A command line utility to generate fancier underlines for Apple Keynote

by iOS Example

Elegant Underline for Keynote

A command line utility to generate fancier underlines for Apple Keynote. This tool can be invoked in two different ways: in standalone mode, or in Keynote mode.

Operating modes

In standalone mode, the tool will generate a PDF in the current directory. That PDF contains an underline computed for the specified text, font, and font size, which can be dragged and dropped directly into Keynote and positioned under the appropriate text element.

In Keynote mode, the tool requires Keynote to be open and on the desired slide. The tool will select the first text item on the slide, and generate an underline that matches its text content, font, and font size.

Keynote mode

elegant-underline [style] [color]

  • style: must be jagged or elegant, specifies the style of underline
  • color: an sRGB color in hex form without any prefix (e.g. FF00FF)

Note This tool tries to automatically place the generated underline on your slide, but it is only an approximation. It works best when the text item box is tight around the text, and text is left and top aligned.

Standalone mode

elegant-underline [style] [color] [font name] [size in points] [text]

  • style: must be jagged or elegant, specifies the style of underline
  • color: an sRGB color in hex form without any prefix (e.g. FF00FF)
  • font name: the PostScript font name, for instance Baskerville-Bold or Helvetica
  • size in points: the size of text element in points, as specified in Keynote
  • text: the text content string to underline

Styles

elegant-underline supports two underline styles, jagged and elegant.

Jagged

This style can be used to replicate the jagged underline style seen in programming IDEs. It is particularly useful when presenting code in a slide:

Elegant

This style produces an underline that never crosses any descenders, avoiding the visual clutter caused for instance when underlining text content with letters such as “p” or “g”.

Warning This feature is not yet available, but will be after macOS 13.0 is released.

License

This repository is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.

GitHub

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