Source ledger

Research cutoff: 2026-07-24. Recheck live organizer, printer, package, and application guidance before production use.

This ledger records the upstream basis for skill behavior. It is not a poster's scientific bibliography.

Method: targeted parallel-cli search and parallel-cli extract queries restricted to the official domains cited below, followed by cross-checking canonical pages. Retrieval dates are stated where a page exposed no publication/update date.

Microsoft PowerPoint

Poster-specific product guidance

• Microsoft Create poster templates for PowerPoint (official Microsoft Create).
  • Describes editable PowerPoint poster/flyer templates and saving, printing, or sending the result as PDF.

Skill impact: confirms PowerPoint as a supported poster authoring format, but does not establish research-poster dimensions or printer requirements. This strict generator does not ingest downloaded templates or use the page's AI design features.

Slide dimensions and scaling

• Change the size of your PowerPoint slides (Microsoft Support; checked 2026-07-24; no publication date exposed).
  • Custom width/height each range from 1 to 56 inches.
  • Units can be inches, centimeters, or pixels; PowerPoint converts them.
  • All slides in a presentation have the same size.
  • Maximize can cause content not to fit; Ensure Fit can make content smaller.

Skill impact: enforce 1–56 inches, one slide, exact aspect ratio, explicit physical scale, and no reuse/resizing of existing content.

Export

• Export a presentation (Microsoft Support; checked 2026-07-24).
  • Standard is the option for publishing online and printing; Minimum size prioritizes a smaller file.

Skill impact: provide a manual export plan and require independent PDF/print checks. The scripts do not invoke Office or an alternative converter.

Accessibility

• Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible to people with disabilities (Microsoft Support; checked 2026-07-24).

  • Use Accessibility Checker and Reading Order pane.
  • Add alt text to visuals.
  • Do not use color alone.
  • Use sufficient text/background contrast.
  • Use meaningful hyperlink text.
  • Test with a screen reader.
  • Recommends 18 pt or larger for ordinary slides.

• Rules for the Accessibility Checker (Microsoft Support).

  • Includes missing alt text and logical reading order checks.

• PowerPoint PDF Accessibility (Microsoft Learn; last updated 2026-05-12).

  • Documents tagged-PDF behavior and applicable PowerPoint versions/channels.

Skill impact: automate only structural checks; require final Accessibility Checker, reading-order, screen-reader, and exported-PDF review. The 18 pt recommendation is identified as slide-specific, not a universal poster minimum.

Fonts, pictures, and media

• Benefits of embedding custom fonts (Microsoft Support; published 2026-05-04 in the extracted result).

  • Embedding can preserve layout, styling, and characters when a recipient lacks a font, but not all fonts permit embedding.
  • Embedding only used characters limits later editing; embedding all characters is the PowerPoint option intended for editing by others.

• Change the default resolution for inserting pictures in Office and Turn off picture compression (Microsoft Support; checked 2026-07-24).

  • Microsoft documents High fidelity/minimal compression and a per-document option not to compress images.

• Video and audio file formats supported in PowerPoint (Microsoft Support; checked 2026-07-24).

  • PowerPoint supports several audio/video formats and notes deprecations beginning in version 2505 for older formats.

Skill impact: the generator records font names but does not install or embed fonts; availability, embedding rights, substitution, and the exported PDF are checked manually. It accepts only fully decoded local PNG/JPEG still images, reports effective DPI, and excludes every audio/video or linked-media feature from its package profile.

Color API

• PowerPoint ColorFormat.RGB property (Microsoft Learn).

Skill impact: author opaque sRGB colors, label PowerPoint as an RGB workflow, and block claims of CMYK readiness until printer-approved conversion/proof.

File formats and macros

• File formats supported in PowerPoint (Microsoft Support).

  • Identifies .pptm as a VBA-containing macro-enabled presentation.

• Save a presentation that contains VBA macros (Microsoft Support).

  • Macro-bearing presentations require macro-enabled extensions such as .pptm.

Skill impact: accept/generate only .pptx, then inspect content types and package parts rather than trusting the extension alone.

Office Open XML and packaging

• ECMA-376 (Ecma International).

  • Defines Office Open XML vocabularies, document representation, and packaging.

• ISO/IEC 29500-2:2021 (ISO).

  • Defines Open Packaging Conventions for combining parts and relationships.

• Open XML SDK overview (Microsoft Learn).

  • Connects the SDK and file formats to ECMA-376 and ISO/IEC 29500.

