designcraft/ROADMAP.md

DesignCraft roadmap

Stage: pre-alpha · next: alpha, ~5–7 h away; beta ~28 points and ~420–750 h beyond that (the core-workflow gate, not the percentage: ready for real work is already ~47%)

• FID1: PDF export normalizes mixed emitted gradient color spaces to RGB with an explicit warning; homogeneous device-space gradients retain their components. Linear/radial, midpoint, archival and print policies have synthetic regression coverage.

Last reviewed: 2026-10-11 · Last updated: 2026-10-13 · Change: minor (File ▸ Open Recent; .indd and .indt open through indd-utils; text threads by hand; the alpha gate waits on Primary Text Frame page fixes; Japanese print, import and table controls localized; Live corners (#186); Optical kerning from outlines (#181); window and menu quit confirmation; failed writes preserve live save and collection state; spring-loaded Zoom navigation; orderly native exit recovery; Pages panel parents; cancelable macOS Dock Quit; text stroke behind fill; Based on Parent; object styles carry effects; table anchors keep their own paragraphs; grouped HTML/EPUB reading order; Links source paths; XLSX cached cell values retain numeric precision and text) · Target: Adobe InDesign 2026

• AR1.1: Kashida justification tests verify space fallback without Tatweel fonts using an isolated font database, while retaining elongation assertions when fonts support it.

• AR1: Arabic IDML controls now retain character direction, kashida switches, diacritic offsets/forms, paragraph policy values and independent story/table directions. Shaping preserves joining context and script/language selection; paragraph-level bidi, contextual digit conversion, mark-safe elongation, RTL columns/tables and physical column insertion have regression coverage. Vendor-specific justification and diacritic presets remain explicit preflight warnings; see docs/arabic-typography.md.

• CJK1: IDML composite fonts now retain character mappings and metrics; explicit aki, tsume, jidori, em alignment/leading, named/custom kinsoku boundaries, hanging punctuation, tate-chu-yoko offsets and kenten symbols flow through composition and IDML export. Automatic kerning no longer imports inactive numeric values as enormous manual spacing. Composite definitions are editable through commands with undo/cache invalidation. Mojikumi definitions are retained and unsupported spacing-table / push-in-push-out policies are reported by preflight. Full InDesign CJK composition parity, frame-grid layout and detailed ruby remain unfinished. Warichu sets the selected run in smaller lines inside the line after the line is broken.

DesignCraft aims at full Adobe InDesign parity — and to be better: faster, open (documented JSON format + IDML), scriptable by agents (MCP), and available on the web.

• 2026-10-23 · PDF layer choices now validate before editing all targets; rejected rewrites leave document/undo state intact. Null trailer entries remain unencrypted, and unsupported all-content crops retain the whole page rather than silently clipping hidden layers.
• 2026-10-23 · PDF layer visibility variants retain catalog/configuration entries and full object references; bounded incremental updates replace the existing catalog. Synthetic regression tests cover metadata, output-intent references, nonzero generations and forward Prev links; repeated cross-reference offsets are rejected explicitly. No readiness percentage change.

Status (2026-10-01)

