Archi view to PowerPoint experiments

[yveszoundi]

This is a follow-up of the Humane image scripts thread.

Per previous notes from JB, it is nice to have diagrams in PowerPoint decks that others can finish off to their liking (audience or specific message to convey).

My general struggles
While making diagrams look less technical (via Humane image archi scripts) "works" reasonably well in my environment, there are still challenges. I've noticed that my diagrams mostly get reused by others when they're in PowerPoint format (adding legends, titles or simplifying diagrams helps but has little impact).

• Creating manually "polished" diagrams in PowerPoint is time-consuming (costs/benefits).
• Dealing with shape connectors, placement/size of boxes and labels is a chore.

The experiment: How it works

• With auxiliary scripts from my "Humage image archi scripts library", I generate a "canonical model" in JSON format.
• I then process the JSON via a small Java application to generate a PowerPoint deck (scale the diagram to fit on the "content placeholder" on a slide).
• This leverages Apache POI to create the deck and draw shapes/connectors.

The experiment: How it looks

• Notes
• The prototype itself is a bit old and uses few constants for font size and other settings, instead of properly extracting it from the archi model.
• There are sometimes issues with connections or label placement (bendpoints, java vs. native font rendering to size boxes, etc.).
• Future plans: Improve my humane images script to include a view-to-ppt functionality.