html2deck

What it does

Given an HTML page, html2deck renders it in headless Chromium at exactly 1280x720 (16:9), walks the page's top-level "units" (each --unit-selector match), projects a slide face (visual-first; excess prose → speaker notes), and decides — per unit — whether it fits on one slide or must be split. It then writes one PNG per slide, a contact sheet for approval, and finally a .pptx and .pdf.

Fixed title bar (PowerPoint-master style)

The heading is pulled OUT of the flowing content into a pinned top zone — same Y and same font size on EVERY content slide, like a PowerPoint master. Only the content below it (figure / table / lead) is scaled to fit; the title never moves or resizes from slide to slide. On a split unit the N / M part label sits top-right of that title bar.

Fit equation (hard — never overflow):

[ s_{\mathrm{fit}}=\min!\Big(1,\ \tfrac{H_c}{h},\ \tfrac{W_c}{w}\Big),\quad s=\begin{cases} s_{\mathrm{fit}} & h>H_c\ \min(s_{\max},,0.72,H_c/h) & \text{visual, under-filled}\ 1 & \text{otherwise} \end{cases} ]

Readability floors (0.90 / 0.80) decide whether to split, never whether to spill. Content is clipped in #__fit under the title; the title zone is z-stacked with an opaque background so transforms cannot paint over it. Content stays top-aligned under the title.

Title page exception: the first unit's first slide uses a PowerPoint title layout — title + optional lead stacked and centered on the full canvas (no pinned title bar). Never a graphic, table, card, or figure on a title page. If the opener needs a visual, the title page stays text-only and the visual lands on the next slide (master title bar), or under the next section header. The same title-page layout may be reused as a section header before a graphic-heavy unit — title alone (or title + one lead), then the chart/table.

Layout contract: best-fit equation

The height budget alone prevents overflow. Composition fit prevents awkward slides (sparse, text-walled, or chart-crushed-by-prose).

Canvas (fixed)

Measure

For a candidate packing (B) (blocks on one slide face):

[ \begin{aligned} h &= \mathrm{measure}(B) \ s &= \mathrm{clamp}(H_c / h,\ s_{min},\ 1) \ \phi &= (s \cdot h) / H_c \ V &= h_{\mathrm{visual}} / h \ \tau &= 1 - V \end{aligned} ]

Hard constraints (must pass)

If hard constraints fail → evict prose to notes and/or split again. Do not ship a slide that only passes by (s < 0.90) when it still has multiple blocks.

Soft score (pick among valid packings)

[ \mathrm{score}(B) = \mathbf{1}[s=1]

• e^{-(\phi-0.72)^2 / (2 \cdot 0.12^2)}
• 0.5,V

• \mathrm{prose_words}/40 ]

Maximize score; tie-break with the linear-partition DP (minimize tallest part, then fewer slides). Sweet-spot fill is ~72% of Hc at scale 1.0.

Recipe budgets (allowed shapes)

Anything outside these bands is rewritten (strip) or split — not scaled into place.

Face rules (strip-to-notes, default on)

Source HTML may stay long-form for the web page. The deck path is a projection.

Default mode enforces these rules (strip automatically; full prose lands in notes_text). --keep-source skips projection and only warns (debug the HTML).

After eviction, a slide whose face still exceeds ~60 words is flagged text_heavy as a residual sanity check. Contact sheet / report mark slides that had content stripped (stripped: true).

The principle: measure, project, then split

1. Measure. Each unit is rendered alone and its true (unclipped) height is read from the DOM after fonts and images have loaded.
2. Project face. Classify blocks (visual / table / caption / lead / prose / list / callout); apply face rules; excess → speaker notes.
3. Fit-or-split. A projected unit within ~10% of the content budget stays whole. A genuinely taller unit is split.
4. Split at safe boundaries, balanced. Parts are cut only at child boundaries. Part count is amortized — a unit ~2x the budget makes 2 parts, not 3 — and blocks are distributed to minimize the tallest part (linear- partition DP), preferring higher composition score. The heading rides on every part.
5. Never orphan a figure. A figure (svg/img/figure/.fig) is welded to an adjacent caption or bignums row and treated as one atomic block.
6. Scale only as last resort. Prefer strip/split. Scale floor for ordinary packings is 0.90; a single atomic overflow may go to 0.80 rather than clip unreadably.

What the contact sheet shows is what the .pptx contains — the same measuring code feeds both.

Usage

# 1. slice: measure + project face + decide + render slide PNGs + slice-report.json
python3 slice.py <src.html> --unit-selector section [--theme light|dark]
# debug without stripping prose off the face:
python3 slice.py <src.html> --keep-source

# 2. approve: open the contact sheet (thumbnail grid) a human can eyeball
python3 contact_sheet.py _out            # writes _out/contact-sheet.html

# 3. build: assemble the approved slides
python3 build.py _out --pptx --pdf       # writes _out/deck.pptx and _out/deck.pdf

Every run always writes _out/slides/*.png, _out/slice-report.json, and (after step 2) _out/contact-sheet.html.

--theme light|dark (default light)

The page already reads data-theme on its root, so before rendering, slice.py stamps document.documentElement.setAttribute('data-theme', theme) and every slide inherits the page's own light or dark tokens. Interim (stopgap): under --theme dark, any chart that is still a baked light-background image is wrapped in a soft neutral figure-plate card (rounded, subtle border) so it reads as an intentional inset rather than a raw white rectangle. This goes away once charts render natively from a dark palette; it is not the end state.

Source types and the right --unit-selector

Pick the selector that matches the page's natural slide boundaries. If the page has no sections, add them (or select on headings) so each match is one topic.

Readability guarantees (enforced by tests)

tests/test_slice.py asserts, on a real render:

• every slide PNG is exactly 2560x1440 (16:9 at 2x device scale);
• every slide carries a title;
• a unit marked fits=True is never split;
• all parts of a split unit share one title and carry sequential 1/N … N/N labels;
• the total slide count stays in a sane, measure-driven band;
• a figure is never separated from its bignums, and the block partitioner produces exactly N contiguous, balanced parts;
• the title bar sits at an identical Y and height on every slide (master-style);
• --theme dark visibly darkens the rendered slide background vs light;
• face projection moves >2-sentence / >40-word prose blocks off the face into notes (unless --keep-source);
• a residual text-heavy face (>60 words after projection) is flagged;
• a text-only slide is top-aligned while a slide with a visual stays centered;
• the title page (first unit, first slide) is centered like a PowerPoint title slide (no pinned title bar).

Build notes

build.py sets each slide's real title (in the outline / accessibility tree) and puts the unit's prose (plus any face-stripped text) in the speaker notes. Slides are image-per-slide today. TODO: native editable text boxes/shapes later.

External visual grader

grade_slides.py sends every slide PNG to Gemini (not the authoring model) with a paid-PPT rubric and writes _out/grade-report.json. Target is every slide ≥ 9. Re-run after each slicer change:

HTML2DECK_GRADER_MODEL=gemini-3.1-pro-preview python3 grade_slides.py _out-current

Screenshot-of-webpage decks typically ceiling in the mid-6s to high-7s until charts/cards are laid out in a deck-native template (SVG text size and card chrome are baked into the source HTML).

Related

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