Working today

• Document model: facing/non-facing spreads, parent pages with page-number markers, sections, layers, frames (text / graphic / unassigned), threaded stories, paragraph/character/object styles with based-on, swatches (process/spot/tints/gradients), corner options, text wrap, drop shadow, opacity/blend.
• Text engine: Knuth–Plass paragraph composer and single-line composer, dictionary hyphenation (public-domain Moby list + our own trained Liang patterns), justification with word/letter/glyph-scaling ranges, keep options (keep with next, keep lines together, widows/orphans), balance ragged lines, optical margin alignment, hyphenation zone/limit, columns, threading across frames and spreads, tabs, bullets/numbering, rules, shading, baseline grid, first-baseline options, vertical justification, wrap exclusions, overset detection, caret/hit testing.
• FID2: IDML underline/strikethrough Text Color resets survive style inheritance and roundtrip. Raster and PDF paint underlines behind glyphs, retain strikethrough above, and center rules on their offsets; synthetic overlap tests cover both backends.
• Rendering: vello_cpu (SIMD, multithreaded) — pages, items, images with mip levels, gradients, composed text.
• UI (egui): application bar + menus, Control panel (object and text modes), Tools panel with flyouts, document tabs, rulers, pasteboard, guides (margins, columns, bleed, baseline grid), frame edges, selection handles, text ports and threads, Properties / Pages / Layers dock, Swatches, Styles, Character, Paragraph, Stroke, Text Wrap panels, New Document and Preferences dialogs, Quick Apply (⌘Return), 4 brightness themes.
• Pen tool, Direct Selection anchor/handle editing, rotate from corners, Rotate/Scale/Shear tools, Eyedropper, snapping & smart guides, Align/Distribute, Find/Change (text + GREP), Story Editor, Paragraph Style Options, Effects panel, hidden characters, native macOS menu bar, measured InDesign 2026 look (Medium Dark): Properties sections per selection state, 21 pt spinner fields with arithmetic, Contextual Task Bar, inverse (black) text selection, Pages panel with drag-and-drop reorder / parent apply, Layers panel with per-object rows.
• Tools: Selection (click, marquee, move, Alt-duplicate, resize handles), Direct Selection, Type (draw frame, click caret, select, type), Rectangle/Ellipse/Polygon (+ frame variants), Line, Hand, Zoom.
• PDF export (krilla): real selectable text with embedded font subsets, DeviceCMYK/RGB + spot Separations, bleed boxes, crop/bleed marks + page info, pages or spreads, PDF/A-2b (PDF/X-4 output intent pending) — file.exportPdf, File › Export PDF…, designcraft-cli run --export out.pdf. File › Export PDF… now opens an "Export PDF" options dialog (General / Compression / Marks and Bleeds / Advanced) and remembers the last-used settings across exports and sessions.
• IDML interchange (designcraft-idml): export and import of swatches, styles, fonts, preferences, parent spreads, spreads/pages, frames, groups, images (embedded or linked), formatted threaded stories — opens in InDesign 2026 and round-trips InDesign-exported files (file.exportIdml, file.openIdml, File → Export IDML…, CLI --in x.idml / --export x.idml). Placed PDFs keep their page (PDFAttribute), font names with the $ID/ prefix resolve, and the IDML in a package links the images in its Links folder without embedding them.
• Tables (M8): tables anchored in stories (header/footer/body rows, merged cells, per-edge strokes, fills + alternating fills, insets, vertical justification, at-least/exact row heights); composed into the text column (columns scale to fit, rows break across columns/frames with repeating headers/footers, overset); rendered, exported to PDF (real text) and IDML (export + import); Table menu, Table panel, Create Table dialog, caret/typing/Tab navigation and cell selection in cells; table.* commands.
• Hyperlinks (text or frames → URL / e-mail / page) and bookmarks, exported as PDF link annotations and outline.
• EPUB 3 (reflowable) export: stories in reading order, CSS from paragraph/character styles, images, navigation (file.exportEpub, CLI --export x.epub).
• Data Merge (one linked CSV, TSV, text, or Excel file; text, image, QR, and hyperlink placeholders; preview; a new document with one record per page or records tiled on a single page), spell checking (public-domain Moby list + document dictionary, suggestions), Step and Repeat (count or grid), snippets, object styles, Numbering & Section Options.
• Footnotes: Type › Insert Footnote (caret moves into the note), Document Footnote Options (numbering style incl. symbols, start/restart per page/spread/section, prefix/suffix, reference position/character style, paragraph style, separator, spacing, first baseline, rule above); notes composed at the bottom of the referencing column with the body text making room; edited in place on the canvas; rendered, exported to PDF (real text) and IDML (InDesign's structure, verified opening in InDesign 2026) and imported from IDML; footnote.* commands.
• Paragraph Rules: Rule Above / Rule Below (on, weight, colour, tint, column or text width, offset, left/right indent) set in Type › Paragraph Rules…, the Paragraph panel menu and Paragraph Style Options › Paragraph Rules; inherited style values shown, and type.para / style.paragraph.edit change only the rule fields named.
• Cross-references and text anchors: Insert Cross-Reference (paragraph by style, or text anchor), 11 formats with InDesign's building blocks (full/partial paragraph, paragraph text/number, page number, anchor name, chapter, file name) plus user formats; resolved live at composition — never out of date, no Update step; unresolved destinations show ??; PDF link annotations to the destination page; IDML export/import as InDesign cross-reference sources, hyperlinks, text destinations and formats (verified in InDesign 2026); xref.* / anchor.* commands.
• Index: page references (topic from the selection or up to 4 levels, sort keys; current page, to end of story, next n paragraphs, suppressed, See / See also), Generate / Update Index (section headings, nested or run-in, page ranges merged, Index Title / Section Head / Level 1–4 styles); IDML export/import as InDesign topics, page references and topic cross-references (verified in InDesign 2026); index.* commands.
• Text clipboard keeps formatting (character/paragraph formats, footnotes, cross-references, index markers, tables) and falls back to plain text when the system clipboard changed; Paste without Formatting (⇧⌘V); Change Case (UPPERCASE, lowercase, Title Case, Sentence case — formatting kept); Type › Insert Special Character / White Space / Break Character submenus.
• Anchored objects: items flow in the text inline (on the baseline, with Y offset; lines grow to fit) or above the line (left/center/right, space before/after); paste copied items into text to anchor them; Anchored Object Options and Release (back onto the page where shown); rendered, exported to PDF and to/from IDML (InDesign anchored object settings; verified in InDesign 2026); copy/paste and threading carry them; anchored.* commands.
• Ruler guides: drag out of the rulers (page guides, or spread guides on the pasteboard), drag to move, drop on a ruler to delete; a dragged guide snaps along its axis to other guides, margins, columns, bleed, page and object edges and centers and the document grid (Shift: the ruler's ticks; Cmd suspends snapping); selected like objects (click, Shift-click, a marquee that touches no object, Edit › Select All Guides ⌥⌘G), moved together, nudged, deleted, and placed exactly with the X or Y field; Layout › Create Guides (rows/columns with gutters, fit to margins or page); Delete All Guides on Spread; guide.* commands.
• Links panel: every placed graphic with status (OK / Modified / Missing / Embedded, checked against the file on disk), page and effective PPI (low resolution flagged); Relink…, Go To, Update, Embed; links.* commands.
• Missing fonts: highlighted pink on screen (never in output), listed by Preflight; Type › Find/Replace Font (fonts in the document, missing first; replace in text, cells, footnotes and styles); font.list / font.replace.
• Missing glyphs, as in InDesign: a character the applied font lacks is drawn as that font's missing-glyph box (its .notdef; a drawn box when the font's is empty), on screen and in PDF (as a path, so PDF/A and PDF/UA exports take it), and Preflight lists the characters by font. Preferences › Composition › Draw Missing Glyphs from Fallback Fonts (document.preferences {glyphFallback}, stored with the document) draws them from other fonts instead; it is off in new documents and IDML imports, on in documents saved before it existed. A missing font's substitute always uses fallback fonts.
• Damage-region repaint: after an edit the canvas re-renders only the frames whose composed text (or the items that) changed and patches its texture — pixel-identical to a full render; typing in a frame repaints in under a millisecond instead of a full-viewport render (22 ms measured on the sample).
• Crash recovery: unsaved documents are written to the recovery folder every 30 s and reopened (unsaved, remembering their files) after a crash; File › Revert and Save a Copy…; file.recovery.*, file.revert, file.saveACopy.
• Graphics backend chosen before the window exists (DirectX 12 on Windows, Vulkan on Linux, Metal on macOS, OpenGL as the fallback; WGPU_BACKEND overrides) with a start-up fallback: a backend whose start never showed a frame is skipped at the next start and the status bar says so (gpu.json). Found on an AMD hybrid-graphics laptop whose Vulkan driver faulted at the first present.
• Edit › Paste Into (copied objects become a frame's content, clipped by it; rendered, PDF and IDML both ways — verified in InDesign 2026); Polygon Settings (sides, star inset; double-click the Polygon tool).
• Color panel (fill/stroke proxy, CMYK/RGB/Lab sliders with channel ramps, tint slider for swatches, spectrum ramp, Add to Swatches) and Color Picker (double-click the proxy); mixed colours are unnamed (not listed in Swatches until added); object.color, swatch.addToSwatches, swatch.addUnnamed.
• Place text files: Word (.docx: styles by name with their attributes, bold/italic/underline/size/font, footnotes, tables, tabs, breaks), RTF and plain text, into the insertion point, the selected frame or a new frame; autoflow threads frames on the pages that follow, then adds pages at the end of the document until the text fits; Remove Styles option (designcraft-textimport).
• Gradient Feather (⇧G tool, object.gradientFeather): objects fade along a linear or radial opacity gradient, on screen and as a soft mask in PDF.
• Script Label (object.label, object.findByLabel), alt text (object.altText), Isolate Blending / Knockout Group (object.transparencyGroup; on screen, PDF isolates), Table ▸ Sort (table.sortRows, numeric-aware, header/footer fixed).
• File ▸ Export Text (file.exportText): a story as Text Only or RTF (fonts, styles, alignment, indents, tables as tab-separated rows); Export EPUB now asks for a path in the UI.
• Tagged PDF (file.exportPdf {tagged}, on by default from the UI): structure tree with stories as paragraphs in reading order, figures carrying their alt text, parent-page items and printer's marks as artifacts.
• Global Light (object.globalLight, globalLight on drop/inner shadows; Use Global Light in the Effects panel) and Generate Static Caption (object.caption: template over name, path, alt text, label, effective ppi, dimensions, format; any side, offset, style).
• Control panel scale X/Y, rotation and shear fields (transform.info, absolute transform.set {scaleX, scaleY, rotation, shear} about the reference point) and Preferences › Transformations are Totals for nested objects and placed graphics.
• Variable fonts: each named instance is a style (Font menu, shaping with feature variations, metrics, outlines) and embeds at its axis settings in PDF; free axis sliders still to come.
• Object ▸ Select (first/next above, next/last below, container, content, previous/next in group), full Object ▸ Convert Shape (object.convertShape), Table ▸ Split Cell Horizontally/Vertically.
• Attributes panel (object.attributes: Overprint Fill/Stroke/Gap, Nonprinting), with Overprint Gap in Overprint Preview and IDML.
• Page Numbering View (Preferences: section or absolute): page labels everywhere follow it; Go to Page takes section names, numbers or +n.
• Preferences › Advanced Type (document advancedType: superscript/subscript size and position; IDML TextPreference); subscripts now drop 33.3% like InDesign.
• Preferences › Composition › Highlight: keep violations, H&J violations (three shades), custom tracking/kerning, substituted fonts.
• File ▸ Export HTML (file.exportHtml): one self-contained page in reading order, styles as CSS, images inline, alt text from Object Export Options (also in EPUB).
• File ▸ Export PowerPoint (file.exportPptx, CLI --export x.pptx): every page becomes a slide of editable objects: shapes (preset or custom geometry, solid and gradient fills, dashed/compound strokes with arrowheads, shadows, glow, feather, opacity), pictures cropped like their frames (SVG kept as SVG), native tables (merged cells, fills, per-edge borders) and text boxes. By default the text keeps DesignCraft's line breaks, justified spacing and leading; threaded stories split at their frames and lines pushed aside by a wrap get boxes of their own. lineBreaks: reflow writes one box per frame in native columns instead. TrueType fonts are embedded where their licences allow, and objects without a PowerPoint equivalent are rasterised. Checked against PowerPoint for Mac and LibreOffice.
• Swatches panel colour groups (swatch.newColorGroup, moveToGroup, ungroupColorGroup, renameColorGroup; folders and a row context menu; IDML ColorGroup).
• Object ▸ Generate QR Code (object.qrCode: web link, text, SMS, email, business card; vector modules as a compound path, into a frame or re-encoded in place).
• Conditional text (condition.new/options/delete/apply/list, Conditional Text panel): hidden conditions drop their text from layout and exports, indicators underline on screen, IDML Condition/AppliedConditions.
• Endnotes (endnote.insert/edit/delete/list/options, Type ▸ Insert Endnote): references number through the document, the endnote frame on a new last page lists them under a heading; IDML keeps the listed text only.
• Editorial notes (note.new/edit/delete/convertToText/list, Notes panel): anchored in text, flagged on screen, never printed or exported.
• File ▸ Print Booklet (file.printBooklet): saddle-stitch or 2-up consecutive printer spreads as PDF, padded with blanks, with a gap between pages.
• Edit ▸ Transparency Blend Space (edit.transparencyBlendSpace; RGB for web/mobile documents; IDML TransparencyPreference) — exported PDFs give pages with transparency a DeviceCMYK or DeviceRGB page group, so viewers and RIPs blend in that space. On screen, spreads with transparency in a CMYK blend space are shown through the working CMYK profile (their colours keep to its gamut, as when composited in CMYK).
• High Contrast interface theme (fifth Interface Color Theme: black chrome, white text, yellow selection).
• Place Excel workbooks (.xlsx): the first worksheet's used range becomes a table (shared/inline strings, numbers, booleans).
• Object Library (library.new/open/add/place/remove/list/json/close, Library panel): .dclib files of snippets that keep stories, styles, swatches and images.
• Ink Manager (ink.list, ink.options; Swatches panel menu): All Spots to Process, per-ink conversion and ink aliases in PDF output; IDML ConvertToProcess/AliasInkName.
• Appearance of Black complete: Printing/Exporting rich black for RGB output (PNG), Overprint [Black] Swatch at 100% (document, IDML OverprintBlack).
• Hyperlinks and Bookmarks panels (Window ▸ Interactive): new from the selection, edit (hyperlink.edit), go to source (hyperlink.goToSource), rename bookmarks (bookmark.rename), go to page, delete.
• Nested line styles (nestedLineStyles paragraph attribute, Paragraph Style Options › Drop Caps and Nested Styles, IDML AllNestedLineStyles): the first lines restyle until the line breaks settle.
• User dictionary hyphenation exceptions (hyphenation.addException/removeException/list, Edit ▸ Spelling ▸ User Dictionary): ex~am~ple breaks only at ~, a plain word never hyphenates.
• Frame Fitting Options (object.fittingOptions, Object ▸ Fitting ▸ Frame Fitting Options…): Auto-Fit refits on resize, fitting, Align From reference point, crop amounts; IDML FrameFittingOption.
• Paragraph borders (per-side weights, colour, tint, offsets) and shading offsets, drawn per column part of split paragraphs (also when overset); Paragraph panel controls; IDML ParagraphBorder*/ParagraphShading*Offset.
• Font menu: search, favourites (stars, Show Favorites Only; favoriteFonts preference) and each family previewed in its own face. Western (and other-script) families come first, then Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean ones, each group alphabetical and set off by a separator; the group comes from the font's own data (meta languages, family names in a CJK language, OS/2 code pages, else what it covers), read once (installed fonts by the font scan, without loading them). CJK families show their native names, the English name on hover; Preferences › Type › Show Font Names in English (showFontNamesInEnglish) shows English names throughout. Search matches either name; documents store the English name. Every family list (Character panel, Control bar, Properties, style dialogs, Find Font, Glyphs) follows this order.
• Application preferences (engine Prefs) now persist across launches (desktop: prefs.json beside ui.json).
• View ▸ Fit Selection in Window (⌥⌘=) and Find/Change ▸ Object (find.objects, find.changeObjects: by fill, stroke, weight, opacity, kind, layer, label).
• Custom workspaces (window.newWorkspace/deleteWorkspace/resetWorkspace; workspace switcher shows the current one): bars and panel arrangement saved by name.
• Word/RTF Import Options (File ▸ Place with Import Options…, place.styles, file.place {styleMap, styleConflicts}): map imported styles onto the document's, use existing / redefine / auto-rename on conflicts, or remove formatting.
• Custom anchored objects (anchored.insert/options {position: custom}): placed relative to the anchor, frame, column, page margins or page edge with reference points and offsets, no space in the text, keep within column; IDML Anchored position.
• Variable font axes: Character panel sliders; any axis values (fontStyle: "Bold {wght:650}") make that instance for layout, screen and PDF.
• Image Import Options › Crop to for placed PDFs (file.place {pdfCrop: crop|art|trim|bleed|media|contentVisible|contentAll}, Place PDF dialog): the graphic spans that page box, the document stores the choice, and IDML keeps it as PDFCrop.
• Stroke styles: striped (thick-thin… and custom bands), wavy and straight-hash strokes now draw on screen and in PDF; named custom stripe/dash/dot styles (strokeStyle.new/delete/list, Stroke panel Type list; IDML Striped/Dashed/DottedStrokeStyle).
• Object ▸ Primary Text Frame (object.primaryTextFrame): any text frame's story can become (or stop being) the primary story Smart Text Reflow follows.
• Column rules (Text Frame Options › Column Rules, object.textFrameOptions {columnRule, columnRuleWeight, columnRuleColor, columnRuleTint, columnRuleOffset, columnRuleTopInset, columnRuleBottomInset}, reported by document.inspect): a bar centred in each gutter of a multi-column frame, inside the insets and between the columns of right-to-left and vertical frames too, broken around paragraphs that span columns, with weight, colour, tint, horizontal offset and top/bottom insets; on screen, in PDF (tagged as an artifact) and in IDML (ColumnRule… attributes of TextFramePreference, also in object styles). The dialog shows the frame's options and changes only the fields edited. Rule stroke types and overprint aren't there yet.
• Place a page of an IDML or DesignCraft document (file.place {layoutPage}): its objects, stories, styles and swatches as one group (INDD files are not readable).
• Articles panel (article.new/add/remove/options/delete/list): reading order and content of EPUB and HTML exports.
• Object ▸ Clipping Path (object.clippingPath {type: alpha|edges, threshold, tolerance}): traces the placed image and makes the outline the frame.
• Gridify: arrow keys while dragging a frame or shape tool add columns/rows (frame.grid), one undo step.
• Gap tool (U, gap.move): drag the space between objects (or an object and the page edge) and both sides resize.
• XML basics (xml.newTag/deleteTag/tag/mapStyle/structure, file.exportXml, file.importXml; Tags panel with structure; View ▸ Show Tagged Frames): tagged frames export in reading order, mapped paragraph styles become elements, imported elements flow into frames with matching tags. Inline text tagging (xml.tagText, an xmlTag character attribute, exported as nested elements) and tag markers (View ▸ Structure ▸ Show Tag Markers) too. DTDs (xml.loadDtd, xml.validate, xml.deleteDtd; Tags panel): loading one adds its elements as tags and names the root; validation checks content models (sequences, choices, ?*+, mixed content, EMPTY/ANY, parameter entities) and required attributes, and lists each problem with its element path.
• Adjust Layout / Layout Adjustment (adjustLayout on Document Setup and Margins and Columns): objects follow each page's margin box to its new size and position.
• Content Collector and Placer tools (B; conveyor.collect/place/list/clear): copies of objects (with stories, styles, images) ride a conveyor between pages and documents; Alt-click keeps them on it.
• Linked stories (Edit ▸ Place and Link, story.placeAndLink/links/updateLink/unlink): child stories copy a parent, show out of date in the Links panel and update.
• Edit ▸ Menus (window.hideMenuItem): hide menu items; menus with hidden items end in Show All Menu Items.
• View ▸ Separations Preview (view.separations): one process plate as ink density, or areas over an ink limit in red (a GCR preview of the rendered view; spot plates and the flattener preview aren't there).
• Separations Preview plates now come from each object's own colour (CMYK as authored; RGB and images through the colour settings, images via a cached 17³ table), so pure black shows only on the black plate.
