8.0 KiB
8.0 KiB
WordCraft roadmap: milestones and what's next
Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-11 · Change: minor (Polish interface and Polish proofing; previously trivial: M7: formatting revisions landed, #41; previously trivial: M5: Draw Table and Eraser landed, #303; previously minor: beta distance restated: ~15 points, ~150–230 h; previously: alpha gate checked: six core workflows pass; previously major: milestones moved here from ROADMAP.md; Current focus set from the re-measured gaps) · Target: Microsoft Word (Microsoft 365) for Mac 16.113.4
Forward-looking plan. The summary is ROADMAP.md; the ranked work list is
gaps.md; the numbers are in target-app-parity.md. Hours are
Opus 5.5 agent wall-clock.
Current focus (toward beta, ~150–230 h)
- Merge or close the ~45 open PRs before starting overlapping work: many close catalog gaps (Clipboard pane #264, Manage Styles #270, Group #267), fix field bugs (Hebrew RTL #20, IME fixes #155–#164) or add languages (nb, nn, he). Owner review needed.
- DOCX real-world corpus (gap #1, 30–50 h): collect openly licensed real-world .docx files, open/render/round-trip them, compare with Word locally, fix what breaks. Omitted/empty paragraph defaults now have synthetic save/reopen coverage; the corpus gate remains open.
- Preserve what we can't render (gap #2, 10–15 h): remaining native ink forms and unsupported graphics survive a round trip. Drawing-level native ink now keeps its InkML and optional picture fallback alongside chart, SmartArt, OLE and drawing-canvas support.
- Stability sweep (gap #3, 20–30 h): the open crash, hang and write-failure issues, plus an autosave/recovery soak test.
- Pagination fidelity (gap #4, 30–50 h): column balancing, footnote continuation, compat options, a local page-by-page comparison harness; an owner decision on an Aptos-metric font.
- Formatting revisions and content controls (gap #5, 12–18 h), native printing (gap #6, 6–10 h), dialog depth (gap #7, 20–30 h).
Alpha gate (core workflows)
The core-workflow gate from the craftrules progress-docs standard: what a typical Word user does every day, checked end to end on the main platform (macOS desktop), including save and reopen. "Partial" here means rough but not blocking: the workflow completes.
| Core workflow | Works end to end? | Evidence | Hours to pass |
|---|---|---|---|
| Write and format a document: type, fonts, paragraph formatting, styles, lists, undo, find/replace; save as .docx and reopen | yes | 422 commands, typing parity pinned by tests_typing.rs, DOCX round-trip tests (crates/docx/tests/roundtrip.rs) |
0 |
| Open a .docx someone sent, edit it, send back a .docx Word opens | partial (not blocking) | Word opens our files; typical text/table/picture documents work; never tested on a real-world corpus; charts, SmartArt and OLE dropped silently, move tracking lost (gaps #1, #2, #5) | 0 (beta work: 50–80) |
| Build a structured document: tables, pictures, headers/footers, page numbers, sections, columns | yes | Tables with row splitting and floating tables (#137), floating pictures (#136), first/odd/even headers; columns don't balance (gap #4) | 0 |
| Review with others: comments, track changes, accept/reject, compare | yes | Margin balloons, tracked insert/delete incl. paragraph marks (#125, #244), formatting revisions (#41), compare | 0 |
| References for reports and papers: TOC, footnotes, citations and bibliography, captions | yes | Updatable TOC field (#52), notes, APA/MLA/Chicago/IEEE, Zotero (#189); long footnotes don't continue (gap #4) | 0 |
| Share or print: export PDF, print | partial (not blocking) | PDF export solid (krilla); desktop printing goes through a PDF, no native print dialog (gap #6) | 0 (beta work: 6–10) |
Result: passes. Every core workflow completes on macOS and the work saves and reopens; the partial rows are fidelity gaps (beta work), not broken workflows. WordCraft stays alpha.
