designcraft/ROADMAP.md

DesignCraft roadmap

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.

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.
• 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 dialog, ⌘K palette, 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).
• 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.
• 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).
• 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 (CSV or JSON rows, <<Field>> placeholders), spell checking (public-domain Moby list + document dictionary, suggestions), Step and Repeat (count or grid), snippets, object styles, Numbering & Section Options.
• ~170 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): tables · TOC, text variables, footnotes · PDF/X-4 output intent, tagged PDF · Links panel + relink · UI for Data Merge/spelling/hyperlinks.

Milestones

#	Milestone	State
M0	Skeleton + vertical slice	✅
M1	Selection, transform, layers, pages, MCP	in progress
M2	Type I (Type tool, threading, Character/Paragraph, composer)	in progress
M3	Styles (nested/GREP, bullets, keeps, span columns)	started
M4	Color & effects	started
M5	Graphics & links	started
M6	Files & export (native, IDML, PDF, PNG/JPEG)	in progress (IDML ✅, PDF export)
M7	Long documents (sections, TOC, index, footnotes, books)	started (sections, hyperlinks, bookmarks)
M8	Tables
M9	Performance (MT composition, tiles)
M10	Find/Change, spelling, Preflight	in progress (Find/Change ✅, spelling ✅, Preflight)
M11	Layout power features (liquid/alternate layouts, data merge)	started (data merge, step & repeat, snippets)
M12	Interactive & digital (EPUB, HTML, interactive PDF)	started (EPUB, PDF links/bookmarks)
M13	Automation (scripts, batch)
M14	1.0 polish & packaging