• Language (Character panel ▸ Language, Properties ▸ Character, type.char {language}): text in other languages isn't hyphenated or spell-checked with the English dictionaries, typographer's quotes follow the language (German „…“, French and Russian «…», Swiss, Spanish, Dutch, Nordic, Japanese and Traditional Chinese 「…」, Simplified Chinese “…”), the font's localized forms (OpenType locl: Turkish i, Bulgarian Cyrillic, Japanese / Chinese / Korean glyph variants) follow it too, and so does the fallback for CJK characters the font lacks (with Draw Missing Glyphs from Fallback Fonts on): Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean each try their own installed system fonts (Japanese starts with the craft-fonts Japanese faces, Mincho first, when built with them; Hangul, kana and Bopomofo pick their language's fonts whatever the language). Language names from IDML keep their spelling; locale codes as InDesign writes them for some languages (de_DE_2006, nl_NL_2005; any ll, ll_CC, ll-CC) are their language and region for all of the above, and Chinese is also recognised in its common spellings ("Simplified Chinese", "Chinese (Traditional)", zh_CN, zh-Hant). Spanish is hyphenated with Javier Bezos's Liang patterns (hyph-es.tex 5.0, MIT) through the hypher crate; hyphenation for other languages isn't bundled yet.
• Books (book.new/open/add/remove/list/styleSource/paginate/syncStyles/exportPdf, Book panel): .dcbook files, continuous page numbering, style sync from a style source, one merged PDF.
• Track Changes (changes.track/list/acceptAll/rejectAll, Type ▸ Track Changes): typing is marked added (highlighted on screen), deletions are kept but hidden from layout and exports until accepted or rejected. Per-change accept/reject and authors aren't there yet.
• Track Changes: per-change Accept / Reject (changes.accept, changes.reject) and a Track Changes panel listing every change.
• Move table rows and columns (table.moveRow, table.moveColumn, Table panel buttons; with whole rows or columns selected, drag them with the Type tool — table.dropCells).
• Distribute Rows Evenly (table.distributeRows, Table menu and panel): selected rows receive equal fixed heights preserving their composed total height, with undo/redo. Row-spanning merges and rows outside the composed frames are rejected; shrinking tall cells can overset their text.
• Object States (states.create/show/rename/release/list, Object States panel): multi-state objects show one state on screen and in PDF.
• Buttons (button.set/clear/list, Buttons and Forms panel): go to page / next / previous / first / last / URL as PDF link annotations. Form fields too (form.set/clear/list: text fields, check boxes, combo and list boxes, signature fields; required, multiline, defaults) exported as AcroForm widgets through an incremental update (not in PDF/X).
• Power Zoom (Hand tool: press and hold still for half a second, or Alt-press): zoom out to the spread, aim the red view rectangle, release to zoom back in there.
• Graphic cells (table.placeGraphic, table.textCell, Table › Convert Cell Type, Table panel): images in table cells, fitted or filled, clipped to the cell on screen and in PDF.
• Live Distribute (Space while dragging a selection handle; transform.resize {distribute}): objects keep their size and spread with the bounds.
• Liquid Layout (liquid.pageRule/object, guide.liquid, layout.createAlternate, Liquid Layout panel): scale / re-center / guide-based / object-based page rules applied on page resize and Document Setup; dashed liquid guides; alternate layouts as resized page copies in a named section. Text in an alternate layout stays linked to the original stories (Links panel shows them out of date; story.updateLink).
• Split Window / New Window (window.split, window.newWindow, Window ▸ Arrange): two side-by-side views of the document with their own zoom, scroll and render cache. New Window puts the second view in its own OS window (an egui viewport; a floating window on the web).
• Transparency flattener (file.exportPdf {flatten: high|medium|low|ppi}, Edit ▸ Transparency Flattener Presets): each object involving transparency becomes an opaque image of its area over what's beneath it, so everything else stays vector (spreads with transparent parent items are rasterised whole).
• Video and sound (place .mp4/.mov/.webm/.mp3/.wav…, media.options/get, Media panel): media frames show a poster or placeholder on screen, in print and in PDF, and export as HTML5 <video>/<audio> in EPUB. Interactive PDF export (file.exportPdf {media: true}, File ▸ Export PDF (Interactive)) embeds each file and plays it in a Screen annotation through a rendition action (controls, loop, play on page load). No in-app playback.
• Right-to-left text (World-Ready basics): right-to-left runs are shaped right to left, lines are reordered by the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (matched against the reference implementation), Paragraph Direction (type.para {direction}, Paragraph panel, IDML ParagraphDirection, EPUB dir). Digits (digits: Default, Arabic, Hindi, Farsi, Native by language; Character panel for right-to-left text; IDML DigitsType) draw 0–9 in another script. Kashidas (kashidas paragraph attribute, on by default): justified Arabic lines stretch at one join per word (after seen/sad when possible, never inside lam–alef) with a drawn tatweel before word spaces widen. Carets follow the drawing: the caret before a right-to-left glyph sits at its right edge, arrow keys move as drawn (by words in the line's direction), clicks find the nearest drawn caret position and selections highlight the selected glyphs. Binding: Right to Left (Document Setup, layout.documentSetup {binding}, IDML PageBinding) makes page 1 a left page and lays spreads out right to left.
• Interface language (Edit ▸ Interface Language, app.language): German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Arabic menu titles, common menu items and panel names (our own translations). Common dialog, panel and tooltip labels are also localized, with English fallback for untranslated strings. Arabic translations cover every key in the shared interface translation table, including menu commands and utility labels. German and Japanese cover the whole interface: every key of every catalog. The Type menu's Story Direction, Horizontal/Vertical, Tate-Chu-Yoko, Ruby… and Kenten are translated too. Arabic labels use Unicode bidi run ordering and contextual shaping; welcome and new-document form layouts follow RTL direction independently of document binding. CJK and Arabic glyphs come from craft-fonts when built with CRAFT_FONTS_DIR (all releases): BIZ UDPGothic and Noto Sans CJK SC for the UI (Chinese forms first in the Chinese interface), Noto Sans Arabic, and Mincho for Japanese documents (the web build embeds BIZ UDPGothic only); otherwise from system fonts. Ukrainian covers all 1,430 existing catalog keys, including publishing dialogs and built-in names, with persisted selection, grammatical count captions, English fallback and bundled Cyrillic UI glyph coverage.
• Page transitions (page.transition/transitions, Page Transitions panel): twelve transition types with speed and direction per spread, written into exported PDFs as /Trans entries through an incremental update.
• PDF/X-4 export (file.exportPdf {standard: "x4"}): an output intent with our own Generic CMYK ICC profile (lut16 tables generated from the parametric press model), GTS_PDFXVersion in Info and XMP, pdf:Trapped in XMP as in Info, RGB images without a profile tagged sRGB, no image interpolation (none in PDF/A either), and built-in PDF/X-4 checks reported as warnings. qpdf finds no errors in the result.
• EPS place: placed at its (high-resolution) bounding box and shown, printed and exported through its TIFF preview, or a placeholder when it has none. PostScript itself isn't interpreted.
• Preferences: Dictionary (user dictionary; spelling.setWords/words), Spelling (Dynamic Spelling: red squiggles on the canvas, also Edit ▸ Spelling), Autocorrect (word list, applied as you type), Notes, Track Changes, Story Editor Display and File Handling (recovery interval) sections.
• Colour management exposed: Edit ▸ Color Settings (color.settings: RGB/CMYK working spaces, intent, black-point compensation; color.loadProfile for ICC files; color.convert through the working spaces, with gamut checks) and View ▸ Proof Setup / Proof Colors (press, sRGB, legacy Mac RGB, colour-blindness simulations, simulate paper) on the canvas.
• Keyboard: Tab / Shift+Tab hide and show all panels / all but Tools (window.hidePanels, window.hidePanelsExceptTools); Cmd+F6 / Cmd+Shift+F6 cycle documents; panel fields are reached with Tab and Escape returns to the layout.
• Smart guides and snapping (View ▸ Snap to Guides / Snap to Document Grid / Smart Guides, view.snapPreferences and Preferences ▸ Guides & Pasteboard): moving, drawing, resizing, rotating and pen/anchor drags snap in order to the document and baseline grids, ruler guides, margins and columns, other objects' edges and centres (parent-page items too, by visible stroked bounds), equal spacing, matching dimensions and matching rotation, with guides, gap marks and measurements drawn on the canvas. Shift and Cmd constrain the gesture.
• View ▸ Rotate Spread (view.rotateSpread, layout.rotateSpreadView): the spread in view turns in quarter turns on screen (stored with the document; output is unaffected). The canvas maps each spread through its own transform, so tools, snapping, resize handles, guides, overlays and rendering all follow the turned spread.
• Vertical type (Vertical Type Tool, Type ▸ Story Direction type.storyDirection, IDML StoryOrientation): the direction belongs to the story, so every frame of a thread is vertical or horizontal together and a frame threaded onto a story takes its direction (object.textFrameOptions {vertical} sets the frames' stories); lines run top to bottom and follow each other right to left; the arrow keys follow them (Down and Up along the line, Left and Right to the next and previous line, keeping the position along it); CJK characters stay upright and other text turns, on screen and in PDF; CJK line breaking with basic kinsoku (also in horizontal text); Korean breaks at spaces, word by word (Hangul in any language, hanja in Korean text), or between syllables when the paragraph asks for it (type.para {koreanCharBreaks}, Paragraph Style Options ▸ Justification; not written to IDML). Upright text is shaped top to bottom: punctuation and brackets take their vertical forms (OpenType vert; vkrn and vpal through OpenType features), glyphs advance by their vertical metrics (vmtx) and hang from their vertical origins (VORG) on the centre of the ideographic em box (BASE, else OS/2), which the first line's ascent follows; turned text keeps its horizontal forms. Tate-chu-yoko (Type ▸ Tate-Chu-Yoko, type.tateChuYoko, IDML Tatechuyoko) sets a run such as "12" side by side within one em of the line. Ruby (Type ▸ Ruby…, type.ruby, IDML RubyString; group ruby spread 1-2-1 or centred) and kenten emphasis dots (type.kenten, IDML KentenKind) are set over their text — to its right in vertical frames — without changing line breaks. Warichu and ruby options (per-character ruby, positions, overhang) aren't there yet.
• Math expressions (Type ▸ Insert Math Expression…, math.insert, math.svg): a LaTeX subset (fractions, scripts, roots, big operators with limits, Greek, relations and operators with math spacing, \left…\right, \text) typeset by our own engine into SVG, placed inline at the cursor or as a frame; the LaTeX is kept as alt text and can be edited.
• Object Layer Options for placed PDFs (object.pdfLayers, object.layerOptions, Object ▸ Object Layer Options…): the file's optional-content layers listed and shown or hidden per frame on screen; in exported PDFs such graphics go out as 300 ppi images of their visible layers.
• Effects: Inner Glow (edge or centre), Bevel and Emboss (inner bevel lit from the light angle), Satin (object.innerGlow, object.bevel, object.satin); PDF export now keeps soft effects: objects with shadows, glows, feathers, bevels or satin go out as 300 ppi transparent images of their appearance (threaded text frames excepted).
• Directional Feather (object.directionalFeather {widths: [top, left, bottom, right]}): each side fades over its own width.
• View ▸ Flattener Preview (view.flattenerPreview): objects involving transparency highlighted in red; knockout groups export as images (PDF output has no knockout groups).
• Live captions (object.caption {live: true}, Object ▸ Captions ▸ Generate Live Caption): the caption text is re-filled from the source object's metadata after every edit (same undo step).
• Style Export Tagging (style.exportTag, Paragraph Style Options ▸ Export Tagging): paragraph and character styles choose their HTML element and class in EPUB/HTML.
• Tagged Text: export (file.exportText {format: "tagged"}) and place (detected by its header; ASCII, UTF-8 or UTF-16) with paragraph and character styles, font, typeface and size, and <0x…> characters.
• Tagged PDF: one structure element per paragraph (H1–H6 and BlockQuote from Export Tagging, else P) in reading order, frame fills, strokes, rules and tables as artifacts, figures with alt text.
• EPUB: cover image from the first page (file.exportEpub {cover}), and Fixed Layout export (file.exportFixedEpub, File ▸ Export EPUB (Fixed Layout)…): pre-paginated pages as 144 ppi images with their text kept for search and read-aloud.
• Interactive PDF options (file.exportPdf {fullScreen, bookmarksPanel, pageLayout, view, advanceSeconds}, File ▸ Export PDF (Interactive)…): page mode, layout, opening view and page timing in the catalog and pages.
• Object Export Options (object.exportOptions): tagged-PDF artifact, EPUB/HTML rasterize (the object as an image), alignment and page break before, alt text.
• Scripts panel (Window ▸ Utilities ▸ Scripts, script.run): saved command scripts (with $N.path references to earlier results) run as one undo step; edit, add, load and delete them in the panel. Scripts use DesignCraft's command language, not ExtendScript.
• Drag and drop text editing: drag selected text to move it (Alt copies) with its formatting (text.release).
• Image Import Options: place any page of a multi-page PDF (file.place {pdfPage}; the app asks which page), shown on screen and embedded as that page in PDF export.
• Define Lists: named numbered lists that continue across stories in page order (list.define, paragraph listName / startAt), round-tripped through IDML; null in type.para / type.char now removes an override.
• View › Overprint Preview (⌥⇧⌘Y): overprinting fills, strokes and 100% [Black] text mix with what's beneath on screen.
• Type on a Path (⇧T tool, type.onPath): a story along any line, curve or shape on screen and in PDF; Type on a Path Options (start, flip, baseline/ascender/descender/centre) and Delete Type from Path. Round-trips through IDML as TextPath; on-path caret drawing is still to come.
• Preferences › Appearance of Black: 100% K on screen accurately (dark grey) or as rich black (window.richBlack); the printing/export side is still to come.
• Spreads of up to 10 pages: Add to Previous Spread and Allow Spread to Shuffle (Pages panel; layout.pages.toSpread, layout.spreadShuffle); inserted pages go around kept spreads.
• Page tool (⇧P) and layout.pageSize: pages of their own size (or a preset); the spine stays put and objects keep their place on their page.
• File › Print (⌘P): printer, copies, page range, spreads, marks, bleed; printed as PDF through the system spooler (file.print, file.printers, dryRun for agents). Shortcuts now act like choosing the menu item (dialogs open), and UI commands win shortcut ties (⌘N opens New Document).
• Nested styles (through/up to N sentences, words, characters, letters, digits, tabs, breaks, spaces or given characters) and GREP styles (regex → character style), edited in Paragraph Style Options and composed under local formatting; ui.dialog.open for agents. Nested line styles are still to come; nested and GREP styles round-trip through IDML.
• Table and cell styles (round-trip through IDML): cell styles (fill, insets, vertical justification, strokes, paragraph style) and table styles (region cell styles, border, alternating rows, spacing); apply from the Table panel, edits re-apply to every user; style.cell.*, style.table.*.
• Style groups: paragraph and character styles shown in group folders, Move to Group (new, existing, none); style.group renames every use (styles, stories, table cells, footnotes, object styles).
• Scrubby zoom: drag the Zoom tool left or right to zoom continuously around the press point.
• Guides belong to the active layer: hidden with it (or with its Show Guides off) and locked with it.
• Pencil tool (N): freehand strokes simplified to smooth paths (Alt closes); Smooth and Erase tools re-fit or remove the stretch you drag along (path.smooth, path.erase).
• Edit › Keyboard Shortcuts: every command, click and press the new keys, conflicts shown, per-command and global reset; window.setShortcut.
• Primary Text Frame (New Document) and Smart Text Reflow: pages are added while the primary story oversets and empty ones at the end removed, in the same undo step (Preferences › Type).
• Glyphs panel: every character of any font (rendered by our renderer), search by character or U+code, click to insert, recently used.
• UI scaling (Preferences › Interface, 50–200%; window.uiScale); the window title steps aside when the bar is crowded.
• Underline / Strikethrough Options: weight, offset, colour and tint (Character panel; screen, PDF and IDML).
• Relink to Folder and Relink File Extension (links.relinkFolder; missing links found by name).
• File › Package (⌥⇧⌘P): the document relinked to a Links folder, the placed files, the font files that draw its text in a Document Fonts folder (the fonts it names and any fallback fonts that draw characters those lack; except fonts whose licence restricts it, OS/2 fsType), an IDML copy, an optional PDF and a report (fonts, fallback fonts, links, preflight, instructions); Copy Links To (links.copyTo).
• Document fonts: opening a .designcraft or .idml file loads the fonts in the Document Fonts folder beside it (as Package writes it), ahead of installed fonts with the same name, so a packaged document opens with its fonts on another machine. Damaged, oversized (over 256 MB per file, 512 MB in all) and surplus (over 200) font files are skipped and listed in file.open's warnings; font.list gives each font's source. Document fonts belong to their document, as in InDesign: other open documents don't see them (each document with a same-named font draws with its own), and closing the document (or reverting it, or a book chapter's export ending) makes them unavailable. Their files stay in memory until DesignCraft quits, so reopening a document doesn't read or load them again; on the web there is no folder to read.
• Load Swatches / Save Swatches for Exchange (.ase: CMYK, RGB, Lab, Gray; spot or process) from the Swatches panel menu; swatch.load / swatch.save.
• Pathfinder (Object › Pathfinder and a Pathfinder panel): Add, Subtract, Intersect, Exclude Overlap, Minus Back; curves stay curves (flo_curves); object.pathfinder.
• Make / Release Compound Path (⌘8; nested paths become holes), Create Outlines (⇧⌘O; one path per text colour), Scissors tool (C) with path.split.
• Transform Again / Individually / Sequence Again (⌥⌘3; a moved copy repeats like Step and Repeat), Clear Transformations; Layers: Merge, Delete Unused, Hide/Lock Others, Show/Unlock All; Break Link to Style (paragraph and character).
• Floating panels: tear a panel off the dock (its float button, or drag its header away) into a movable, resizable window; Dock puts it back; positions persist; window.floatPanel / window.dockPanel.
• Place SVG (vector in PDF export via krilla-svg, resvg on screen, text in the bundled fonts), Photoshop (.psd/.psb composite in its colour mode — Bitmap, Grayscale, Duotone, Indexed, RGB, CMYK, Lab, 8/16-bit — with merged transparency; extra alpha and spot channels don't change the image), BMP, and Illustrator files saved with PDF compatibility (.ai). New designcraft-images crate (L2) for sniffing, sizes and decoding. EPS is still missing.
• View › Display Performance: Fast (grey boxes, no effects, ⌥⇧⌘Z), Typical (72 ppi proxies, ⌥⌘Z), High Quality (⌥⌘H, our default — the renderer is fast enough).
• OpenType menu (Character panel): discretionary ligatures, fractions, ordinal, swash, titling, contextual alternates, slashed zero, the four figure styles and stylistic sets 1–20; type.openType; mapped to IDML's OTF attributes.
• Add Anchor Point (=), Delete Anchor Point (-) and Convert Direction Point (⇧C) tools (click toggles smooth/corner, drag pulls out handles), with path.addAnchor, path.deleteAnchor, path.convertAnchor.
• Gradients: the Gradient Swatch tool (G) drags a gradient's start and end across objects (Shift: 45°); the Gradient panel sets type, angle, reverse and edits stops on a ramp (drag, add, drag off to remove, location, colour). Edited gradients are unnamed swatches; object.gradient; the vector round-trips through IDML.
• Document Setup (⌥⌘P): intent, number of pages, start page # (an even start begins with a left page), facing pages, size presets and orientation, bleed and slug per edge; layout.documentSetup {} reports the setup.
• Stroke panel: cap, join, miter limit, alignment, type, Start/End arrowheads (12 kinds, drawn on screen and in PDF; the path is shortened under pointed heads) and gap colour under dashes and dots.
• Preferences (⌘K: General, Type, Units & Increments, Grids, Guides & Pasteboard, Display Performance) backed by prefs.set (application) and document.preferences (units, increments, grids — undoable, saved with the document; right-click a ruler to pick its units, the horizontal and vertical rulers each have their own); scaling applies to content and scales stroke weights (Include Stroke Weight), and X/Y/W/H measure the stroke's outer edge (Dimensions Include Stroke Weight). Quick Apply (⌘Return) finds paragraph, character and object styles as well as commands.
• Parent item overrides: Cmd+Shift-click a parent item on a page (or Override All Parent Page Items, ⌥⇧⌘L) makes an editable local copy that hides the parent's; Remove All Local Overrides and Detach All Objects from Parent in the Pages panel menu.
• Place PDF: placed PDF pages are sized by their crop box, drawn on screen through hayro (with mip levels) and embedded in exported PDFs as vector form XObjects (krilla), <PDF> in IDML.
• Menus expose the engine's features (TOC, numbering & sections, text variables, hyperlinks, cross-references, footnotes, step and repeat, spelling, fitting/content, effects, Data Merge, Preflight, EPUB); any menu command with parameters gets a dialog generated from its parameter documentation.
• Table of contents (generate/update, dot leaders) and text variables (running headers, last page number, chapter number, file name, dates, custom) resolved per page.
• Soft effects: blurred drop shadow, inner shadow, outer glow, basic feather.
• ~200 commands, all reachable through the JSON control channel; headless CLI rendering to PNG.
• MCP server (designcraft-cli mcp [--connect PORT], docs/mcp.md): headless engine or the running app; commands, batch, document/story inspection, page renders as images, window screenshots, pointer/keyboard/dialog input.
• Web build (apps/designcraft-web, trunk): the same UI on WebGPU with a WebGL2 fallback; open/place via the browser file picker or drag-and-drop, save/export as downloads.

