Fellow Monks,

I seek PowerPoint/Win32/Linux enlightenment (not the X WM...).
Help me, O Wise Ones!

This is a challenge with which I will have to deal in the next couple of months. I'd like to get some ideas and feedback before I get started so that I can plan it well.

Scenario:
Manipulation of MS PowerPoint files from a Linux server.

Environment:
RH Linux 6.1 connected to Internet via cable modem
Win95 routed to outside using ip_masquerading / the Linux box as a router


The Challenges:
1) Retrieve PowerPoint file from remote site.
- At this point, I am not sure if I will be able to use FTP or not. How do I retrieve a PPT file from a remote site? (I have permission to do so.)

2) Be able to manipulate all text in the PPT file.
- This is for a translation project, so I need to get the text and compare it to a dictionary file, etc. I can do this with plain text files, but does anyone know how to do this with PPT? I assume there must be some way to do it with Win32, perhaps by using the 'Save As HTML' feature and then parsing the HTML? A more direct way would be preferred, of course...

3) Allow remote user to be able to use the script
- I will also want a remote user to be able to call the script, have the script get the file, parse the contents, and display a custom lexicon/dictionary for that PPT file. I have no problem building displaying the custom lexicon. My problem is that the remote user can only see the Linux box, not the Win95 box, due to the ip_masquerading setup. So the script has to either A) run on the Linux box, or B) be called on the Win95 box from the Linux box and return results to the user somehow from there. Since I assume that the program will have to use Win32 to manipulate the PPT file, I assume that something like B) would be in order.

Thanks in advance for any help/input into any area of this challenge!

gM

In reply to PowerPoint, Linux/Win32 by GridMonk

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