update: They fixed the bug in 9.0.1, so we don't need this script any more, but I'll leave it as a starting point for how to crack open the contents of a Keynote document.

---

I dutifully upgraded to iWork '09 which contains an upgraded version of Keynote. Much to my dismay, there's a critical bug in this first release: when the outline mode left column is resized before saving the keynote document, upon restoration the left column is not resized properly, often hiding the scroll handle and scrollbars!

But, I recalled that a keynote document is nothing more than a zip archive around a bunch of files, one of which is a giant XML file containing most of the base content. After a half hour of experimenting, I figured out that the difference between a broken save and a good save was the presence of a single XML element. So I wrote a quick script to remove the XML element, and rebuild the zip archive:

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
$|++;

use Cwd qw(abs_path);
use File::Temp qw(tempdir);

@ARGV = map abs_path($_), @ARGV
  or die "$0: please give keynote zip names on command line";

while (@ARGV) {
  my $key = shift;
  -e $key or die "$key not found";

  my $tempdir = tempdir( CLEANUP => 1 );
  chdir $tempdir or die "cannot cd $tempdir: $!";

  system "unzip", $key;

  my $flag = 0;
  {
    local @ARGV = "index.apxl";
    local $^I = "~";
    while (<>) {
      s#(<key:BGShowUIStateOutlineWidth>.*?</key:BGShowUIStateOutlineW
+idth>)##
        and $flag = 1 and warn "removed $1";
      print;
    }
  }
  (warn "no changes made, skipping\n"), next unless $flag;
  my $old_key = $key;
  $old_key =~ s/\.key$/ OLD.key/ or $old_key .= "-OLD";
  (warn "unsafe to mv $key $old_key, skipping\n"), next if -e $old_key
+;
  rename $key, $old_key or die "cannot mv $key $old_key: $!";
  system "zip", "-r", $key, '.';
}
[download]

Now, I can get on with my Keynote development, just remembering to run this script once to start a new editing session. I just pop open a local Terminal window, type "fix-keynote-outline" followed by a space, then drag the keynote file into the Terminal window, which automatically pastes the full unix path. I press return, and within a few seconds, a new keynote file appears with the outline mode restored.