Next (in order): books · New Window / split view · Ink Manager and Separations Preview · XML structure, tags and export · buttons and forms · PDF/X-4 output intent (needs krilla support) · EPS place.

How far from full parity (estimate, 2026-10-04)

Breadth: ~99% weighted (P0 core 99%, P1 100%, P2 97%) over the 275 features of the InDesign catalogue, scored row by row in docs/parity-checklist.md (cargo xtask parity recomputes it). Many features scored done still lack some of InDesign's options or dialog details, so overall parity including depth is about 83%.

Remaining work: about 170 wall-clock hours of a single Claude Opus 5.5 agent (±30%), or roughly 60–85 hours with four agents in parallel on separate crates:

Work	Estimate
Open P0 (2: PDF/X-4 validation against a certified checker, PostScript interpretation for EPS)	8 h
Open P1 (none partial)	0 h
Open P2 (3 partial: localization breadth, INDD pages (not readable clean-room), in-app media playback)	14 h
Depth and pixel fidelity of every dialog, panel and menu against InDesign 2026	90 h
Performance (incremental composition, GPU raster) and interchange hardening (IDML/PDF corpus)	55 h

Basis: since the first estimate this effort landed about 45 arcs (from parent overrides, Preferences, Stroke panel, gradients and Pathfinder to table/cell styles, nested/GREP styles and Print) in roughly 14 hours on a heavily loaded machine — about 1–2 hours per catalogue row.

Agents: CLI and MCP

Every command is reachable from designcraft-cli (run, script with $N.path result references, app for the running window, describe, commands), from MCP (designcraft-cli mcp, tools including execute and batch with the same references), and from the app's JSON control channel. See docs/agents.md.

Milestones

| # | Milestone | State | Stage: pre-alpha · next: alpha, ~0% and ~15–25 h away; beta ~28 points and ~420–750 h beyond that (the core-workflow gate, not the percentage: ready for real work is already ~47%)

Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-15 · Change: minor (A0, A1 and A2 poster presets) · Target: Adobe InDesign 2026 Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-12 · Change: minor (text threads by hand; the alpha gate waits on Primary Text Frame page fixes) · Target: Adobe InDesign 2026 Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-13 · Change: minor (parent canvas refresh) · Target: Adobe InDesign 2026 Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-13 · Change: minor (bounded control click/drag input) · Target: Adobe InDesign 2026 Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-12 · Change: minor (text stroke behind fill) · Target: Adobe InDesign 2026 Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-13 · Change: minor (text threads by hand; the alpha gate waits on Primary Text Frame page fixes; Links source paths) · Target: Adobe InDesign 2026 Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-13 · Change: minor (table anchors keep their own paragraphs) · Target: Adobe InDesign 2026

DesignCraft aims at full Adobe InDesign parity, and to be better: faster, open (documented JSON format + IDML), scriptable by agents (MCP), and available on the web.

Headline numbers

	Value	Kind
Feature breadth	~80% (69% of InDesign 21.6's in-scope menu items matched; 99% of our 275-row checklist)	measured bounds, estimate between
Ready for real work	~47% (range 42–52%)	estimated: weighted sum over the dimensions below
Mainstream practitioner	~42% (weekly core 60.7% × 0.88 interaction × 0.92 stability × 0.85 file exchange)	estimated
Essentials user	~54% (core features 72% × 0.90 launch × 0.88 discoverability × 0.95 files received)	estimated
Remaining to beta	420–750 Opus 5.5 agent-hours (~120–200 wall-clock hours with 4–5 agents)	estimated
Remaining to full parity	1,150–1,950 Opus 5.5 agent-hours	estimated

Audience	Ready	Opus 5.5 agent-hours to ~95%	Work that dominates
Full target (ready for real work)	~47%	1,150–1,950 (~70% parallel)	depth across all areas, scripting compatibility, localization, typography fidelity, INDD/IDML
Mainstream practitioner	~42%	500–850 (~65% parallel)	INDD and IDML real-file corpus, composition fidelity, weekly-area depth, PDF/X-1a and printing
Essentials user	~54%	135–250 (~50% parallel)	start-up robustness, context menus and copy/paste, threading, fonts, Windows printing

Why pre-alpha: it fails one of InDesign's core workflows, the alpha gate in docs/roadmap.md. Text threads by hand (click a port, then click or draw a frame; thread and unthread commands), but Primary Text Frame autoflow adds pages users can't delete (#165). Everything else in the gate works end to end on macOS (document setup, styles, images, object editing, PDF export, save and reopen), and ready for real work (~47%) is above the alpha bar, so the Primary Text Frame page fixes are the whole distance to alpha. Beyond that, beta needs INDD and IDML proven on real files, composition compared with InDesign's, and basic editing fixed on Windows and Linux. Details: docs/target-app-parity.md.

By dimension

Dimension	Ready	Hours	Doc
Features (depth)	55%	250–400	target-app-parity.md
Typography and composition fidelity	45%	120–200	typography-parity.md
File formats	40%	150–250 + 10–30 (INDD corpus)	file-format-parity.md
UI/UX fidelity	45%	120–180	ui-parity.md
Stability	45%	60–100	gaps.md
Performance	65%	40–80	gaps.md
Localization	45%	120–180	localization-parity.md
Platforms	55%	40–80	hardware-parity.md
Hardware	45%	20–40	hardware-parity.md
Ecosystem (scripting, plug-ins)	15%	150–250	gaps.md
AI features	15%	60–120	gaps.md

All "Ready" figures are estimates; the weights and evidence are in target-app-parity.md.

Features

Breadth from docs/parity-checklist.md (cargo xtask parity, measured); Ready estimated.

Area	Breadth	Ready	Hours
Application shell & workspace	99%	55%	40–60
Documents, pages, spreads	100%	65%	20–35
Layers	100%	75%	5–10
Frames, shapes & paths	100%	60%	25–40
Transform	100%	70%	10–20
Fill, stroke, colour	100%	60%	20–35
Effects & transparency	100%	50%	20–30
Placing & links	93%	55%	20–35
Type & text frames	99%	45%	40–60
Typography	100%	45%	see typography-parity.md
Styles	100%	60%	15–25
Tables	100%	55%	25–40
Long documents	100%	45%	30–50
Interactivity & digital	100%	40%	30–50
Output & production	92%	55%	40–70
XML & automation	100%	35%	see Ecosystem
View & navigation	100%	65%	10–20
Undo, history, saving	100%	70%	5–10
Accessibility	100%	50%	15–25

Languages

Interface strings translated, of 1,724 measured. Detail: docs/localization-parity.md. A string without a translation shows in English and fails no check; cargo xtask i18n-report (also a cargo xtask ci step) lists the missing strings per language.

Language	Code	Status	Translated
English	en	full	100%
Simplified Chinese	zh	partial	83%
Spanish	es	partial	83%
Hindi	hi	none	0%
Arabic	ar	partial (RTL UI and composition)	85%
French	fr	partial	83%
Portuguese (Brazil)	pt-br	partial	61%
Indonesian	id	none	0%
Japanese	ja	partial	95%
German	de	partial	83%
Korean	ko	none	0%
Vietnamese	vi	none	0%

Also shipped: Czech (99%), Italian (85%), Ukrainian (83%), Polish (99%). Also shipped: Italian (85%), Ukrainian (83%), Georgian (100%).

Upcoming

Ranked; detail and estimates in docs/roadmap.md, the full list in docs/gaps.md.

1. Alpha gate: Primary Text Frame page fixes: autoflow adds pages users can't delete (#165) (5–7 h)
2. Basic editing on every platform: copy/paste, context menus, caret formatting (30–50 h)
3. CI running cargo xtask ci on pull requests (4–8 h)
4. INDD real-file corpus: measure what .indd files keep through indd-utils (10–30 h)
5. IDML real-file corpus and fixes (60–100 h)
6. Composition oracle against InDesign; optical kerning tuning; overset rule (70–125 h)
7. Start on any GPU; find every installed font (25–50 h)

Documents

target-app-parity.md (assessment) · gaps.md (work list) · roadmap.md (milestones, plan) · parity-checklist.md (presence checklist) · typography-parity.md · file-format-parity.md · ui-parity.md · hardware-parity.md · localization-parity.md · architecture.md · agents: agents.md, mcp.md, control-protocol.md · CJK: cjk.md, cjk-typography.md · Arabic: arabic-typography.md

Progress log

Newest first.

