rpptx-cli

rpptx-cli makes complete PPTX workflows available to shell scripts. It inspects and extracts deck content, validates package invariants, compares or replaces text, and produces deterministic fixed output.

Capabilities

• Human-readable inspection, and JSON inspection with per-shape kind, placeholder, geometry, rotation, autofit, and text detail.
• Slide-order text extraction and recursive outlines, as plain text or schema-1 JSON, with speaker notes on request.
• PDF, PNG, JPEG, and multi-page TIFF conversion.
• Selected-slide rendering, thumbnails, text diff, replacement, and validation.
• Modern comment thread listing, addition, replies, resolution, and removal.
• Scriptable output covers slide order, notes, comments, recursive group content, relationship-backed media, and deterministic rendering diagnostics.

Measured footprint and speed

Use it when

Use the CLI for shell automation. Use rpptx when the same operations belong inside a Rust application.

Relationship

It uses oxml-cli-support for shared command conventions and the real rpptx facade for document behavior.

Example

cargo install rpptx-cli --version '^0.14.0'
rpptx inspect deck.pptx --json
rpptx text deck.pptx --json
rpptx outline deck.pptx --notes
rpptx comment add deck.pptx --slide 2 --author Reviewer \
  --text "Check the figures" --date 2026-09-25T10:00:00Z -o reviewed.pptx
rpptx comment list reviewed.pptx --json
rpptx convert deck.pptx --to pdf -o deck.pdf
rpptx thumbnail deck.pptx -o thumbnail.png

inspect --json keeps its existing keys and adds shape_details beside each slide's shape count. Each shape reports its z-order index, id, name, kind, placeholder type and index, direct position and size in EMU, rotation in degrees, direct autofit mode, paragraphs, table size, and children. A placeholder that inherits its geometry from its layout reports null geometry, and a placeholder without an explicit type reports a null type.

Both inspection forms report every core property the deck sets. Beside title, creator, subject, description, keywords, last modified by, created and modified, they report category, content status, identifier, language, last printed, revision and version, which inspect --json adds to its metadata object. Human-readable inspection prints (none) when the deck sets no core property.

text --json reports each slide's one-based number, slide id, paragraphs, and speaker notes, or null notes when the slide has no notes part. Each paragraph has a typed zero-based path of shape, table row, table cell, and paragraph positions, the id of the shape that owns it, its level, its visible text, and its regular runs. Run indexes are the facade's run positions, so fields and line breaks appear only in the paragraph text, where a line break is U+000B. Run formatting is null when a run has no direct properties. Otherwise it records nullable direct bold, italic, underline, font, point size, and sRGB colour values.

outline --json reports each slide's title, its outline items with their levels, and its speaker notes. Notes are the plain text of the notes body, with paragraphs and line breaks both written as newlines. --notes prints one Notes: line for each non-empty notes line after a slide's plain text or outline. JSON output always carries the notes.

comment works on modern PowerPoint comments. Legacy comments stay preserved but are not listed. list shows each comment and reply as open, resolved, or closed, and its JSON carries the resolved flag beside the raw status token. add --slide takes a one-based slide number. add and reply require an RFC 3339 --date, reuse an existing author with the same name, and add the author otherwise. New ids are sequential GUIDs, so the output depends on neither a clock nor a random source. resolve takes a thread id. remove takes a thread id, which also removes its replies, or a reply id. Every mutation requires -o/--output, refuses an existing output, publishes only a complete presentation, and supports a schema-1 record through --json.

convert, render, and thumbnail refuse an output file that already exists unless --force is given. Even with --force they refuse their own input file under any spelling of its path, and an output that is not a regular file, such as a directory, a symbolic link, a FIFO, or a device like /dev/null. A run checks every file it would write before it writes the first one, and publishes each file only once it is complete, so a failed run leaves no truncated output.

The output extension of replace and of every comment mutation selects the package class the output declares. A .potx template written to deck.pptx becomes a presentation, and a deck that carries a VBA project cannot change to a macro-free extension.

Run rpptx --help or rpptx <command> --help for the complete command surface.