rpptx-py

Native rpptx for Python

rpptx gives Python applications a native PPTX workflow for creating, opening, editing, and saving PowerPoint-compatible presentations. It also supports comments, speaker notes, and deterministic rendering. It works directly with OOXML packages and does not require Microsoft PowerPoint, LibreOffice, a conversion service, or a Java or .NET runtime.

The package uses the Rust rpptx presentation engine and ships with a default presentation template for from-scratch deck creation.

Installation

Install the current release from PyPI:

python -m pip install rpptx

rpptx requires CPython 3.9 or newer. Its platform wheels use the Python 3.9 stable ABI, so one wheel supports multiple compatible Python versions. Source installation requires a Rust toolchain and maturin.

Quick start

from rpptx import Presentation
from rpptx.util import Inches

presentation = Presentation()
slide = presentation.slides.add_slide(presentation.slide_layouts[6])
text_box = slide.shapes.add_textbox(
    Inches(1), Inches(1), Inches(8), Inches(1)
)
text_box.text = "Quarterly review"
presentation.save("review.pptx")

pdf = presentation.to_pdf()
with open("review.pdf", "wb") as output:
    output.write(pdf)

Capabilities

• File and byte-based PPTX input and output.
• Slide layouts, slides, placeholders, shapes, text frames, paragraphs, runs, pictures, preset shapes, and tables.
• Deterministic PDF and PNG output for slides and speaker notes.
• Speaker-note text plus modern comment authors, threads, replies, and ordered comment movement.
• Read speaker-note text and inspect or mutate modern comment threads.
• Python collections with negative indexes, slices, iteration, and explicit stale-handle errors after structural changes.

Use it when

Use rpptx when a Python service, desktop application, or automation task needs to create, inspect, update, comment on, or render presentations locally. It is suited to generated decks, template workflows, review, and previews.

Relationship

The Python API is intentionally focused. It covers the documented rpptx surface and the reviewed python-pptx Getting Started workflows, but it is not a drop-in replacement for every python-pptx method or private lxml object.

Example

Open and inspect an existing presentation:

from rpptx import Presentation

presentation = Presentation("deck.pptx")
print(len(presentation.slides))
png = presentation.render_slide_to_png(0)
for slide in presentation.slides:
    print(slide.notes_text or "")

Type checking

The distribution includes hand-written extension stubs and a py.typed marker. Editors and type checkers can inspect concrete presentation, slide, shape, text, table, notes, and comment types.

python -m pip install mypy
python -m mypy your_application.py

The release gate validates the installed package with strict mypy and stubtest in addition to its runtime suite.

Project links

• Source repository
• Issue tracker
• Changelog
• Binding specification

License

Licensed under either the MIT License or the Apache License 2.0, at your option.