Balisage Paper: General Architecture for Generation of Slide Presentations, including PowerPoint, from arbitrary XML Documents

Abstract

PowerPoint slide decks are often required for training content authored in XML. Until recently, this was difficult for many users. With the development of the Apache POI library, it is now possible to reliably generate PowerPoint documents with a minimum of implementation effort. This paper presents a general architecture for generating slide presentations of any format from XML of any sort through the use of an intermediate format that abstracts the general structure of PowerPoint-type presentations. This general architecture allows the same source to potentially produce PowerPoint, Slidey, PDF, or any other presentation-optimized format from the same source with a minimum of implementation effort. The paper focuses on the specific challenge of producing PowerPoint using this architecture.