extract text from powerpoint

fionbarr has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: extract text from powerpoint by marto (Cardinal) on Jan 05, 2010 at 15:04 UTC
You may be able to use OpenOffice Impress and OpenOffice::UNO, though you'd need to do some further research. Martin	[reply]
Re^2: extract text from powerpoint by fionbarr (Friar) on Jan 05, 2010 at 16:31 UTC
thank you...I hadn't seen that reference though I have seen mention of using OO Impress to save the file as a DOC file and then look at that.	[reply]
Re^3: extract text from powerpoint by marto (Cardinal) on Jan 05, 2010 at 16:58 UTC
Well that's one approach. If I had to do this task I'd probably try using OpenOffice::UNO to automate the presentation opening, text selection and extract rather than save to another file format for parsing/extracting. Let us know how you get on. Martin	[reply]
Re: extract text from powerpoint by LTjake (Prior) on Jan 06, 2010 at 13:48 UTC
At $work we've installed the catdoc package (`sudo apt-get install catdoc` on ubuntu) which provides a few binary tools: catdoc - extract text from word docs catppt - extract text from powerpoint presentations These have worked well in the absence of any pure-perl libraries. HTH. -- "Go up to the next female stranger you see and tell her that her "body is a wonderland." My hypothesis is that she’ll be too busy laughing at you to even bother slapping you." (src)	[reply] [d/l]