• 2026-10-24 · Custom-positioned anchored objects honour Relative to Spine (anchored.options {spineRelative}, IDML SpineRelative): the settings describe a left-hand page and mirror on a right-hand page, so marginal notes stay in the outside margin on both pages of a spread. On right-hand pages they took the left-hand placement and landed in the inside margin, across the spine or over the body text. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-23 · Save and export dialogs (Save As, Save a Copy, Export PDF and the other exports, Package, libraries and books) start in the active document's folder once it has been saved, and for a document never saved in the folder of the last file saved or exported, remembered across sessions (#1653). A folder deleted since falls back to the system's choice. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-22 · Autoflow (Shift-click with the loaded text cursor, autoflow on Place, text.thread {autoflow}) fills the pages that follow before it adds any, as InDesign does: one frame per column on each following page, whatever else the page holds, then new pages at the end of the document. It inserted pages right after the story's last frame, in front of the document's own pages. Frames it set past the end of the text go again; a page the document had stays, and a page autoflow added only for such a frame goes with it. Smart Text Reflow of the primary text frame is unchanged. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · Edit › Keyboard Shortcuts imports a set saved by InDesign's Show Set (.txt, Windows or Mac key names, UTF-8 or UTF-16): matched commands take its Default shortcuts or lose theirs, other commands give up keys it takes, and a report lists what it changed and the items it could not match (window.importShortcuts, #1180). Tool keys stay fixed. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-23 · Translations: a missing string shows in English and fails no test; cargo xtask i18n-report, run by cargo xtask ci, prints the missing strings per language. Tests keep duplicate-key and placeholder checks and the language mechanics (lookup, context captions, plural captions, right-to-left). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-22 · A ruler guide dragged with the Selection tools, out of a ruler, on its own or with other selected guides, snaps along its axis as objects do (#1221): to other ruler guides, margins, columns, bleed, page and object edges and centers (with the smart-guide mark) and the document grid, within the snap zone and following Snap to Guides and Smart Guides. Shift snaps to the ruler's ticks and Cmd suspends snapping. The preview line, the position readout and the drop use the same snapped position. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-22 · macOS: the app menu has a Language submenu after Settings… with each interface language in its own name and the current one checked, as in the suite's other apps; Preferences › General › Interface Language stays. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-22 · macOS menu bar: the menus keep working after the interface language or Show CJK Features changes (a rebuilt menu bar lost every click, Quit included), and its key equivalents are the shortcuts in effect, so a shortcut moved in the Keyboard Shortcuts editor leaves its old menu item. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-22 · Paragraph rules: Rule Above's offset is measured from the first line's baseline to the rule's bottom edge, as in InDesign. Rules sat one ascent too high and crossed the previous paragraph's text (reported from an imported INDD document). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-21 · Ruler guides are selected like objects (#1282): a click with the Selection tools selects a guide (also where it crosses an object), Shift-click adds or removes one, a new guide from the rulers is selected, a marquee that touches no object selects the guides it crosses, and Edit › Select All Guides (⌥⌘G, guide.selectAll) selects every unlocked guide on the spread. Selected guides draw thicker in their layer's color, drag together (all of them shown moving), nudge with the arrow keys and go with Delete, each as one undo step (guide.select, guide.deselect, guide.moveBy, guide.delete {}). With one guide selected the Control bar's X (vertical guide) or Y (horizontal guide) field and Properties › Transform show where it is, as the rulers measure, and typing a value moves it there. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-17 · PDF/X-4 export warns about fonts drawing visible text without an embedded font program, including placed PDF forms; validate-pdf reports the font and page (#909). Invisible OCR text is exempt. Detection only: fonts are not embedded or outlined automatically. Repeated forms reuse context-aware font findings; a document-wide operation limit and a form-nesting depth limit report incomplete checks instead of allowing excessive nested-form traversal. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · Selection: drag a column guide to move its gutter, as in InDesign (#1096). Both guides of the gutter move together and keep its width, stop at the neighbouring guides and the margins, and snap to the document grid, guides and objects, or with Shift to the ruler's tick marks; Escape cancels and the drag is one undo step. Locked column guides (the default) are not picked. A document page takes the result as its own columns; on a parent page it passes to the pages that follow it. layout.moveColumnGuide does the same over the control channel and MCP. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · Layout: autoflow, inserted pages and new parents follow dragged column guides (#1096). Autoflow sets one frame per dragged column and counts the pages it adds from them; Insert Pages and New Parent keep the custom positions with the column count and gutter; a page that moves to the other side of the spine (inserted, deleted or moved pages, Duplicate Spread, a new parent's other page) has them mirrored across its margin box, as InDesign does; document.inspect reports each page's gutter, column rects and whether its columns are custom. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · Layout: Margins and Columns keeps dragged column guides unless the column count or gutter changes (#1096). The dialog sends every field on OK, so a margin-only change re-divided the columns evenly. Margin changes keep the positions; the columns follow them only while they fit the margin box. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · Lock Guides and Lock Column Guides are commands in View ▸ Grids & Guides (view.lockGuides, ⌥⌘;, and view.lockColumnGuides), so the control channel and MCP reach them. Lock Column Guides is an undo step, is saved with the document, on in new ones, and read from and written to IDML's ColumnGuideLocked, which export always wrote as locked (#1096). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · IDML: a page keeps column guides that were dragged off centre (InDesign's Custom columns). They were divided evenly on import, so the gutter sprang back to the middle; the imported positions now place the columns, with the canvas guides, snapping and text placement following them, and they are written back on export. Layout › Margins and Columns re-divides them evenly when the count or gutter changes, as InDesign's does. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · IDML: custom column positions are checked before they are used (#1096). A set must give two edges per column, ascending from the left margin to the right one; any other (a wrong count, unsorted or non-numeric values, a list longer than 216 columns allow, or positions left behind by a margin or page-size change) is the even split, in the canvas, on import and on export, instead of columns drawn outside the margins. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · Type › Reload Fonts (font.reload): fonts installed, edited or removed while DesignCraft runs are read again without a restart, and the open documents recompose with them (#328, #547). An edited font file is noticed by its length and modification time; bundled, added and document fonts stay as they are. InDesign does this by itself, so noticing changes automatically is still open (gap 6). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · Parents can be deleted from their Pages-panel context menu or layout.parents.delete {id}. Applied-page and based-on references are cleared, local override copies survive, and Undo restores the parent. Addresses the deletion portion of #956; no readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-17 · File › Package writes the document's and the IDML's links relative to the package (Links/logo.png, file:Links/logo.png), so a package holds no path from the machine that made it; opening a document resolves them to the files beside it. Links › Copy Link(s) To still links by full path. (#340). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-18 · View › Screen Mode: Bleed and Slug do what they say. Both were selectable from the toolbar, the View menu and view.screenMode but drew the canvas exactly as Normal did, guides and all; they are preview modes now, and what each page shows reaches the bleed box or the slug box instead of stopping at the trim. The slug guide is drawn as well, in the Slug colour from Preferences › Guides & Pasteboard, which nothing had read. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-17 · Object strokes reject malformed types and unknown type fields before changing the document; command help lists every stroke kind and its required fields. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-17 · Docs: documented a persistent source CLI install with Cargo, MCP-client PATH setup and bare-name server registration in docs/mcp.md. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · Selection: drag a column guide to move its gutter, as in InDesign (#1096). Both guides of the gutter move together and keep its width, stop at the neighbouring guides and the margins, and snap to the document grid, guides and objects, or with Shift to the ruler's tick marks; Escape cancels and the drag is one undo step. Locked column guides (the default) are not picked. A document page takes the result as its own columns; on a parent page it passes to the pages that follow it. layout.moveColumnGuide does the same over the control channel and MCP. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · Layout: Margins and Columns keeps dragged column guides unless the column count or gutter changes (#1096). The dialog sends every field on OK, so a margin-only change re-divided the columns evenly. Margin changes keep the positions; the columns follow them only while they fit the margin box. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · Layout: autoflow, inserted pages and new parents follow dragged column guides (#1096). Autoflow sets one frame per dragged column and counts the pages it adds from them; Insert Pages and New Parent keep the custom positions with the column count and gutter; document.inspect reports each page's gutter, column rects and whether its columns are custom. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · Layout: autoflow, inserted pages and new parents follow dragged column guides (#1096). Autoflow sets one frame per dragged column and counts the pages it adds from them; Insert Pages and New Parent keep the custom positions with the column count and gutter; a page that moves to the other side of the spine (inserted, deleted or moved pages, Duplicate Spread, a new parent's other page) has them mirrored across its margin box, as InDesign does; document.inspect reports each page's gutter, column rects and whether its columns are custom. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · IDML: custom column positions are checked before they are used (#1096). A set must give two edges per column, ascending from the left margin to the right one; any other (a wrong count, unsorted or non-numeric values, a list longer than 216 columns allow, or positions left behind by a margin or page-size change) is the even split, in the canvas, on import and on export, instead of columns drawn outside the margins. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · IDML: a page keeps column guides that were dragged off centre (InDesign's Custom columns). They were divided evenly on import, so the gutter sprang back to the middle; the imported positions now place the columns, with the canvas guides, snapping and text placement following them, and they are written back on export. Layout › Margins and Columns re-divides them evenly when the count or gutter changes, as InDesign's does. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · Lock Guides and Lock Column Guides are commands in View ▸ Grids & Guides (view.lockGuides, ⌥⌘;, and view.lockColumnGuides), so the control channel and MCP reach them. Lock Column Guides is saved with the document, on in new ones, and read from and written to IDML's ColumnGuideLocked, which export always wrote as locked (#1096). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · Lock Guides and Lock Column Guides are commands in View ▸ Grids & Guides (view.lockGuides, ⌥⌘;, and view.lockColumnGuides), so the control channel and MCP reach them. Lock Column Guides is an undo step, is saved with the document, on in new ones, and read from and written to IDML's ColumnGuideLocked, which export always wrote as locked (#1096). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · Threading: the loaded text cursor threads into a text frame inside a group (it hit the group and showed it could not thread); a plain click still selects the group (#1075). Gap 27 closed. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · Greek text hyphenates. The patterns were never compiled in, so Greek set unhyphenated however narrow the column; "Greek", "Greek: Greece", el and el-GR all resolve now and ανθρωπος breaks αν-θρω-πος. They are the monotonic patterns (hyph-el-monoton, Dimitrios Filippou, under MIT), which is what polytonic text hyphenates by too. Five of InDesign's ~40 hyphenation languages. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-16 · A swatch applied to a placed greyscale or bitmap image colours it, as in InDesign: IDML's <Image FillColor> is read and written, greyscale pixels become a tint of the swatch on opaque white and a bitmap's white lets the frame show through, on screen and in PDF (spot swatches print on their plate). Colour images keep their colours. Applying the swatch from the Swatches panel comes next. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Color Theme: the toolbar tool previews up to five colours from a placed raster and adds them as one undoable swatch group. Local deterministic extraction; transparent padding is ignored. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Applying text styles removes matching local formatting so capture sources inherit later edits; real overrides and named character styles remain.

• 2026-10-15 · Redefine paragraph and character styles from local formatting, including the Styles panel context menu, global updates and one-step undo.

• 2026-10-15 · Paragraph Styles marks local character overrides and offers Clear Overrides in the style row menu; named character styles and equal local values are not false overrides.

• 2026-10-15 · Existing paragraph and character styles preview their attribute edits in Style Options; Cancel restores the document and OK records one edit.

• 2026-10-15 · Paragraph Style Options summarizes captured and pending color, size and paragraph settings relative to the Based On style.

• 2026-10-15 · Typography uses named panel groups with the Control panel and restores that arrangement on Reset Workspace, leaving the page clear until a panel is opened. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Character panel: dragging a variable font axis slider previews on the page and is one undo step when let go (with several axes it piled up an undo step per frame); each axis takes a typed value, and narrow axes (Skia's 0.48–3.2) step by hundredths instead of jumping to whole numbers. The fields line up in two columns, auto leading shows in parentheses, and an axis-set style shows its axes. New edit.preview / edit.commitPreview / edit.cancelPreview commands give panels, the control channel and MCP live previews. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Selection tool: once a frame's content is selected (double-click, or the content grabber), the pointer is a hand over it and a drag anywhere on it moves the content inside the frame (Shift keeps one axis), as in InDesign; it moved the frame unless the press was on the grabber. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Scaling a text frame (Cmd+Shift-dragging a handle, the Scale tool, Transform panel scale fields) sets its text larger or smaller and leaves the frame at 100%, as InDesign's default When Scaling: Apply to Content does; it used to keep the text's size with the scale on the frame. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · With nothing selected, the Tools panel's fill and stroke (the Color Picker, swatches, Apply None, Swap, Default) set the colours new shapes are drawn with, as InDesign's document defaults; the proxy shows them. They were refused ("nothing selected").

• 2026-10-15 · The Eyedropper with text selected picks up the formatting of the text it clicks (character style and overrides, paragraph style and overrides) and applies it to the selection, as InDesign's does; it copied the clicked frame's fill and stroke instead. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · A0, A1 and A2 poster presets are available in New Document, Document Setup, Properties, the Page tool and the Pages panel's size menu, as well as file.new and layout.pageSize. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Define Lists… is listed under Type › Bulleted & Numbered Lists in command search and Edit › Menus, matching the menu, and the parity doc no longer lists a Type › Paragraph Rules… menu item that does not exist. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Pressing Enter in the Layers panel's rename field without typing leaves an unnamed object unnamed, so it keeps following its automatic label instead of taking it as a fixed name. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Apply Gradient (.) with the Stroke box in front puts a new default gradient on the stroke in one undo step and leaves the fill's swatch and tint as they were. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · In a facing-pages document, two odd-numbered pages in a row after a section restart (page 2 starting at 1) each get their own spread and stay right pages, instead of sharing a spread with an odd page on the left. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Character formatting set at a caret on a blank line (an empty paragraph) applies to the line's paragraph mark and to the text typed there, also after the caret has left the line and come back; typed text used to take the previous paragraph's format. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Very wide effects stay sharp at high zoom: a wide Basic Feather draws the object itself at full resolution, with only the soft mask at a reduced one, and wide inner shadows, inner glows, satin and bevels are clipped to the shape at full resolution, so they no longer blur the object or bleed past its edge. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · The Typography panel controls every OpenType feature a character format carries: Other Features lists Proportional Metrics, Horizontal Kana, Localized Forms, Mark Positioning, Justification Alternates and Roman Italics. Lining, Oldstyle, Tabular or Proportional chosen alone also sets the other figure axis, so IDML export keeps the figure style instead of writing Default. Standard Ligatures follows and sets Character › Ligatures. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Join Path and Convert Point leave a path on a locked layer or inside a locked group unchanged, as the other path edits do. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · A kerning value chosen in the Character panel or Properties at a caret kerns the pair at the caret (the character before it takes the value, in one undo step), and the field shows that pair's kerning; at the start of a story or paragraph it is kept for the next typing, and a selection is kerned as before (type.kernPair). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Japanese, Chinese and Korean input methods type into stories with the Type tool: the marked text shows in place, underlined (the clause being converted twice), with the candidate window at the caret, and the commit is one undo step. Keys, shortcuts, the clipboard and Undo wait while the input method composes; a click, a tool switch or another command keeps the marked text as typed. Not yet checked by hand with a system input method. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · IDML placed PDFs keep their page and Crop to box (PDFAttribute PageNumber and PDFCrop, written for every placed PDF); two crops of one PDF page stay two assets; a page the PDF lacks is left out of PDF export with a warning instead of failing it; $ID/ font names resolve; the IDML in a package links the images in its Links folder without embedding them. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · The CJK leading model and character alignment take effect only in paragraphs set with a Japanese composer (HL Composer J, HL Single J), which IDML import and export keep: Western and Arabic paragraphs set baseline to baseline on the Roman baseline, a paragraph switched to a Japanese composer gets the file's Aki Below spacing, and under Aki Below a line's leading is the space below it. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Document pages follow their parent page's margins and columns unless margins were set on the page itself (Page::local_margins): applying a different parent gives a page that parent's margins, a page that changes side after an insert takes the other parent page's, and a page given margins equal to its parent's keeps them when the parent changes. IDML import and older files mark pages whose margins differ from their parent as their own. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Start-up picks the GPU that drives the display (or the kind WGPU_POWER_PREF or the adapter WGPU_ADAPTER_NAME names), and when a start-up fails or hangs it restarts on the next adapter, then the next backend, then a software renderer, keeping recovered documents; start-up errors are logged to standard error and the log file (#273, #334). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · IDML: liquid guides keep their type on document and parent pages instead of reopening as ordinary ruler guides. Positions, orientation, Fit to Page, locks and layers are preserved; object liquid constraints remain unmapped (#872). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Table ▸ Convert Rows ▸ To Header / To Body / To Footer, as in InDesign: the selected rows become header rows when they touch the top of the table or its header rows, footer rows when they touch the bottom or its footer rows, and header or footer rows next to the body go back to body rows. The items are greyed out when the rows can't change (a gap, the last body row, a merged cell across the new boundary); one undo step. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Table of Contents: each included style can set a character style for its page number and for the text between entry and number, and Sort Entries in Alphabetical Order lists its entries alphabetically among their siblings, each with the entries under it (#1069). Both survive Update Table of Contents, renaming or deleting the character style, and IDML (PageNumberStyle, SeparatorStyle, Sort). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Measures in inches show four decimals, as InDesign's fields do (A4 is 8.2677 × 11.6929 in, a 1p0 gutter 0.1667 in); other units keep three.

• 2026-10-15 · Ruler menus as InDesign's: right-clicking where the rulers meet sets the units of both; each ruler's menu lists InDesign's units and Hide Rulers, the horizontal one Delete All Guides on Spread.

