My md2pptx code creates slides using python-pptx. It sometimes ignores shapes on a page it doesn't need.
In Powerpoint Slide Show these empty shapes don't appear. In LibreOffice they seem to.
I'm pretty adept at manipulating the underlying XML for a slide.
Is it feasible to remove empty shapes - perhaps by deleting their XML elements? Or does python-pptx itself offer the capability to delete a shape? (I think not.)
Assume I can navigate to the shapes and figure out which ones are empty.
Note: I'm not aiming to delete whole slides, just empty shapes.
Deleting a "stand-alone" shape is reliable and pretty easy, something like:
sp = shape._element
sp.getparent().remove(sp)
The problem comes in where the shape has a relationship to some other "package part". For example, a Picture shape has a relationship (identified with an rId) to an image part (file) in the package (.pptx zip archive). In those cases, if you don't also properly deal with the relationship, you may get a "repair error" when you try to open the resulting file in PowerPoint.
A "regular" shape (so-called "auto-shape") such as a rectangle, text-box, line, or other geometric shape has no relationships and can be reliably deleted with this method. A table is probably safe too, but not a chart. A group shape is probably okay too, but only if it does not contain a picture or a chart. Both a picture and a chart may be a problem if you don't also remove their relationship.
Whether or not a repair error is triggered is a behavior that may differ between PowerPoint and LibreOffice (or other PPTX client). You can try just deleting a picture or chart shape without dealing with the relationship and see what happens, but to be reliable you'd need to test it with all the possible clients.
Removing a relationship is a little more involved and is either covered in another python-pptx question here on SO or would make a good new question.