Milestones
| # | Milestone | State | Remaining |
|---|---|---|---|
| M0 | Skeleton and vertical slice (model, layout, render, engine, Word-style UI, CLI, MCP, web) | done | — |
| M1 | DOCX I/O | done (first version); real-world corpus not started; charts/SmartArt/OLE dropped | 45–75 h |
| M2 | Home tab | done except Paste Special, Clipboard pane, Style Inspector, Manage Styles, Asian typography (PRs open for four) | 5–10 h |
| M3 | Insert tab | mostly done; equations done (#191), icons done (#309); charts, SmartArt, 3D, screenshot, online media missing | 50–80 h |
| M4 | Layout and Design tabs | done except column balancing, group | 6–10 h |
| M5 | Tables | done (row splitting, floating tables, style formatting); custom table styles (#256); Draw Table and Eraser (#303) | 6–10 h |
| M6 | References | first version done (TOC fields, cross-references, Zotero); footnote continuation missing; all 12 bibliography styles (#383) | 15–25 h |
| M7 | Review | done (balloons, paragraph-mark revisions, formatting revisions #41); move tracking, multilingual proofing missing | 35–60 h |
| M8 | View | mostly done; window commands missing | 3–5 h |
| M9 | Mailings | done (first version); Excel/Outlook data sources and email merge missing | 6–10 h |
| M10 | File/Backstage | mostly done; native printing, Options depth missing | 12–20 h |
| M11 | Draw and objects | text wrap, text boxes, canvas handles, rotation (#332), ink pens and eraser (#307), contour wrap (#354), lasso, Add Pen, Ink to Shape and Ink Replay (#395) done; Ink to Math, grouping missing | 35–55 h |
| M12 | Formats breadth (PDF, ODT, RTF, HTML, MD, TXT, LaTeX, .doc import) |
done (first versions); .doc write, encryption, minor formats missing |
60–100 h |
| M13 | Performance budgets | on track (1.4 ms relayout); large real-world documents unmeasured | 10–20 h |
| M14 | 1.0 polish, packaging, signing | releases v0.1.0–v0.4.0 published (signed macOS, Windows MSI x64/x86/arm64, Linux, FreeBSD, web) | — |
| M15 | Localization (12 key languages, RTL interface, proofing languages) | 15 UI languages; English and Polish proofing, a proofing language per run | 75–120 h |
| M16 | Right-to-left and East Asian typography | RTL paragraphs done (#207) | 30–45 h |
Next after beta
Charts and SmartArt editing, the Draw tab, .doc writing, PDF Reflow, the remaining interface
languages, screen-reader access, ecosystem decisions (VBA, add-ins, cloud), an in-app assistant.
Revision history
| Date | Change | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-11 | trivial | M15: Polish interface and Polish proofing landed |
| 2026-10-11 | trivial | M3: icons landed (#309) |
| 2026-10-11 | trivial | M11: contour (Tight/Through) wrap done (#354) |
| 2026-10-11 | minor | Native drawing-level ink and its picture fallback survive DOCX edits and repeated saves; rendering and editing InkML remain missing |
| 2026-10-11 | trivial | M6: the eight missing bibliography styles landed (#383) |
| 2026-10-11 | trivial | M7: formatting revisions landed (#41) |
| 2026-10-11 | trivial | Omitted w:pPrDefault stays omitted across saves; explicit empty/default properties and later spacing edits remain writable. Synthetic preservation checks only; readiness estimates unchanged |
| 2026-10-10 | trivial | M5: Draw Table and Eraser landed (#303) |
| 2026-10-10 | trivial | Merged main: PRs that landed removed from the Current focus list |
| 2026-10-10 | minor | Current focus heading back to ~150–230 h to beta: full number restored to the additive weighted sum (~60%), method aligned with the standard, no new evidence |
| 2026-10-10 | minor | Alpha gate table added (core-workflow gate from the progress-docs standard): all six workflows pass, stage stays alpha |
| 2026-10-10 | major | Created: milestones moved from ROADMAP.md with remaining hours; Current focus from gaps.md; M15–M16 added |
| 2026-10-10 | trivial | M11: ink pens and eraser landed (#307) |
| 2026-10-11 | trivial | M11: lasso, Add Pen, Ink to Shape and Ink Replay landed (#395) |