4 ms·

Didn't use AI for it, but had similar request for our team and we found it easier to build a tool that checks against our defined style-guide and auto-fixes wha

by csydas 1mo ago

Didn't use AI for it, but had similar request for our team and we found it easier to build a tool that checks against our defined style-guide and auto-fixes what it can as opposed to generating and reporting on other violations of style guide. The idea was similar to latex, don't think about design while creating and let the tool flag / enforce the style-guide and design, and reviewers don't need to focus so much on what's wrong with slides and can pretty much focus on content We use a simple PowerShell script to run the check (you can interact with any office doc as a ComApplication object) and it took only a few hours of digging through the properties / MS docs to get what we needed.

gomoboo 1mo ago
How do you check style via PowerShell? You’ve pulled me in.
- csydas 1mo ago
  As in how to interact with office docs programmatically? It's in the second text blurb, you can make a new COM object. For example new Excel Workbook: $excel = New-Object -ComObject excel.application From there you have full access to all parts of the document as properties & can call whatever methods are available to edit the document. As for how we enforce style guide on a presentation, each slide runs through a workflow checking the various style-guide rules that we have / corporate has - Ensure correct template is used - Set and enforce correct font - Check text boxes for font size to check verbosity / readability - Flag / remove animations (not accessible) - Flag images without alt-text and so on for a 300 slide new release presentation, it takes about 45 seconds for the script to process and auto-fixes what makes sense to auto-fix (e.g., wrong fonts) and adds comments / generates report on what needs to be reviewed and adjusted
eek2121 1mo ago
This takes me back. I had to do something similar, but in ASP (Classic), with .ppt files, and with dynamic data that was modifiable by the user. Quite an interesting rabbit hole. I eventually was able to build a solution using some COM components and custom code. I miss those days, simpler, more fun times. I was given a problem and asked to solve it. No pressure on hours or anything else. (I did get it done relatively fast...a couple weeks I think). We didn't have SCRUM or sprints or anything, and we only had to give rough estimates for deliverables. The problems were interesting, and there was always a challenge. My how times have changed.

by csydas 1mo ago

gomoboo 1mo ago

How do you check style via PowerShell? You’ve pulled me in.

csydas 1mo ago
As in how to interact with office docs programmatically? It's in the second text blurb, you can make a new COM object. For example new Excel Workbook: $excel = New-Object -ComObject excel.application From there you have full access to all parts of the document as properties & can call whatever methods are available to edit the document. As for how we enforce style guide on a presentation, each slide runs through a workflow checking the various style-guide rules that we have / corporate has - Ensure correct template is used - Set and enforce correct font - Check text boxes for font size to check verbosity / readability - Flag / remove animations (not accessible) - Flag images without alt-text and so on for a 300 slide new release presentation, it takes about 45 seconds for the script to process and auto-fixes what makes sense to auto-fix (e.g., wrong fonts) and adds comments / generates report on what needs to be reviewed and adjusted

eek2121 1mo ago

This takes me back. I had to do something similar, but in ASP (Classic), with .ppt files, and with dynamic data that was modifiable by the user. Quite an interesting rabbit hole. I eventually was able to build a solution using some COM components and custom code. I miss those days, simpler, more fun times. I was given a problem and asked to solve it. No pressure on hours or anything else. (I did get it done relatively fast...a couple weeks I think). We didn't have SCRUM or sprints or anything, and we only had to give rough estimates for deliverables. The problems were interesting, and there was always a challenge. My how times have changed.