Themes and layout

A theme is a directory. theme.yml is required; styles.yml, layouts.yml and template.pptx are optional.

themes/corporate-dark/
├── theme.yml      required
├── styles.yml     the Word half's vocabulary — the renderer does not read it
├── layouts.yml    which PowerPoint layout each role maps to
└── template.pptx  optional, a path

`theme.yml`

Key	Type	Default	Notes
`name`	string	—	required, non-empty
`description`	string	`null`
`author`	string	`null`
`dark`	boolean	`false`	boolean only — `dark: yes` is refused
`colors:`	mapping	see below	`#rrggbb`, stored upper-cased
`fonts:`	mapping	Calibri / Calibri / Consolas	`heading`, `body`, `mono`
`style:`	mapping	see below	the geometry

dark: yes being refused is not pedantry. YAML 1.1 truthy strings are what make a theme written by hand behave differently from one written by a machine, and this one is for machines.

The twelve colour slots

dk1 lt1 dk2 lt2 accent1 accent2 accent3 accent4 accent5 accent6 hlink folHlink

Defaults: #000000 #FFFFFF #44546A #E7E6E6 #4472C4 #ED7D31 #A5A5A5 #FFC000 #5B9BD5 #70AD47 #0563C1 #954F72.

Four read-friendly aliases are accepted: dark1, light1, dark2, light2, hyperlink, followedHyperlink.

dark: true swaps four of them — the page becomes dk1, the ink lt1, the panel dk2, the subtle ink lt2 — which is why the same theme can be dark without being a second theme.

`style:` — the geometry

Key	Type	Default	Minimum
`margin`	int, px	40	1
`gutter`	int, px	20	1
`block`	int, px	12	1
`rule`	int, px	2	1
`body`	int, pt	16	1
`title`	int, pt	28	1
`cover`	int, pt	40	1
`section`	int, pt	44	1
`headings`	list of int, pt	`[22, 20, 18, 16, 14]`	each ≥ 1
`leading`	number	1.2	1.0
`heading-weight`	`bold` or `regular`	`bold`
`heading-ink`	`ink` or `accent`	`ink`

Layout roles

Eight, and only these:

title  content  two-column  section  blank  image-text  image-title  image-slide

blank and image-slide have no title box. layouts.yml maps each role to a layout name in the master — the file may be a bare mapping or nested under a single layouts: key.

Only the roles a deck actually uses are built, so a ten-slide deck does not carry eight masters.

The four that ship

Theme	Margin	Block	Body	Headings	Leading	Weight	Ink
`default`	40	12	16pt	22/20/18/16/14	1.2	bold	ink
`corporate-dark`	48	16	18pt	26/23/21/19/17	1.32	bold	accent
`minimal`	64	14	17pt	23/22/21/20/19	1.12	regular	ink
`dense`	28	8	13pt	17/16/15/14/13	1.1	bold	ink

minimal has more margin and less ink; dense has less margin and smaller type. Those are the two axes a deck is usually fighting over, and they are separate keys so you can move one.

Resolution order

an explicit path — anything containing /
<workingDirectory>/themes/<name>
the package's own themes/<name>

There is no silent fallback to default. A name that does not resolve raises ThemeNotFound and lists every theme that does. A deck that came out looking like something other than what was asked for is worse than a deck that did not build.

Word themes

The Word half has themes too, and they are the other shape: a directory with theme.yml — name, description, author, and name required — and an optional styles.yml holding the same slot names the Word configuration page lists. Four ship: default, minimal, corporate, report.

A theme is a starting point, not a replacement: your own styles: sits on top of it, and which keys you wrote is remembered so a partial override does not silently discard the rest.

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

theme.yml