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vectorcraft/ROADMAP.md
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bflatasticandClaude Opus 5.5 59c890df9e Part of gap 2: Effect › Brush Strokes (Accented Edges, Angled Strokes, Crosshatch, Dark Strokes, Ink Outlines, Spatter, Sprayed Strokes, Sumi-e)
Eight raster effects on the pixel-filter pipeline
(vectorcraft_effects::pixel::brushstrokes), under a new Effect › Brush
Strokes submenu between Blur and Distort in the Raster Effects section:

- Accented Edges (edgeWidth pt 1..14, default 2; edgeBrightness 0..50,
  38; smoothness 1..15, 5): the edges of the softened object painted
  towards white chalk at high brightness or black ink at low brightness;
  Smoothness also leaves the faint edges out. The shape stays as it was.
- Angled Strokes (directionBalance 0..100, 50; strokeLength pt 3..50, 15;
  sharpness 0..10, 3): light areas in right diagonal strokes, dark areas
  in left diagonal ones; 0 makes every stroke a left diagonal, 100 every
  stroke a right diagonal. Sharpness brings detail and bristles back.
- Crosshatch (strokeLength pt 3..50, 9; sharpness 0..20, 6; strength
  1..3, 1): the detail kept under pencil hatching along both diagonals,
  Strength passes of it, the edges roughened.
- Dark Strokes (balance 0..10, 5; blackIntensity 0..10, 6;
  whiteIntensity 0..10, 2): short strokes towards black in the dark
  areas, long strokes towards white in the light areas.
- Ink Outlines (strokeLength pt 1..50, 4; darkIntensity 0..50, 20;
  lightIntensity 0..50, 10): black outlines over the edges, ink hatching
  in the shadows, shadows darkened and highlights lightened.
- Spatter (sprayRadius pt 0..25, 10; smoothness 1..15, 5): each pixel
  shifted by noise up to 0.4 x the radius; Smoothness makes the grains
  larger and smoother.
- Sprayed Strokes (strokeLength pt 0..20, 12; sprayRadius pt 0..25, 7;
  strokeDirection Right Diagonal, Horizontal, Left Diagonal or Vertical):
  strokes along the direction, scattered by up to 0.3 x the radius.
- Sumi-e (strokeWidth pt 3..15, 10; strokePressure 0..15, 2; contrast
  0..40, 16): wet strokes, ink bleeding from the darks along paper
  fibres, more ink with pressure and an S-curve contrast for rich blacks.
  It works in value only: hues and saturation stay, and so does the
  object's shape (no fringe in the transparency).

A stroke averages the colour along a segment through the pixel (16
samples at most, the art softened first when they lie more than a pixel
apart); strokes lie in rows around the object's centre, each row
starting at random and each stroke shifted along itself, with streaked
noise for the bristles. Everything is in document space, so the effects
look the same at any zoom or resolution, move with the object and draw
the same every time; outsets and reaches are exact. On a 2000 x 2000
raster in release the slowest settings take 0.3-2.0 s (Crosshatch at
50 pt with 3 passes the most).

Shared helpers instead of copies: edges::sobel (Glowing Edges now uses
it, unchanged), distort::displace and texture::Tones are pub(super).

Catalogue rows with parameter docs, menu entries, Sprayed Strokes'
direction dropdown, translations (de, es, fr, it, ja, ru, uk, zh-hans,
zh-hant; menu labels in cs and pt-br), tests (parameters and clamping,
outsets and reaches, each filter and option showing, chalk and ink on
the edges only, shadows and rich blacks, Sumi-e keeping the shape and
hues, hatching keeping the tone, strokes smearing along their direction,
Spatter's radius, resolution and move invariance, canvas, multithreaded,
PDF and SVG, the command sweep with junk parameters, the menu) and
ROADMAP.

Behaviour from public documentation only:
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/using/brush-stroke-filters.html
https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/p/photoshop-sprayed-strokes.htm

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-11 01:19:26 +07:00

10 KiB
Raw Blame History

VectorCraft Roadmap

Stage: alpha · next: beta, ~13 points (ready for real work ~62% → ~75%, and reliable .ai exchange) and ~170–270 h away

Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-11 · Change: minor (Effect › Brush Strokes landed: Photoshop-style filters 28 of 57, raster effects 40% → 48%) · Target: Adobe Illustrator 2026 (30.x)

VectorCraft is a clean-room, open-source, pure-Rust reimplementation of the Adobe Illustrator workflow. It runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and the web (WASM), and agents can drive all of it over MCP, the CLI and a JSON control channel. This page is the summary; the evidence is in docs/target-app-parity.md and the work list in docs/gaps.md.

Why alpha: the core workflows exist end to end (drawing and path editing, Pathfinder, paint and appearance, type, SVG/PDF/EPS, print, export) and feature depth is ~75%, but a professional can't yet switch: Illustrator's own .ai files open with a wrong layer structure in real cases and can't be saved back with Illustrator's editing data, the interaction details have never been checked side by side, and some machines fail to start the app. Beta needs those closed (the beta list in gaps.md). It passes the core-workflow gate: all six core workflows (path drawing and editing, paint and style, type, layers/artboards/export, print production, file exchange) work end to end on macOS with save and reopen, and only the last is partial, without blocking it (Alpha gate).

