DITA2PPTX Command Line

The dita2slideset-app.jar provides the command DITA2PPTX, which generates a PowerPoint presentation from a DITA map.

It requires a DITA Open Toolkit installation with the Slidinator and DITA for Publishers Toolkit plugins deployed (the Slidinator plugin depends on several D4P plugins). The jar file and Toolkit plugins are distributed in the project's bin/ directory.

You supply the input DITA map, a base PowerPoint PPTX file that provides the slide masters to use as the base for the new slides, and the location of the DITA Open Toolkit to use. By default, it uses the generic DITA-to-simpleslideml transform provided by the Slidinator Toolkit plugin. You can specify your own custom transform if you want.

Typical command line when the Toolkit is the one included with OxygenXML:

java -jar /Users/me/apps/slidinator/bin/dita2slideset-app.jar DITA2PPTX  
-i /Users/me/myslides.ditamap  
-b /Users/ekimber/workspace/conference_papers/balisage-2013-xml2slides/xml2slides-base.pptx  
-o /Users/ekimber/workspace/conference_papers/balisage-2013-xml2slides  
-otdir /Applications/oxygen/frameworks/dita/DITA-OT 

The dita2slideset-app.jar contains all its dependencies, so it does not require any other jars.

Full usage details:

usage: DITA2PPTX
 -b <basePPTXPath>   (Required) The path and filename of the PPTX file to
                     use as the basis for the generated presentation.
 -i <mapFilePath>    (Required) The path and filename of the DITA map file
                     to process.
 -o <basePPTXPath>   (optional) The output file. If an extension is not
                     specified, the extension will be '.pptx'. If not
                     specified, the input map filename is used for the
                     output, with the extension '.pptx'.
 -otdir <otdir>      (optional) The directory containing the DITA Open
                     Toolkit to use (e.g., c:\DITA-OT). If not specified,
                     uses the environment variable DITA_HOME.