• 2026-10-15 · Properties › Edit Page works as InDesign's: the Page tool on the page in view, and Properties shows that page alone (Page Size: page, preset, orientation, W/H; Margins and Columns; Quick Actions) with Back. It opened Document Setup, which changes every page.

• 2026-10-15 · Deleting pages that contain objects asks first, as InDesign does ("The affected page contains objects. Delete the page anyway?", with Don't show again), from the Pages panel, Layout › Pages › Delete Page and Properties.

• 2026-10-15 · A page scrolled or jumped to shows its paper while its render is on its way, as in InDesign, instead of the black of its shadow.

• 2026-10-15 · Tab, Shift+Tab and Presentation hide the icon column's panel flyout and the classic floating panels too, as InDesign hides floating panels.

• 2026-10-15 · Layers panel: an object's row is renamed with a slow double-click (a second click on the selected row), as in InDesign; a quick double-click only selects it.

• 2026-10-15 · New Workspace is InDesign's: Name, and Capture › Panel Locations and Menu Customization (the items hidden with Edit › Menus), both on by default; a workspace saved without panel locations leaves the panels where they are. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Presentation shows one spread at a time, as large as the screen allows; the arrow keys, Page Up/Down, Home, End, a click and Shift-click go through the spreads.

• 2026-10-15 · Layout › First Page, Previous Page, Next Page, Last Page, Next Spread and Previous Spread, with InDesign's shortcuts (Shift+Page Up/Down, Shift+Cmd+Page Up/Down, Alt+Page Up/Down).

• 2026-10-15 · A panel tab's context menu (and the end of its panel menu) has InDesign's Close, Close Tab Group, Minimize and Collapse to Icons, before Float Panel and Group with; window.panel.closeGroup and window.collapseToIcons are commands. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Window › Styles › Paragraph Styles (or Character Styles) opens InDesign's floating Character Styles | Paragraph Styles group, which stays open while other panels open; it was a flyout that the next panel replaced. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Double-clicking the status bar's preflight count or its light shows the Preflight panel, as in InDesign.

• 2026-10-15 · A tool group's flyout closes on Esc and on a click anywhere outside it (a panel, the Fill swatch), as InDesign's; it only closed on a click on the canvas.

• 2026-10-15 · Pages panel › Panel Options…, as InDesign's: page and parent sizes from Extra Small to Jumbo, Show Thumbnails, parents shown vertically or side by side, Pages or Parents on Top, and how the two parts share a resize; in the panel menu, the page menu and the right-click menu on the panel's empty part.

• 2026-10-15 · The Pages panel is laid out as InDesign's: parents and pages scroll on their own, a divider between them shows more or fewer parents, and the footer (page count, Edit page size, Create new page, Delete) stays at the bottom. It scrolled away with the pages.

• 2026-10-15 · IDML: ruler guides import and export (they were dropped). Each page's guides come in measured from the document's ruler origin (spread, page or spine), with Fit to Page, Locked and their layer, parent pages' included, and go out again under their pages. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Find Font no longer reports a style missing when it differs from the installed one only in spacing or case (InDesign files can name Regular with a trailing space); the text was already drawn in the right face. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · A line of text is set when its baseline fits in the frame, as in InDesign: descenders may hang below the frame's bottom. A frame sized to the cap height of a big heading (103 pt in a 2.77 cm frame, as Zero2Graphic's magazine tutorial draws them) no longer oversets. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · A story that ends with a return is no longer overset when only its empty last paragraph doesn't fit, as in InDesign (Preflight said "Overset text: 0 characters" for a caption InDesign shows with no errors). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · Flex Layout (InDesign 2026): Object › Flex Layout (Add to, Convert to, Remove) and a Flex Layout panel laid out as InDesign's, also in Properties. A container lays out its objects by direction, wrap, justification, the alignment grid, Fixed/Auto width and height, padding and spacing, after every edit; Add detects aligned objects (direction, Auto size, Space Between at their spacing); resizing a container reflows its objects instead of scaling them; dragging an object in one reorders it. Montilla Design's tutorial replays step for step. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · IDML: the CJK leading model InDesign writes on [No paragraph style] of every document (Aki Below) only applies when the document uses a Japanese composer, as in InDesign; a Western document's paragraphs after a size change no longer sit lower than in InDesign (Montilla Design's Flex Layout file: its captions came out overset). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-15 · IDML: linked images in a subfolder beside the package load when the package is opened on another machine (a link to /images/logo.png finds images/logo.png next to the .idml); they showed as missing. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · Overset text is marked on every frame that ends an overset story, selected or not and inside groups too (the red mark at the out port, with frame edges shown); a selected group shows the in/out ports of the text frames inside it. InDesign shows it only on the selected frame, which hides overset labels in grouped objects until Preflight. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · Load Swatches adds the colors of an .ase file that repeat a name or have none: a repeated name gets a number (Red 2), and a color without a name is named by its value (C=0 M=0 Y=0 K=55). Before, a repeated name kept one of its colors, and only the first unnamed color was added, with an empty name. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · Objects snap to the bleed guide's four sides while moving, resizing or drawing; snapping and the canvas share one bleed rectangle (Spread::bleed_rect). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · Threading keeps generated and linked stories, text that refers to a story, local IDs and locked frames intact; a colour chosen at a caret waits for the typing, Swap Fill and Stroke on text keeps each run's colours, control-channel input never reads or writes the system clipboard, and IDML frame preferences given as properties import with bounded column counts (#84). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · The Liquid Layout panel follows InDesign's: Liquid Page Rule with the page number, Content › Auto-Fit, and Object Constraints › Resize with Page and Pin for the selected object on an object-based page; Create Alternate Layout moved to the Layout menu. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · On an object-based page the Page tool shows a selected object's liquid pins and resize locks as InDesign does: a click pins a side to the page edge or locks the width or height, with InDesign's tooltips. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · With the Page tool, the Control panel shows the page as InDesign's does: W/H from a reference point, page-size preset (US Business Card added), orientation, Liquid Page Rule and Show Parent Page Overlay, which draws the parent page's size over a resized page. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · The Page tool works as InDesign's: a click selects a page and shows its handles and liquid page rule; dragging a handle previews the rule and springs back, Alt-drag resizes the page from the opposite edge, Shift keeps proportions, with a W/H readout. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · With the Page tool, a guide dragged from a ruler is a liquid guide (dashed), as in InDesign; guide-based pages stretch the objects it crosses. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · The Pages panel menu follows InDesign's order: Insert Pages…, Move Pages…, Duplicate Spread (and at End of Document), Delete Page (and Delete Spread for a spread of several pages), New Parent…, Apply Parent to Pages, Override All Parent Page Items, Parent Pages, Create Alternate Layout…, Numbering & Section Options…, Allow Selected Spread to Shuffle. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · Pages panel: Alt-drag copies a page that is a spread of its own (one undo step; layout.pages.duplicateSpread takes to), a page dropped on Create new page is duplicated at the end, Edit page size offers the presets and Custom Page Size…; duplicated pages keep their own size, rule and guides; thumbnails of pages of their own size stay in their rows. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · The Type tool draws a new text frame over a locked empty frame, as InDesign does, instead of turning the locked frame into a text frame. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · 100% black shows as pure black on screen by default, as InDesign's Appearance of Black does out of the box (Display All Blacks as Rich Black); Preferences › Appearance of Black › Display All Blacks Accurately still shows it as the dark grey it prints, and a saved choice is kept. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · Pathfinder keeps the frontmost object, as InDesign does: a photo placed over shapes and intersected with them shows through the shapes (it was dropped, and the shapes kept their black fill); Add, Exclude Overlap and Minus Back take the front object's fill too, Subtract still keeps the back one. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · The Color panel's Tint field keeps what is typed while it has focus and applies it on Enter or when it loses focus, clamped to 0–100 %. Typing 60 over 100 % no longer snaps back to 100 after the first digit (10060), and a typed tint is no longer ignored. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · Layout › Margins and Columns and Layout › Create Guides are laid out as InDesign's: Margins in Top/Bottom and Inside/Outside pairs with a link button that makes all four the same, Rows and Columns side by side, Fit Guides to Margins or Page, and a Preview checkbox that shows the change on the canvas before OK. A measurement field works out arithmetic when you leave it (0.4375 in*2 becomes 0.875 in). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · The Pathfinder panel is laid out as InDesign's: Paths (Join, Open, Close, Reverse), Pathfinder, Convert Shape and Convert Point, each a row of icon buttons. Join Path closes an open path or joins two at their nearest ends (path.join), and Convert Point makes the selected points plain, corner, smooth or symmetrical (path.convertPoints). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · Type › Fill with Placeholder Text fills a frame with paragraphs of a few sentences, as InDesign does, so one paragraph can be styled on its own (it was one long paragraph, and the filler ran sentences together, "interit.Ovid"). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · The Swatches panel has InDesign's header: a Fill/Stroke proxy, Formatting Affects Container/Text and the Tint of the colour in front (a tint alone keeps each object's own swatch). Clicking a swatch applies it to the fill or stroke in front (of the text, when formatting affects text), and the bottom row has New Color Group, New Swatch and Delete Swatch. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · With the Page tool, the Control panel shows the page as InDesign's does: W/H from a reference point, page-size preset (US Business Card added), orientation, Liquid Page Rule (now with Controlled by Parent) and Show Parent Page Overlay, which draws the parent page's size over a resized page. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · The Pages panel menu follows InDesign's order: Insert Pages…, Move Pages…, Duplicate Spread (and at End of Document), Delete Page/Spread, New Parent…, Apply Parent to Pages, Override All Parent Page Items, Parent Pages, Create Alternate Layout…, Numbering & Section Options…, Allow Selected Spread to Shuffle. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · Pages panel: Alt-drag copies a page, a page dropped on Create new page is duplicated at the end, Edit page size offers the presets and Custom Page Size…; duplicated pages keep their own size, rule and guides; thumbnails of pages of their own size stay in their rows. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · In a facing document, pages take their side from their section's page numbers, as InDesign shuffles them: a section that starts at 1 on a left page moves it to the right and the pages after it follow, with their objects. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · The Type menu follows InDesign's order (Size, Character ⌘T, Paragraph ⌥⌘T, Glyphs, the style panels, Notes, footnotes and endnotes, then the insert submenus and Show Hidden Characters); Current Page Number has ⌥⇧⌘N. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · Colour parameters: a bare {c,m,y,k} is always read as 0..100, so C 1 is a 1 % tint and no longer solid cyan; fractions take the colour's own {model: "cmyk", …} form (#910). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · The Tools panel follows InDesign's: Gradient Swatch and Gradient Feather are tools of their own; in two columns Content Collector and Placer, Apply Color / Gradient / None and Normal / Preview each get a button; View Options holds Frame Edges, Rulers, Guides, Smart Guides, Baseline Grid and Hidden Characters; Apply Color (,) and Apply Gradient (.) reuse the last colour and gradient. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-14 · Georgian interface (ka, Edit ▸ Interface Language ▸ ქართული): every catalog key translated, count captions as noun: n.

• 2026-10-13 · IDML: an anchored object takes each anchor setting it leaves unset from its object style, the styles that one is based on, then [None]; other item attributes read through the same chain. A left-aligned anchored object's X offset reads in the layout's direction. A rotated group's bounds follow its children's outlines instead of the box of their rotated boxes. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Control-channel clicks and drags validate positive counts and the complete pending-event budget before queuing input (#732). Oversized requests leave pending gestures intact, preventing unbounded click-count allocation. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Switching between document and parent pages refreshes the canvas immediately, preventing black parent pages and stale document objects when the zoom stays the same. Ordinary edits retain partial repainting. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Placed PDFs are drawn through pdfcraft's patched hayro crates: calculator functions whose idiv divides by zero or overflows, chains of stitching functions a hundred thousand deep, and mesh shadings with points far off the page, ten thousand overlapping triangles or forty thousand patches no longer panic, overflow the stack, run for over a minute or use more than 2 GiB of memory. A page with a /UserUnit, and its trim, bleed and art boxes, are sized in points. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Object › Fitting has InDesign's shortcuts: Fill Frame Proportionally ⌘⌥⇧C, Fit Content Proportionally ⌘⌥⇧E, Fit Frame to Content ⌘⌥C, Fit Content to Frame ⌘⌥E, Center Content ⌘⇧E. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Gradients between process colours blend as inks, as InDesign shows them: magenta to cyan passes through C 50 M 50 (a light lilac) on screen instead of the darker RGB mix, and a midpoint between CMYK or grey stops no longer turns the PDF shading RGB. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Commands refuse parameter keys their params description doesn't name (#776): the control channel, MCP (-32602, every batch step checked before the first runs) and designcraft-cli --cmd answer with an “unknown parameter” error naming the nearest or the accepted keys instead of running with defaults; journals still replay. Descriptions of the table, anchored-object, data-merge and placing commands now name every key they read. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · File ▸ Open Recent lists the documents last opened or saved (newest first, no duplicates; Save a Copy and exports don't count), with Clear Recent Files; the start screen shows the last eight, below the community card, as cards with a picture of the first page: saving puts one in the file (preview.png), so the start screen reads it without opening the document. A file that is gone is dimmed and says so when chosen, and stays listed. Preferences ▸ File Handling sets how many are kept (default 20, 0–100). file.openRecent {index}, file.recentFiles, file.clearRecent (#706). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Dropping an .ase file on the window loads its swatches, as Load Swatches does (the drop failed with "Can't Place the File"). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Text takes gradient swatches: a gradient fill or stroke on characters spans the text frame's box (on a path: the path's), on screen and in PDF. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Gradient swatches work on strokes: drawn across the path's box on screen and in PDF (they drew nothing), set with object.gradient {target: stroke} and in the Gradient panel when the Stroke box is in front; the stroke's gradient vector moves with the shape and round-trips through IDML. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · The Gradient panel follows InDesign's layout (thumbnail, Type, Location, Angle, Reverse, ramp with midpoint diamonds) and takes swatches dragged from the Swatches panel: dropped on a stop they colour it, elsewhere they add a stop. Stops keep their CMYK through panel edits; object.gradient stops accept a swatch. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · New Swatch works as InDesign's: a gradient made in the Gradient panel becomes "New Gradient Swatch" (still applied), an unnamed colour a listed swatch, a named swatch a "copy" (swatch.new); swatch.create {gradient} makes a gradient swatch from colour swatches. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Radial gradients stretch with the object's box, as InDesign draws them: by default an ellipse reaching the frame's sides (it was a circle reaching only the longer side), and a Gradient Swatch tool drag keeps the box's proportions; on screen and in PDF. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Inner Glow takes a blend mode (Screen by default) and a Technique (Softer or Precise); Basic Feather takes Choke and Corners (Sharp, Rounded, Diffused), in the Effects dialog and object.effects. Inner glow and bevel blend modes now mix with the object below them instead of an empty layer. Noise isn't drawn. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Text Frame Options is laid out as InDesign's: General (Columns: Fixed Number or Fixed Width with Number, Width and Gutter; Balance Columns; Inset Spacing with the link button; Vertical Justification; Ignore Text Wrap), Baseline Options (First Baseline Offset and Min) and Column Rules. object.textFrameOptions takes columnWidth and firstBaselineMin. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · The Window menu follows InDesign's order (Arrange, Workspace, then the panels alphabetically with Color, Editorial, Object & Layout, Styles… submenus), and Window › Workspace lists the workspaces as InDesign does, now with Essentials Classic: the Control panel and an icon column of named panel groups. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · .indd and .indt documents open through File › Open, drop, the web inbox, file.open, file.openBytes, file.openIdml and the CLI: storytold/indd-utils converts them to IDML in memory and the IDML importer reads the result, on desktop and web. Converter warnings come first in the open result; an unreadable file is an open error (#21, #114). No readiness percentage change until a real-file corpus measures it.

