How can I programmatically create PowerPoint presentations. On Linux. For Free.

Question

I'd like to create a PowerPoint (not Javascript/HTML/PDF/Keynote/.mov) using code (any language, C preferred) for free.

(I've seen this SO question which references how to create them in C#)

Is this even possible? How can I write the raw bits that make up a PowerPoint file? Any good libraries for doing this?

UPDATE The Microsoft Reference Page for the binary format is here.

Answer 1

Open Office has an API. You can use the C++ bindings (doc available here). If you really need C, you'll have to do some wrapping.. but hey, it's Christmas, isn't it ;-)

Open Office has export functions to create .ppt compatible files.

Answer 2

PowerPoint you may not, but OpenOffice Impress you may. (Yoda style answer :) )

Take a look at the ODF Toolkit project. They aim to produce lots of libraries for generating this kind of content programatically.

Answer 3

If you don't mind going to Java, Apache POI provides readers and writers for most MS Office formats (up to the 2003 version anyway).

Answer 4

keywords, package: unoconv phppowerpoint application/vnd.ms-powerpoint