keynote-parser

keynote-parser is a Python module for unpacking and re-packing Apple Keynote .key files. It supports Keynote files generated by Keynote version 8.3 (current as of January 2019).

Keynote uses a proprietary, compressed binary format to store its presentations. This format is comprised of a zip file containing images and videos, as well as Snappy-compressed Protobuf .iwa files containing metadata, text, and all other definitions used in the presentation.

keynote-parser unpacks these component files into .yaml files in a directory, making them editable by text editors and/or scripts, then allows re-packing of these files into a working Keynote archive.

What could you use this for? Well, I use it to allow versioning of Keynote files in Git, which makes diffs more understandable (rather than binary), as well as modifying text in Keynote files in response to external scripts. (e.g.: figures that update from databases before giving a presentation)

Installation

pip install keynote-parser

Usage

# Unpack MyPresentation.key into ./MyPresentation/
keynote-parser unpack MyPresentation.key

# Re-pack ./MyPresentation/ into MyPresentation.out.key 
keynote-parser pack ./MyPresentation/

# List the files within a Keynote archive
keynote-parser ls MyPresentation.key

# Dump a particular .iwa file into its yaml representation on stdout
keynote-parser cat MyPresentation.key /Index/Slide-00001.iwa

# Replace text within a Keynote file in-place
keynote-parser replace MyPresentation.key --find "hello world" --replace "hello dolly"

Updates

As keynote-parser includes private Protobuf definitions extracted from a copy of Keynote, new versions of Keynote will inevitably create .key files that cannot be read by keynote-parser. As new versions of Keynote are released, the following steps must be undertaken:

• Run proto-dump on the new copy of Keynote to dump new Proto files.
  • Any . characters in the Protobuf definitions must be changed to _ characters manually.
• Connect to a running copy of Keynote with lldb (or any other debugger) and manually copy the results of [TSPRegistry sharedRegistry] into mapping.py.
  • Versions of macOS >= 10.11 may protect Keynote from being attached to by a debugger - to attach, temporarily disable System IntegrityProtection to get this data.

Credits

keynote-parser was built by Peter Sobot but heavily based on prior work by Sean Patrick O'Brien. A copy of O'Brien's format documentation is included in the docs folder for posterity.

License

All code in this repository is licensed under the MIT License, save for protobuf_patch.py, which contains its own license.

Copyright 2019 Peter Sobot

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