Aspose.Slides.Cpp.FOSS 26.9.0

Aspose.Slides FOSS for C++

A free, MIT-licensed C++ library for creating, reading and editing PowerPoint .pptx presentations. It builds the Office Open XML package itself, so it needs no PowerPoint installation, no COM interop and no proprietary runtime.

Everything below is verified by opening the file it produced and asserting on the XML inside — never by asking the library to read its own output back.

Product page | Source | Issues | Free support

Install

In the Visual Studio Package Manager Console:

Install-Package Aspose.Slides.Cpp.FOSS

There is no dotnet add package for a C++ project: this is a native package, and it is consumed by a .vcxproj through NuGet's own import. Installing it adds the include directory and the libraries to your project; nothing else is needed.

What is in the package

pugixml is part of the interface, not an implementation detail. 44 of the headers you include also include <pugixml.hpp>, so its headers ship in this package and are on your include path. That is why the package carries three libraries rather than one.

Set your project's C++ Language Standard to stdcpp20 or later. If you leave it at the default, compilation fails inside these headers, which looks like a fault in the library and is not.

Visual Studio 2022 or newer is a hard requirement, not a recommendation. These are static libraries, compiled against a particular MSVC standard library, and part of that library is itself compiled rather than header-only. An older toolset links against an older standard library that does not contain the symbols these objects reference, and the link fails with LNK2019 naming something like __std_find_first_not_of_trivial_pos_1 — an error that points at the standard library and not at this package. The package checks your toolset and says so plainly instead.

For Linux and macOS, build from source or use the vcpkg port or the Conan recipe — see the repository.

Quick start

#include <Aspose/Slides/Foss/auto_shape.h>
#include <Aspose/Slides/Foss/export/save_format.h>
#include <Aspose/Slides/Foss/presentation.h>
#include <Aspose/Slides/Foss/shape_collection.h>
#include <Aspose/Slides/Foss/shape_type.h>
#include <Aspose/Slides/Foss/slide.h>
#include <Aspose/Slides/Foss/text_frame.h>

int main() {
    Aspose::Slides::Foss::Presentation presentation;

    auto& shape = presentation.slides()[0].shapes().add_auto_shape(
        Aspose::Slides::Foss::ShapeType::RECTANGLE, 50, 50, 400, 100);
    shape.add_text_frame("Hello from Aspose.Slides FOSS");

    presentation.save("hello.pptx", Aspose::Slides::Foss::SaveFormat::PPTX);
}

presentation.h forward-declares the types its collections return, so a program that reaches through slides()[0].shapes() includes slide.h and shape_collection.h as well. That is deliberate: the headers are C++20 and including one does not drag in the rest.

What it does

• Presentations — create, open a file, save to a file.
• Slides — add, insert, remove, clone, hide. Sections, including reordering slides with them.
• Masters and layouts — enumerate them, and clone a master.
• Shapes — AutoShapes, connectors bound by connection site, tables with cell merging, picture frames.
• Text — text frames, paragraphs and portions; character and paragraph formatting; bullets.
• Appearance — solid, gradient, pattern and picture fills; full line formatting; all eight visual effects; 3-D formatting with camera and light rig.
• Pictures — added from a std::span<const std::uint8_t>.
• Notes and comments — speaker notes, and comments with their authors and threading.
• Document properties — core, extended and custom.
• Round-trip — parts the library does not model are preserved verbatim.

What it does not do

Stated plainly, because a library that fails silently is worse than one that says no.

• No rendering or conversion of any kind. No PDF, image, HTML or SVG export. save() writes the six Office Open XML presentation formats and throws std::invalid_argument for every other SaveFormat value, naming the six that work.
• No charts, SmartArt, OLE objects, animations, slide transitions, group shapes, hyperlinks, slide backgrounds or themes.
• No API for the slide size — a new presentation is 4:3 and cannot be changed.
• No saving to a stream, and no adding an image from a path or a stream — the only overload takes a byte span.
• No encryption, protection, digital signatures, VBA macros or mathematical text.
• slides().add_clone() writes the shape but not its text, and masters().add_clone() does not reach the file.

When you want the commercial product

This is not a drop-in replacement for Aspose.Slides for C++ and is not trying to be. If you need PDF or image rendering, charts, animations, the other presentation formats, or a support commitment, that is the product to use. If you need to build and read .pptx packages under a permissive licence, this one is complete for that.

Licence and support

MIT. The full text is packed alongside this file, with the third-party notices for pugixml and miniz.

Questions and bug reports are welcome on the issue tracker or on the free support forum. A report that names the version and attaches the file PowerPoint would not open is one that can be acted on.