• 2026-10-13 · macOS: a command chosen with the mouse in the menu bar runs at once. It used to wait for the next mouse move or key press over the window, so File › Open, Place and Save As seemed to take 10–20 seconds to open their dialogs. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · An explicit recovery folder (file.recovery.save with dir) never overwrites or deletes another running app's checkpoints. Document uids start at 1 in every process, so two apps saving recovery to one chosen folder replaced or removed each other's <uid>.designcraft. A run replaces or removes only the entries it wrote or recovered there, refuses an occupied uid, and refuses a folder whose run lock another app holds. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · PDF export leaves out form fields, buttons and video or sound that don't print: inside a hidden group, on a hidden or non-printing layer, or marked non-printing. Page content and interactive elements follow one inclusion rule. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · IDML export keeps parent item overrides: each page lists its overridden parent items and the local copy keeps its link to the parent item, so a reopened IDML file shows only the local copy (#725). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Reflowable EPUB and HTML export include tables (header and footer rows, merged cells), footnotes (a linked note after the paragraph that refers to it) and endnotes (a linked section at the end of the book). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Word import: table cells read text by the same rules as body text, so deleted text, moved-away text and field codes stay out (#721). Word's Normal comes in as its own paragraph style "Normal" over the document defaults, so text formatted only by Normal keeps its look; it conflicts only with a document's own Normal, and the style map can send it to [Basic Paragraph] (#722). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Text recomposes when the document baseline grid changes, when a layer holding a text-wrap object is shown or hidden, or when a section's start number, numbering style, prefix or marker changes; the composition cache keyed only on the section count and item identities and kept the old layout. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Path edits (path.setAnchor, path.moveAnchors, path.appendAnchor, path.reverse, path.close, anchor add/delete/convert, Erase, Smooth and Scissors) refuse a path that is locked, sits in a locked group or on a locked layer (#735). Properties links to the Stroke, Character, Paragraph, Effects, Text Wrap and Info panels open them in a customized panel layout too (#736). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · The Story Editor stays with the document its story belongs to: it hides while another document is active and closes with its document, so its edits never reach another document's story with the same id (#729). Undo restores the selection from before the command and Redo the one after it (#716). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Saving never reports success without a file: a document that can't be written is an error from Save, Save As, Save a Copy, Package, snippet export and the web serializer, leaving the existing file, the unsaved state and the recovery checkpoint as they were. Placed files over 4 GiB are written with zip64 sizes. A web Save whose browser download can't start reports the error and keeps the document unsaved (#741, #708). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Colour management runs on craft-libs' craft-cms. The default CMYK working space is its Coated FOGRA39 profile (Generic CMYK and Device CMYK stay selectable); CMYK swatches show relative colorimetric with the settings' black point compensation, and PDF/X-4 output intents embed the working CMYK profile (FOGRA39 by default). Profile names the built-in stands in for resolve to it; other unknown names are an error, and saved settings naming one start with the default. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Command scripts look up only a well-formed $N.path / $last.path reference; other strings starting with $, such as a GREP replacement of $1 and a nonbreaking space, stay as written, and $$ writes a literal $ (#749). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Dialogs and the About window move when you drag their title row, so the page behind them can be seen. A dragged dialog may go partly off-screen, but its title row stays reachable; each dialog opens centred, and again after the window is resized. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Links rows show their source paths; selecting a link shows its full path wrapped inside the panel, so same-named files from different folders can be distinguished. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · HTML and reflowable EPUB order grouped stories and graphics by their transformed spread position, including nested groups and rotated frames. Explicit Article order is unchanged. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · A selected placed graphic shows its own brown bounding box with handles: dragging one resizes the graphic inside its frame (Shift keeps proportions, Alt from the centre) and leaves the frame as it is; transform.set takes the graphic's new spread bounds. Builds on #415 and #550. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Create Outlines makes one compound path per line (and per text colour within a line), grouped, as InDesign does: Ungroup then leaves each line on its own to be spaced and made into one compound path again. A single line in one colour stays a single compound path. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Ungroup only takes groups apart: a frame with pasted-in content stays whole (and selected), is named by its shape in the Layers and Properties panels, and offers Convert Shape rather than Ungroup. Non-groups stay selected. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Copy with a placed graphic selected (Direct Selection) copies just the graphic, uncropped, where it sits on the page and without the frame's stroke, so Paste Into puts the whole image in place; Cut and Delete then remove only the graphic and leave its frame empty. Nested selections copy in their spread coordinates. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Object effects (Basic Feather, Inner Glow, shadows, glows, bevel, satin, directional and gradient feathers) apply to frames with pasted-in content, on screen and in image exports: the frame, its clipped content and its stroke are one object to the effect. PDF export still has no soft effects for any object. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Backspace between two consecutive tables, pasting a table next to a table anchor, and pasting several paragraphs right before one keep every table on its own anchor paragraph. Previously a table was dropped or left without its anchor, and the saved file failed to reopen. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · New Document has Preview (off by default, kept for the session): a document with the window's settings shows in the workspace and follows them once typing pauses. Create keeps it with a clean undo history and refuses invalid fields; Close removes it and shows the previous document again. The preview takes no Untitled number and writes no recovery data; one edited by a menu or script stays open as a document. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Object styles carry effects (drop shadow, feather, inner and outer shadows and glows, bevel, satin, gradient and directional feather). New styles from a selection keep its effects, style.object.edit changes a style's effects and every item that follows them, style.object.clearOverrides returns items to their style, and new frames take their default style's effects. IDML carries only the drop shadow and feather, for ObjectStyles (with their effects category and BasedOn chain) as for items (#653). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · A parent can be based on another parent (layout.parents.options). Pages draw the base parent's items, then the parent's, then their own, on screen and in PDF and image export; chains work, cycles are refused, overrides reach base items, document.inspect reports basedOn, and IDML round-trips it. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · The Text Wrap panel is laid out as InDesign's: the wrap buttons with Invert, and the four offsets (Top, Left, Bottom, Right) showing the object's values, with the link button that sets them all the same. It used to show a single offset, always 0. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-13 · Layout ▸ Table of Contents opens a real dialog: title and title style, Include Paragraph Styles and Other Styles lists with Add and Remove, and per style its entry style, page number position (after, before, none), separator and level. Replace Existing regenerates the current table of contents in place; otherwise OK makes a new frame on the page in view. IDML export writes the definition as a TOC style that import reads back, so Update works after a round trip. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Placed Excel tables and Excel data-merge records keep numeric precision, including small values, and preserve numeric-looking cached formula strings as text. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · The engine's atomic writer, used by saves and exports (documents, snippets, books, libraries, swatches, XML, interchange, MCP, desktop and CLI writes), delegates to craft-libs/craft-atomic. Failed writes retain the original; new files follow the umask and replaced files keep their permissions. Recovery checkpoints and package output keep their own no-follow writers. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · The Effects dialog, as in InDesign: Object › Effects (Transparency…, Drop Shadow… and the rest, and their shortcuts) and the Effects panel's fx button open it on the chosen effect, turned on. Transparency and every effect in one window, in the document's units, with X/Y offsets, Preview on the page, Cancel putting things back, and OK as one undo step (object.effects). Shadows default to InDesign's 120° light angle. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Editing type on a path: the Type tool clicks, drags and double-clicks along the curve (the character under the pointer, not one on the straightened line), a click on the letters themselves hits the frame, and the caret and highlight bend with the path. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Type on a path has start and end brackets, as in InDesign: selected path type shows them across the path, and dragging either with the Selection or Direct Selection tool moves where the text starts or ends (text past the end bracket is overset). type.pathOptions {end}; IDML reads and writes EndBracket. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · The Pen tool continues an open path from either end point, as in InDesign: the cursor shows it over an end point, a click there carries on drawing that path, a drag first reshapes the end point's direction lines, and the other end closes it. Object › Paths › Reverse Path (path.reverse); path.setAnchor; path.appendAnchor and path.close take a subpath. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · The Eyedropper puts a colour sampled from an image on the stroke when the toolbox's Stroke box is in front, as in InDesign (a line takes it on its stroke). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Linked text files (#597): placed Word, RTF and text files can stay linked; the Links panel shows them OK / Modified / Missing, and Update imports the file again into the same frames with the saved style map (the Links panel asks before replacing edits made in the layout). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Text in oval, polygon and other non-rectangular text frames follows the frame's outline: each line is set in the part of its band inside the shape, one inset away from the outline, in every column and in vertical frames; text wrap still applies on top (#646). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Colour entry: the Color Picker's hex, R/G/B and C/M/Y/K fields and the Color panel's number fields keep typed text until it is complete; panel and picker values are applied on a fixed scale ({model, …} colours in 0..1), so M 1 is 1 %. Picking keeps a CMYK colour CMYK; dialogs leave the page behind them undimmed; colours that round to the same swatch name share one swatch (#323). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Placed photos show in their own colours: embedded ICC profiles (Adobe RGB, ProPhoto, P3, grey) are converted to sRGB on screen, and CMYK JPEGs (including YCCK), CMYK TIFFs and CMYK PSDs go through their embedded CMYK profile or the working CMYK space with the colour settings' intent and black-point compensation, instead of the profile-free formula. Unreadable profiles are ignored. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Placed Word documents keep their bullets and numbering (#626): numbering.xml levels become bullet or numbered paragraphs with Word's number formats, label text, start numbers, restarts and list indents, also when a paragraph style carries the list. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Text strokes can sit behind the fill: the stroke lies wholly outside the letters at its full weight on screen, in PNG and in PDF, set from the Properties panel or Character Style Options. IDML StrokeAlignment on text imports and exports as this setting, so imported text with outside-aligned strokes keeps its letter shapes (#619). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Type tool: Option/Alt+Left/Right kerns the pair at the caret (manual kerning) or tracks a selection by the Kerning/Tracking increment (Preferences › Units & Increments, 20/1000 em), five times with Cmd/Ctrl; moving by words is Cmd+Left/Right on macOS and Ctrl+Left/Right elsewhere, and Option/Alt+Shift+Left/Right still selects by words (#621). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Autoflow on Place threads one frame per page column (right to left in a right-to-left story), so text no longer runs across the gutter; pages Smart Text Reflow adds get a primary frame with the page's columns (#625). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Vector art copied in Illustrator, VectorCraft, Figma or Inkscape pastes as editable paths, as InDesign pastes Illustrator art: the SVG those apps put on the clipboard becomes paths with their fills, strokes (weight, caps, joins, dashes) and opacity, groups stay groups and text comes in as outlines, centred in the view (edit.pasteSvg, ui.paste). Edit › Paste reads the system clipboard when nothing was copied in DesignCraft. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Pages panel: double-clicking a parent shows that parent and selects only its row; parent rows show rendered thumbnails. Commands name parents by id, full name, or a prefix only one parent has; an unknown or ambiguous name is an error instead of clearing the page's parent (#624). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · With the Type tool, dragging a table's column or row border resizes it (the double-arrow cursor shows over a border): later columns and rows move along, Shift keeps the table size, and Shift on the right or bottom edge scales every column or row. A dragged row becomes At Least; one undo step per drag, Esc cancels; works in rotated frames and turned spreads. Scripts use table.resizeBorder. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · The Tools panel's Fill/Stroke keys work: D (default fill and stroke), X (fill or stroke in front), Shift+X (swap per object, tints included) and / (Apply None), as color.* commands; swap and default are one undo step (object.swapFillStroke, object.defaultFillStroke); the Color panel follows the proxy's fill/stroke choice. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · With a placed graphic selected (Direct Selection), the Transform values act on the graphic inside its frame, as in InDesign: a tilted frame's image can be straightened to 0°. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · The Effects panel shows the level its settings apply to ("Group: Color Dodge 100%") and, as in InDesign, Isolate Blending and Knockout Group for a selected group. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Edit › Step and Repeat has its InDesign dialog: Repeat (Count, or Rows and Columns with Create as a grid), Offset (Vertical, Horizontal, in ruler units) and Preview, which shows the copies while the dialog is open; Cancel takes them away and OK makes them as one undo step. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Load Styles: the Paragraph Styles and Character Styles panels load styles from another DesignCraft document or an IDML file, with the styles, swatches and lists they name; a dialog picks the styles and what happens to one the document defines differently (style.load). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · On screen, blend modes blend with the objects below and not with the paper, as in InDesign and in PDF export: a Color Dodge or Screen object over blank paper shows as it is. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 (PDFW) · PDF, booklet and book composition share guarded writing, metadata and font preparation through craft-pdf. Layout, shaping, placed graphics, colour policy, tagging and PDF/X postprocessing remain in DesignCraft. Failed native drawing returns an export error; failed writer cleanup cannot serialize an incomplete document. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Text threads by hand: click a selected text frame's in or out port to load the text cursor, then click a frame to thread it, click empty space for a column-wide frame or drag one (it snaps like frame drawing); Shift-click autoflows, Alt-click stays loaded on the frame just added; click the linked frame or double-click a port to break the thread. text.thread, text.unthread, text.removeFromThread with undo; locked frames and layers refuse threads. The alpha gate now waits only on the Primary Text Frame page fixes (#165). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Properties › Transform shows rotation, shear and X/Y scale, and Rotate 90° and Flip Horizontal/Vertical buttons, as InDesign's does. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Underlines and strikethroughs are drawn as one bar per stretch of text on screen, as in PDF export: a bar per letter left faint seams between the letters. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · The section marker character shows its section's marker text on document pages (nothing when the section has none) instead of the word "Section", which stays on parent pages; editing the marker recomposes (#556). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · IDML import keeps a font family name exactly as written, trailing spaces included, and font lookup falls back to the name without surrounding spaces; FontStyle="Nothing" leaves the style to the paragraph (#558). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Clipping paths saved with images in IDML (Detect Edges, Alpha Channel, Photoshop Path, User-Modified Path, inverted or not) clip the image on screen and in PDF and survive IDML export; object.clippingPathOptions reports, inverts or removes one (#450). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Anchored objects with text wrap push text aside: other stories' text under them and the lines of their own story after the anchor's line (#557). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Hyphenation Zone applies to the Single-line Composer only, as in InDesign. With the default Paragraph Composer, ragged text hyphenates where InDesign does (aper-natem), giving the same line breaks. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Text frame auto-size: Height Only, Width Only, Height and Width (also keeping proportions) frames grow and shrink to fit their text after edits, around their reference point, with minimum sizes and No Line Breaks, in the same undo step (#180). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Text Frame Options › Balance Columns (object.textFrameOptions {balanceColumns}, IDML VerticalBalanceColumns) evens out the columns of the frame a story ends in, from its last column break on; frames the text runs on from fill normally (#609). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · macOS Dock Quit uses the same unsaved-document prompts as window and menu Quit. Repeated requests keep the current answers; Cancel retains every tab and unsaved recovery checkpoint, and completed Save/Don't Save answers exit through the ordinary event loop. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Orderly native exit writes the latest recovery state after finalizing current quit approvals; incomplete or stale plans keep their documents, and Undo to the saved state clears stale recovery. Unavailable or failed recovery is reported. Cancelable macOS Dock Quit remains open (#544). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Windows: dragging the window across monitors with different display scales keeps its size instead of growing until it crashes (winit pinned to its 0.30.x backport of the fix). The GPU surface may be as large as the adapter's largest texture (16384 px on DirectX 12, Vulkan and Metal hardware) instead of 8192, and a wgpu error is logged instead of closing the app. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Recovered documents keep a checkpoint until saved, closed or reverted, including a second crash before autosave. Restarted document IDs and explicit recovery folders preserve other snapshots; failed republishing retains the original. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Book numbering and style updates prepare every chapter before saving. Only closed native chapters are changed; imported IDML remains a read-only style/PDF source. If a later disk write fails, the error names the completed chapters; the batch is not a whole-book transaction. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Desktop write callbacks and CLI raster exports use the atomic writer too; open readers retain the original bytes, while private Unix modes and symlink targets survive replacement. Permanent tests cover both actual callers. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Save As, library edits and book collection edits persist prospective values before changing live state; failed writes preserve the document and existing collections. Save a Copy rebases data-source paths for its destination without changing the open document. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Window close and application/menu Quit ask about unsaved documents; later Cancel keeps every tab open, including earlier Don't Save choices. Approvals are rechecked after edits. Cancelable macOS Dock Quit remains open (#544). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Each running app keeps recovery data in its own locked folder; current folder and lock ownership are checked before writes and cleanup. Failed isolation disables recovery with a warning instead of sharing document IDs. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Native engine saves and exports replace files atomically; failed writes retain the original, private staging preserves Unix permissions, and valid long filenames work. Desktop Services and CLI raster exports remain separate follow-ups. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · A gradient feather on a group fades the group as one, on screen and in PDF. Before, the screen ignored it, and PDF masked the group with a box of zero size because a group has no path of its own. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · The Eyedropper samples a placed image: clicking the photo with text (or objects) selected fills them with the image's colour under the pointer, as an unnamed colour (color.sample), as in InDesign. Images on locked layers can be sampled. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · In a CMYK transparency blend space (print documents), blend modes blend in CMYK on screen as in InDesign. Color Dodge with 100% K text turns coloured areas under it white and leaves the paper alone, where RGB blending changed almost nothing. PDF export already did this. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Double-clicking a frame handle fits the frame to its content as in InDesign (a corner fits both sides, an edge only its own). Object › Fitting › Fit Frame to Content now fits text frames to their text too, growing them for overset text; fitting leaves locked objects and objects on locked layers as they are. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Words in capitals hyphenate like capitalized words (FERRUM COM-MODI), as in InDesign; Hyphenate Capitalized Words off keeps them whole. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Load Swatches refuses an .ase file with more than 100,000 colors, and swatch.load merges a file of 100,000 colors in under 0.1 s (it took 9.6 s of CPU in a test build). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-12 · Double-clicking the Fill or Stroke box in the Tools panel opens the Color Picker with the selection's colour, as in InDesign (it opened the Swatches panel). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-11 · Font menu laid out like InDesign's: filters (classification, favourites, recently added), families opening to their styles, the selected text as the sample in three sizes, Recently Used fonts, Show Similar Fonts and each font's format.

