PowerPoint Presentations with Office for Mac

[matysek]

Add support to load presentations with PowerPoint on Mac OS X.

[matysek (mzibricky)]

Technically speaking, we could try to use Automator utility on Mac OS X:
- It is an utility to automate repetitive tasks on Mac OS X
- Office for Mac contains some Automator tasks for Word/Excel/PowerPoint
- these tasks are in Mac Office 2008 "Professional" and 2011 (both editions)
- Issues with Mac Office on Lion: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2586538

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automator
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/03/10/mac-automation-automating-microsoft-word-2008/
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/03/26/mac-automation-automating-microsoft-powerpoint-2008/
http://automator.us/
http://www.macintouch.com/reviews/office2011/
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyobjc-framework-Automator/

[matysek (mzibricky)]

Implementation:
- use pyobjc-framework-Automator module from PyObjc package:
- In macports it is package py27-pyobjc

Links:
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyobjc-framework-Automator
http://pyobjc.sourceforge.net/
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/AppleApplications/Conceptual/AutomatorConcepts/Automator.html

[matysek (mzibricky)]

Maybe it will be necessary to create some pyobjc hooks in PyInstaller.

[matysek (mzibricky)]

Another possible implementation could be using python module 'Finder' which acts like a python way for scripting Mac OS X apps. 'Finder' module should be like a wrapper around osascript (applescript) on Mac. Office for Mac should have an osascript interface:

- http://docs.python.org/library/macostools.html#module-findertools
- http://wiki.python.org/moin/MacPython/AppscriptModule
- http://mail.python.org/pipermail/pythonmac-sig/2005-August/014944.html
- http://wiki.python.org/moin/MacPython/Microsoft%20Powerpoint
- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8180078/applescript-command-to-extract-template-from-a-powerpoint-presentation
- http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.23/23.03/23.03AppleScriptPowerPoint/index.html
- http://www.scriptsforapple.com/applescript-for-powerpoint-presentations/
- http://mac2.microsoft.com/help/office/14/en-us/powerpoint/item/939d5113-355e-4ed5-8a82-bf4f3d2faf56

[Dmitriy Marmyshev (marmyshev)]

Also we could use Script Bridge framework
http://www.macosxautomation.com/applescript/features/scriptingbridge.html
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/RubyPythonCocoa/Articles/UsingScriptingBridge.html

[matysek (mzibricky)]

Does scriptbridge framework work with python from macports?

What does mean the following statement that scriptbridge support is implemented in pyobjc?

http://pyobjc.sourceforge.net/documentation/pyobjc-framework-ScriptingBridge/api-notes-ScriptingBridge.html

Does it mean that we could just use the 'objc' module to not call directly module 'ScriptingBridge' module which seems to be available only in python bundled with osx?

[Phill (phill-ridout)]

Changed the status to confirmed, as this has been dropped due to technical issues