records a size for every paragraph rather than a scale. The title is the size most slides are headed in, the cover the largest type on the first slide, the body the size the prose is written at, and the heading scale the sizes below the title.

The layouts are mapped by the placeholders they hold, not by their names: a deck calls its layouts whatever it likes, and the same layout is called different things in two offices. A role the deck has no layout for is reported rather than pointed at a layout that is something else.

The template is the deck's layouts without its slides, and without the pictures on them. A template places, and the slides of the deck it came from are not a placement.

What is left to the library

The spacing and the monospace face are the library's own. A deck records where its boxes are, not the rhythm it draws with, and it says nothing about a face it never uses. Every value the deck did not answer is left at the library's default and named in the report, so the numbers in the file can be told apart from the numbers somebody chose.

The report

The command says what it read and where it read it from:

mdoffice theme: wrote the theme for "deck.pptx" into "deck".

  theme.yml     the colours, the fonts and the type scale
  layouts.yml   1 of the 8 layout roles mapped
  template.pptx the deck's 1 layouts, without its 3 slides

  colours
    dk1        #000000   the type
    lt2        #000000   a filled block

The report goes to standard output, and the theme it writes is a directory the slides part reads: put it in themes/<name>/ beside a deck and name it with theme:. The theme format is the presentation library's, and the layout roles are the ones it defines.

Every example on this page was built by the library it documents while this page was built. This page as Markdown.