• 2026-10-11 · Document chapter numbering (#341): style, automatic, start at, same as previous document in the book; Update Numbering resolves it in book order.

• 2026-10-11 · Advanced workspace's object Control panel compacted into aligned two-row groups (#255): spinners, fill/stroke chips, proportion links, corners, Auto-Fit, alignment.

• 2026-10-11 · Moving a sheared and rotated text frame no longer leaves trails of text behind: canvas repaints cover the frame's whole text box, not just its outline. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-11 (printing): file.printers and file.print use craft-libs/craft-print for CUPS and Windows. DesignCraft retains PDF export, page selection, spreads, marks and bleed; dry runs create no temporary PDF or print job. Windows selects matching or default driver paper and shrinks oversized sheets without enlarging smaller ones; queue duplex defaults are preserved. Headless tests exercise exported bytes, job settings, dry runs and refusals; shared native Windows CI passes, including paused-queue submission and cleanup. PostScript, production print controls and physical output validation remain open. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-11 · The View menu follows InDesign's: proofing first, then zoom, Rotate Spread, Screen Mode, Display Performance, rulers, Extras, Grids & Guides and Structure; the view items that sat at the end of the Type menu moved there. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-11 · Properties › Appearance's Fill and Stroke menus gain InDesign's Tint field and, for a text frame, Apply To: Frame / Text. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-11 · story.replaceRange, story.setText, notes, footnotes, endnotes, type on a path and table cells read \r and \r\n as paragraph returns, as frame.create and text.insert already did. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-11 · Corner Options keep curved sides curved and round every corner point, including where an arc meets a line (a Pathfinder quarter circle with rounded corners stayed a triangle). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-11: Type › Justification… (Cmd+Alt+Shift+J, also in the Paragraph panel menu) sets word and letter spacing, glyph scaling and the composer on the selected paragraphs, sharing the Paragraph Style Options section (#531). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-11 · Properties gains InDesign's Pathfinder section (Add, Subtract, Intersect, Exclude Overlap, Minus Back) with several objects selected; section titles and icon buttons have accessible names. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-11 · transform.move {copy}, Edit › Duplicate and Step and Repeat return the copies' ids, so a script can go on with them. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-11 · object.fill and object.stroke refuse a swatch name the document doesn't have (it painted nothing) and suggest the name meant (Paper → [Paper]). No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-11 · Japanese captions now cover print ranges, imported style handling and table row/column movement, including row-height distribution. Existing translation and RTL helpers handle the display; command IDs, stored option values and user-defined style names are unchanged.

• 2026-10-11 · Live corners: the yellow widget on a selected rectangle frame shows corner diamonds; dragging one rounds the corners, Alt-click steps the corner shape (#186).

• 2026-10-11 · Optical kerning (#181): pairs are spaced from their outlines (ink gap per band, pulled towards the font's stem gap, bounded) instead of silently using the font's kern pairs.

• 2026-10-11 · New Document laid out like InDesign's (#325): Recent, Saved, Print, Web and Mobile preset tabs beside the preset's details; saved document presets live in the engine (file.savePreset, file.deletePreset, file.new {preset}); file.new takes intent, units, start page and per-edge bleed and slug.

• 2026-10-11 · macOS: fonts that font services and managers activate (Adobe Fonts, RightFont) are listed, read from the files CoreText has available (#261, #327).

• 2026-10-11: Document pages take their parent page's margins and columns (left or right parent page by side) and follow its changes unless they have their own; parent ruler guides draw and snap on the pages based on it. IDML import marks a page margin preference that differs from its parent as the page's own. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-11 · Document Setup laid out like InDesign's: Page Size, Margins (new: every page's, layout.documentSetup {margins}), Bleed and Slug with links, Adjust Layout.

• 2026-10-11 · IDML reads and writes a spread's view rotation (Rotate Spread) as the rotation part of the spread transform (#484).

• 2026-10-11 · The document grid is drawn (View ▸ Grids & Guides ▸ Show/Hide Document Grid, ⌘'), on the lines Snap to Document Grid uses, behind or in front of page items (#530).

• 2026-10-11 (DC-1): Hold Cmd+Space for the Zoom cursor and click/scrubby zoom, with Alt-click to zoom out. Releasing restores the selected tool; text editing and existing tool drags retain their input. Space remains Hand, and navigation changes neither the document nor undo history. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-10 (UI.4–UI.5): Panel tabs can move into other groups, split the dock, float, resize and return to their saved locations through shared docking transactions. Layouts persist in custom workspaces; UI and control commands share the same validated action path. Shared pane geometry and widget-state theme application retain all five palettes and local fonts. Split panes send keyboard input only to the focused canvas and scope contextual toolbar IDs per pane. No readiness percentage change.

• 2026-10-10 · Version 0.6.0; releases add a Linux riscv64 tar.gz (cross-compiled, CLI smoke-tested under QEMU).

• 2026-10-10 · Readiness per audience: full ~47% (method aligned with the standard, was 42%), mainstream practitioner ~42%, essentials user ~54%, each with hours to ~95%.

• 2026-10-10 · Stage re-normalized to pre-alpha under craftrules' core-workflow gate: text can't be threaded by hand (no out-port click, no thread command).

• 2026-10-10 · Full re-measure against InDesign 2026 21.6 (menu dump, bundle formats and localizations, 124 issues): breadth ~80%, ready ~42% (down from the ~83% "including depth" of 2026-10-04, on user evidence and the INDD gap); progress docs restructured to the craftrules standard (docs/parity.md → docs/parity-checklist.md; new target-app-parity, gaps, roadmap, architecture, typography, file-format, UI, hardware and localization docs). Landed today: split columns (#295), PDF export options dialog (#196), column rules (#274), Paragraph Rules dialog (#263), Character Style Options (#144), PDF/X-4 RGB handling (#223), Spanish hyphenation (#222), Japanese (#272), Italian (#218) and Ukrainian (#236) interfaces, relocated packages relink (#244), graphics backend chosen before the window (#297), IDML table styles (#288), warichu (#280), list numbering from IDML (#298), security hardening (#153, #155), many text-composition fixes (#282–#293).

• 2026-10-09 · Version 0.5.0; many user reports triaged into issues (#160–#265).

• 2026-10-08 · Version 0.4.0.

• 2026-10-07 · Community PRs: data merge, Brazilian Portuguese, PDF/X-4 flags, Office fonts on macOS; CJK 1.x (Korean line breaking, fallback fonts in Package); PrintCraft renamed PdfCraft.

• 2026-10-06 · Snapping to parent items, Windows packaging, ARM64 workflow, control-channel hardening.

• 2026-10-05 · FreeBSD build; caret-boundary fixes.

• 2026-10-04 · Never-crash pass across importers and the engine; rotate spread view; kashida in styles; previous estimate: breadth 99%, "~83% including depth", ~170 h remaining.

• 2026-10-03 · Release 0.1.1; separations, XML tagging, track changes, PDF/X-4 output intent, split window, buttons, menu customization.

• 2026-10-02 · Hyperlinks/Bookmarks panels, conditional text, tagged PDF, lists across stories, style groups, Glyphs panel, High Contrast theme.

• 2026-10-01 · First commit; skeleton, IDML, PDF, tables, footnotes, cross-references, index, spelling and parallel composition on the first day.

Revision history

Date	Change	Summary
2026-10-12	minor	Manual text threading landed; alpha distance 15–25 h → 5–7 h (Primary Text Frame page fixes, #165)
2026-10-11	minor	Localized Japanese print, import and table controls; readiness estimates unchanged
2026-10-10	minor	Full number 42% → 47% (method aligned with the standard: plain weighted sum, no new evidence); readiness table with hours per audience
2026-10-10	minor	Headline adds mainstream practitioner (~42%) and essentials user (~54%); method in docs/target-app-parity.md
2026-10-10	minor	Stage alpha → pre-alpha under the new core-workflow gate: manual text threading is missing; alpha gate table added to docs/roadmap.md
2026-10-10	major	Restructured to the progress-docs standard; full re-measure; the "Working today" inventory moved to docs/target-app-parity.md, milestones to docs/roadmap.md, the CLI/MCP section left to docs/agents.md (which already covered it)
2026-10-04	major	Parity estimate: breadth 99%, depth ~83%, ~170 h
2026-10-01	major	First roadmap: status, milestones

Windows installer unification — release preparation, 2026-10-12

The shared craft-installer UI preserves this revision's install options and provides persistent installation, repair and Windows Settings removal completion screens. Silent modes stay unattended. Earlier Windows acceptance is recorded in packaging/windows/README.md; normal CI and production-profile upgrade qualification against pinned current releases are in progress. No release or PR has been published.

• 2026-10-15 · Windows recovery folders validate the identity of the live locked file without reading it through a second handle. Missing or replaced locks disable writes and cleanup; regression tests cover retained exclusive locking and replacement-file protection. No readiness percentage change.

• PDF reader infrastructure: pinned shared parsing/rasterization, transformed page-box geometry and explicit failures for known incomplete layered-PDF exports. Application ownership and parity targets are unchanged.