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... that a PowerPoint presentation can be really complex? The occasional PowerPoint user isn't aware of this complexity, mainly because infrequently used features are hidden behind a user-friendly interface.
The latest PowerPoint version supports for example about 150 shapes (some of them having up to three parameters, known as adjustment handles in PowerML context), over 30 different slide layouts, several shadow and 3D styles, arrow head types, line and dashing styles, a great variety of fill styles (solid, picture, gradient fills etc.), over 50 animation effects, a long list of text formatting parameters etc. However, an average presentation makes use of only a small amount of these features.
As both the core and the pro editions of PowerML are based on the same PowerPoint parser, both products support the same set of PowerPoint features. The difference lies in the output options. While the freely available core edition is designed only for XML output, PowerML pro can - in addition to the XML output features also supported by PowerML core - be used to programmatically access the in-memory object graph generated by the presentation parser, using a Java programming interface.
The table below contains the features supported by the PowerML suite:
| Category | Feature | Support | Description / Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| File formats | PowerPoint 2003 |  |
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| PowerPoint XP | |
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| PowerPoint 2000 | |
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| PowerPoint 97 | |
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| PowerPoint 95 |  |
PowerPoint 95 and older file formats are not supported. | |
| PowerPoint for Mac | |
not officially supported (however, you should read this). | |
| Shapes | Basic shapes | |
rectangles, ellipses, hexagons, cuboids, brackets, picture frames etc. |
| Block arrows | |
different kinds of arrows (e.g. simple, bent, curved, u-turn arrows etc.) | |
| Banners | |
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| Connectors | |
used to connect shapes. | |
| Callouts | |
shapes similar to speech bubbles in comic strips. | |
| Flowchart shapes | |
e.g. processes, decisions etc. | |
| Stars | |
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| Freeform lines and shapes | |
currently under development | |
| Adjustment handles | |
used to set various shape parameters (e.g. the depth of a cuboid) | |
| Styles | Fill styles | |
solid, picture, pattern, texture, background and gradient fills |
| Line styles | |
line type (e.g. solid, pattern, double, triple), weight, dashing, color, transparency, arrow head style | |
| Shadow styles | |
shadow type (offset, double, emboss / engrave, rich, i.e supporting perspective and scaling), colors, transparency | |
| Spatial (3D) styles | |
specular / diffuse amount, perspective / wireframe, depth, viewpoint, light, rotation, color | |
| Picture modifiers | |
cropping, color level, brightness, contrast | |
| Text | Character attributes | |
token as text atom, properties: font, size, color, offset (for subscript/superscript) and format flags (bold, italic, underline, shadow, emboss) |
| Paragraph attributes | |
alignment, indentation level, list attributes (numbered / bulleted, bullet properties, numbering type), line feed, upper / lower distance etc. | |
| Text layout | |
relative to containing shape: anchor point, margins, word wrap, rotation | |
| Ruler | |
default tab width, offset per indentation level (first line / hanging offsets), type and width of user-defined tabs | |
| Meta-tokens | |
substitutes for special data (footer text, date, slide number) | |
| Notes | |
speaker's notes, including formatting | |
| Comments | |
for reviewing purposes | |
| Structure | Masters | |
slide and title masters, backgrounds, contained shapes |
| Slides | |
includes slide layout, reference to corresponding master, contained shapes, background, slide number, footer, comments, notes | |
| Shape groups | |
used for grouping at least two shapes; scaling supported | |
| Placeholders | |
contains attributes like type (e.g. header, text, table, masterfooter), size (full, half, quarter), placement | |
| Media | JPG pictures | |
PowerPoint stores pictures in one of these formats; in PowerML, pictures are encoded using base64 encoding (as defined in RFC 3548). |
| PNG pictures | |
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| TIF pictures | |
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| EMF pictures | |
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| WMF pictures | |
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| PICT pictures | |
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| DIB pictures | |
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| OLE objects | |
OLE object access is not supported. However, visual representations of contained OLE objects (e.g. Microsoft Excel sheets) are included in PowerML as base64-encoded metafile pictures (EMF or WMF). | |
| Sounds | |
under development | |
| Movies | |
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| Language support | Unicode | |
support for most languages (including Arabic, Hebrew, Korean, Chinese, Japanese) |
| Bidirectional | |
right-to-left text supported | |
| Other | Summary | |
the file's summary, e.g. title, subject, author, company, revision, keywords etc. |
| Hyperlinks | |
new in PowerML core & pro 1.2: external (URLs and files) and internal links (slides within the same presentation). | |
| Animations | |
currently under development | |
| Slide transitions | |
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| WordArt | |