• IOpcRelationship::GetTargetMode (Microsoft Learn).

  • Distinguishes internal package-part targets from external targets.

• PowerPoint .pptx extensions to Office Open XML (Microsoft Open Specifications; published protocol revision shown as 2024-08-20 during research).

• PresentationML OLE Object (Microsoft Learn / ISO schema remarks).

  • OLE objects can contain embedded or linked objects/controls.

• Presentation NonVisualDrawingProperties (Microsoft Learn / ISO schema remarks).

  • p:cNvPr stores nonvisual properties including the drawing description used for picture alt text.

Skill impact: bounded ZIP/XML inspection, relationship target/mode checks, rejection of embedded/active/external content, and standard alt-description markup.

Python package APIs and versions

python-pptx

• python-pptx on PyPI

  • Current stable at cutoff: 1.0.2, released 2024-08-07.
  • Requires Python 3.8 or later.
  • Described as creating, reading, and updating PowerPoint 2007+ .pptx files.

• python-pptx v1.0.2 repository tag (official GitHub repository).

  • GitHub had tags through v1.0.2; the GitHub Releases list returned no published releases during the 2026-07-23 check. PyPI release history is therefore the version authority used here.

• Presentation API

  • Presentation(), save, slide_width, and slide_height; dimensions are EMU.

• Shapes API

  • add_textbox, add_picture, and explicit shape position/size.

• Text API

  • Font sizes and text-frame behavior.

Skill impact: exact pin python-pptx==1.0.2; use only documented creation, slide, shape, text, color, and core-property APIs. Alt descriptions are added afterward using standard PresentationML because the public python-pptx API does not expose a complete poster accessibility workflow.

Pillow

• Pillow on PyPI

  • Current stable at cutoff: 12.3.0, released 2026-07-01.
  • Requires Python 3.10 or later.

• Pillow documentation (documentation identified itself as 12.3.0 at cutoff).

Skill impact: exact pin Pillow==12.3.0; bounded verification of local PNG/JPEG dimensions, mode, frames, and effective DPI. Heavy imports remain lazy so every CLI's help works without optional packages.

lxml

• lxml on PyPI
  • Current stable at cutoff: 6.1.1, released 2026-05-18.
  • Requires Python 3.8 or later.
  • The 6.1.1 release includes security-related fixes in bundled XML/XSLT libraries.

Skill impact: exact transitive pin lxml==6.1.1 for python-pptx generation. The dependency-free inspector still uses bounded standard-library XML parsing and rejects DTD/entity declarations before parsing.

Accessibility standards

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 (W3C Recommendation, 2024-12-12).
  • SC 1.4.1: do not use color as the only visual means of conveying information.
  • SC 1.4.3: 4.5:1 for normal text; 3:1 for large text.
  • Large text: at least 18 pt, or at least 14 pt and bold.
  • SC 1.4.11: 3:1 for graphical parts required to understand content.

Skill impact: exact sRGB contrast calculations with usage-specific thresholds and mandatory redundant encoding. WCAG is used as a declared design target; no claim is made that a physical poster or PPTX is a conforming web page.

Palette authorities

• ColorBrewer 2 (Penn State/Cynthia Brewer project).

  • Distinguishes qualitative, sequential, and diverging schemes.
  • Offers colorblind-safe, print-friendly, and photocopy-safe filters.

• Paul Tol, Colour Schemes, issue 3.2 (SRON/EPS/TN/09-002, 2021-08-18).

  • Documents clear colour schemes intended to work for colour-blind readers and gives scheme-specific values/order.

Skill impact: explain scheme selection and caveats. No bundled palette is represented as universally accessible; rendered contrast and redundant encoding remain required.

Conference examples — not universal rules

• CSCW 2026 posters (official event page checked 2026-07-24; its explicit 2026 important dates include a 2026-07-10 camera-ready deadline).

  • Allocated 48 × 48 inches; recommended no side over 45 inches, allowed up to 47 inches; stated A0 or A1 could be acceptable.

• IEEE DSC 2025 poster instructions (official organizer page).

  • Required the physical poster to fit A1 space: 84.1 × 59.4 cm.

Skill impact: use these only to demonstrate variation. The validator requires the actual event's confirmed rule and exact source ID.

Secure standard-library APIs

• Python zipfile
• Python xml.etree.ElementTree
• Python json

Skill impact: no archive extraction; strict duplicate/non-finite JSON handling; bounded XML parts; DTD/entity rejection; no network, shell invocation, dynamic code execution, or arbitrary object deserialization.