ppTufte is a quick VBA hack that enables you to efficiently generate slides that mimick the handout style of Edward Tufte in PowerPoint 2010.
Currently the plugin is provided in source form only, hence:
- clone the repo or download the
Tufte.basfile - open PowerPoint 2010
- press Alt-F11 to open the VBA editor
- import code into VBA editor (file -> import)
- save as ppam file (e.g. pptufte.ppam) in your add-on folder
- add & activate add-in
TL;DR: I needed a better way to communicate dense content using PowerPoint.
In the corporate world, slides are being misused to document things that should be written down in a document. The bullet point-heavy slideument is a painful reality. And it needs to be weeded out.
However, as others have argued before, our ways of corporate communication are changing: decision makers have limited time at their disposal and breaking dowm complex matters in well-structured, efficiently digestable and engaging documents has become crucial. It seems that neither presentation slides nor text documents are the best way to go.
So it won't do to declare PowerPoint evil, it won't do to sneer upon those who use it and it won't do to dream up a vision without providing a path towards it (I love LaTeX, but the majority of people in the corporate world have a hard time understanding why WYSIWYG is semi-professional).
ppTufte attempts to facilitate the generation of slide documents, i.e. slides that are more suitable for documentation, pre-read and post-meeting handouts than presentation slides. Slides that enable people to share their thoughts in full sentences and enable readers to process these thoughts efficiently.
Long story short, all ppTufte does is to provide a few macros that should make it easier for people to share information based on a clear and (somewhat) beautiful design without requiring them to learn a new tool. To this end, ppTufte mimicks some of the styles described in Tufte CSS by Dave Liepmann.
I am perfectly aware that this is a poor man's effort to better and more informative communication -- the full-fledged design-type way is quite probably to follow Nancy Duartes slidedoc idea (if you have the necessary resources at your disposal, that is ;-).
The basic building block of the tufte design is a standard text box. You provide the text box content and the macros will format the content according to Tufte's handout rules.
The easiest way to get to know the existing macros is to test them out.
Important: ppTufte will not change your fonts; I recommend to switch the
presentation text style in the Layout ribbon to Palatino Linotype for Serif
Fonts.
- Create slide:
- this creates a new slide using a slightly adjusted contrast.
- Make canvas:
- this either creates a new canvas text box on the active slide or makes the selected textbox a canvas text box. In both cases, the canvas text box is placed below the lowermost known canvas element.
- Make title:
- creates a new title text box or makes the selected text box a title box.
- Make subtitle:
- creates a new subtitle text box or makes the selected text box a subtitle box.
- Make margin note:
- creates a new margin note from highlighted text (empty if no highlighting present) or makes the selected text box a margin note.
- Make referenced margin note:
- creates a new margin note from highlighted text and inserts a reference at the beginning of the selection.
- Make canvas figure:
- formats an existing image/figure to fit the canvas (in width) and adds a figure caption. Also reformats a group of object & caption to fit the canvas
- Make margin figure:
- same as a canvas figure, only for the margin.
- Autolayout canvas elements:
- converts all selected elements to canvas elements and aligns them top-down on the canvas.
Configuration options are stored in the GetConfig function.
In order to change the config, you currently need to edit the code and
re-install the plug-in.
MIT, see LICENSE file and source code.
- Developed and (roughly) tested under Office 2010 only! If you are a proficient .NET developer and feel like bringing this to later versions of Office, please go ahead!
- Currently only tested with 4:3 slides; other formats should scale but may look strange
- The PPT VBA interface does not allow to set up kerning. The PPT default behavior is to kern starting from 12pt, thus the margin notes are currently not kerned.
- In his later books, Tufte starts major paragraphs with a few words in small caps. As there is no programmatic access to the new font interface introduced in Office 2010, you need to do this manually.