However, it might be worth mentioning that, when analysing a
complex slide, the biggest delay in your repeat loop is caused by
the number of external calls to PowerPoint. If the slide contains
(say) 50 elements, then that's how many calls are made to get each
individual shape.
It can be significantly faster to get all the comparison values in
one hit, and then iterate through the list in AppleScript. With a
busy slide, the following variation executes here some 3-4 times
faster than the original. (While the code could be optimised
further, the additional gains are not nearly as significant.)
[sniped code]
Testing in Script Editor, your version seems much much faster,
however testing in my real setup, a Cocoa application, iterating the
shapes is much faster in the common case than getting placeholder
types of all the shapes and iterating on the types as you suggest.
I compared these scripts:
-- Script 1 (based on Kay code)
tell application "Microsoft PowerPoint"
tell active presentation to set currentSlide to slide ¬
(current show position of its slide show window's slide show view)
set titleTypes to {placeholder type title placeholder, ¬
placeholder type center title placeholder, ¬
placeholder type vertical title placeholder}
-- 98% of time is spent here
set types to placeholder type of currentSlide's place holders
repeat with i from 1 to count types
set aType to item i of types
-- It is faster the check for missing value then to search in the
list of title types
if aType is not missing value and aType is in titleTypes then
return content of text range of text frame of shape i of currentSlide
end repeat
tell active presentation to set currentSlide to slide ¬
(current show position of its slide show window's slide show view)
set titleTypes to {placeholder type title placeholder, ¬
placeholder type center title placeholder, ¬
placeholder type vertical title placeholder}
repeat with i from 1 to count shapes of currentSlide
set currentShape to shape i of currentSlide
set aType to placeholder type of currentShape
if aType is not missing value and aType is in titleTypes then
return content of text range of text frame of currentShape
end repeat
return ""
end tell
These script test where the time is spent in Kay version:
-- Script 3
tell application "Microsoft PowerPoint"
tell active presentation to set currentSlide to slide ¬
(current show position of its slide show window's slide show view)
set types to placeholder type of currentSlide's place holders
end tell
-- Script 4
tell application "Microsoft PowerPoint"
tell active presentation to set currentSlide to slide ¬
(current show position of its slide show window's slide show view)
end tell
All scripts saved as compiled scripts.
I run the script from a Foundation tool periodically. I attached the
test tool - i guess it can be useful for others. Run it from the
command line with the path of the script.
I tested a presentation with 2 slides, both containing 65 shapes. The
first one is a test for the best case, when the title is the first
shape. The second, the worst case, when the title is the last shape.
I restarted PowerPoint before each test because if timings tends to
increase over time.
Tests 3 and 4 show that "set types to placeholder type of
currentSlide's place holders" is very expensive.
I assume that in the common case, the title shape is the first one,
because when users add shapes, they are added above (after) the
placeholders. In this case, the "slower" script is about 19x faster.
