Newsprint Manifesto Slides

Make argument decks for small groups, such as proposals to a fund, campaign briefs, zine or radio issue launches and programme pitches, in a cut-and-paste broadsheet look: cream newsprint pages that rotate with full ink and full accent spreads, a two-voice serif headline that recolours itself per surface, typewriter body copy, numbered tabs, taped polaroids, torn clippings, grid-paper notes and a ring stamp.

Newsprint Manifesto Slides

Bring the argument, the audience, the ask, the facts and figures to use exactly and the page count; your own photographs are optional. The Skill returns one offline HTML deck that edits in the browser and exports editable PowerPoint.

How it works

  1. Brief and sequence

    Your Agent asks for the topic, the audience, what should happen after the talk, the facts and numbers to use exactly and the page count, then gives every page one layout and picks one palette.

  2. Pictures and build

    Without your own photographs it lists the scenes in art.json and draws them with press-art.py. It writes plan.json and settings.json, then runs kit.py compose, apply-palette.py, make-deck.py and verify-deck.py to build one offline HTML file.

  3. Look and export

    It opens every page in a browser and checks wraps, overlaps and labels, tries edit, undo, save and present, then exports PowerPoint and runs verify-pptx.py against the deck.

Frequently asked questions

Is the PowerPoint really editable?

Yes. Headlines, tabs, lists, notes, cards, the stamp rings and rules are native text and shapes with speaker notes; each picture is its own image that stays upright and replaceable. There are no rendered layers and no full-slide pictures. The example decks have 115 and 100 text boxes.

Where do the pictures come from?

Your own photographs first; they sit upright in the slot without a torn mount. Otherwise the bundled press-art.py draws two-colour screen-print scenes with a halftone screen (crowds, duplicators, postered streets, paper stacks, stages, work tables), mounted, tilted and taped inside the picture. It uses only the Python standard library, calls no model or image service and is deterministic.

Which fonts does it use?

Newsreader for headlines and Courier Prime for body copy, both under the SIL Open Font License and embedded in the deck. Install both on the presenting machine for matching line breaks; headline weight 500 maps to the installed regular. Chinese, Japanese and Korean use the system face.

What are the known limits?

Grid-paper lines on notes are a picture under the note text and read slightly stronger in LibreOffice than in the browser. Long Chinese headlines break wherever the line ends, so a long cover title can leave one character on its own line unless you place a break.

What was tested?

Both example decks were built from a fresh unzip of the package. Every page was inspected in Chrome and in a LibreOffice render of the exported PowerPoint, 31 browser interaction checks passed on each deck, with 17 engine and 26 generator and palette error-path checks, and python-pptx edits survived save and reopen. PowerPoint, Keynote and WPS were not opened.