Headline numbers

Value Kind
Feature breadth (Illustrator's menu items, tools, effects, formats exist) ~88% measured in part: menu items 348/375 wired (92.8%), tools 89/92, Illustrator effects 44/50, Photoshop effects 28/57, 3D 1/4 (initial Revolve)
Feature depth (weighted by use, scored by behaviour) ~75% estimated
To beta ~170–270 h one agent · ~50–80 h with 4–6 agents estimated
To full parity ~360–590 h one agent · ~95–165 h with 4–6 agents estimated

Readiness by audience (all estimated; method in target-app-parity.md):

Audience Ready % Opus 5.5 agent hours to ~95% (one agent) With 4–6 agents Work that dominates
Full Illustrator (ready for real work; decides the stage) ~62% (57–67%) ~340–560 h ~95–160 h the mainstream work below, plus 3D (50–85 h), raster effects (24–40 h), advanced type (20–28 h), generative AI (30–60 h), localization (70–110 h) and ecosystem
Mainstream illustrator ~65% (60–70%) ~230–380 h ~65–110 h the interaction-fidelity pass (60–90 h), hardening and QA (30–50 h), stability (20–35 h), performance budgets (15–25 h), .ai exchange (10–20 h), the remaining depth of the everyday areas
Essentials user ~75% (70–80%) ~60–105 h ~25–45 h launch and stability on Windows (20–35 h), in-app help and onboarding (8–15 h), basic QA (10–15 h), Shape Builder regions (4–8 h), UI polish

Hours are Opus 5.5 agent wall-clock hours, calibrated from this repo's merged-PR timestamps (e.g. 0.7–1.2 h per Photoshop-style filter, ~0.8 h per medium feature); see calibration. The installed Illustrator was not inspected: the clean-room rule in AGENTS.md forbids it, so everything is measured from our code against Illustrator's public documentation.

By dimension

Dimension % One agent (h) Doc
Features (depth) 75% 220–360 target-app-parity.md
UI/UX fidelity 55% 70–110 ui-parity.md
File formats 75% 15–30 file-format-parity.md
Hardware (GPU, pen, touch, displays) 35% 25–45 hardware-parity.md
Localization (12 key languages) 54% (measured) 70–110 localization-parity.md
Performance ~60% 15–25 gaps.md › G15
Stability ~60% 30–50 gaps.md › G10
Platforms 80% 15–25 gaps.md › G8
Ecosystem and plug-ins 15% 30–60 gaps.md › G17
AI features (generative) 0% 30–60 + owner decision gaps.md › G18
Agent automation beyond Illustrator — mcp.md

The dimension hours overlap (feature rows hold some UI, format and AI work), so they don't add up to the total.

Features

Area % One agent (h)
Selection, transform & align 85% 4–6
Drawing tools 85% 8–13
Path operations, Pathfinder, Shape Builder, Live Paint 80% 4–8
Colour, swatches, gradients, patterns, mesh, recolor 92% 4–7
Strokes, brushes, width profiles 88% 8–15
Appearance, transparency, graphic styles, masks 97% 1–2
Live vector effects 85% 6–10
Raster effects (Effect Gallery) — effects-parity.md 48% 24–40
3D and Materials ~8% 50–85
Type core — type-parity.md 80% 14–19
Type advanced (CJK, spelling, Touch Type) 50% 20–28
Symbols, blends, envelopes, Repeat, perspective 85% 6–10
Image Trace, graphs, image tools 75% 5–8
Layers, artboards, document setup 78% 5–8
View & navigation 70% 9–14
Guides, grids, smart guides, snapping 80% 4–7
File formats — file-format-parity.md 75% 10–20
Export for Screens, Asset Export, slices 85% 2–4
Print, colour management, separations 80% 2–4
Automation (Actions, Variables, scripting) 60% 8–14
UI chrome (panels, Properties, preferences) 80% 13–20
Libraries, Links, Package 82% 2–3
Generative AI 0% 30–60

Weights, evidence and the missing items per area: target-app-parity.md.

Languages

Language Code Status Translated
English en full 100%
Simplified Chinese zh-hans partial (messages in English) 85%
Spanish es full 100%
Hindi hi none 0%
Arabic ar none (no right-to-left interface) 0%
French fr full 100%
Portuguese (Brazil) pt-br partial 68%
Indonesian id none 0%
Japanese ja full 100%
German de full 98%
Korean ko none 0%
Vietnamese vi none 0%

Also shipped: Traditional Chinese (partial, 80%), Italian, Russian and Ukrainian (full), Czech (menus only). No catalog has had a native speaker's review. Details: localization-parity.md.

Upcoming

Ranked; detail in docs/roadmap.md and docs/gaps.md.

  1. Interaction-fidelity pass (G1), tool by tool from ui-parity.md: 60–90 h.
  2. .ai files from real users (G9): layer structure, guides, speed: 10–20 h.
  3. Launch and stability on real machines (G10): 20–35 h.
  4. Core-tool correctness (G11: Shape Builder regions, Asset Export borders): 8–15 h.
  5. Raster effects (G2) alongside: 29 filters and the Effect Gallery, 24–40 h.
  6. Then: type core and advanced type (G4), the Illustrator 2026 additions (G13), 3D (G3).

Progress log

Date What landed
2026-10-11 Effect › Brush Strokes: Accented Edges, Angled Strokes, Crosshatch, Dark Strokes, Ink Outlines, Spatter, Sprayed Strokes, Sumi-e (G2)
2026-10-10 Initial live Revolve (Effect › 3D and Materials, #846, #605), in its own three-d crate. Progress docs re-measured and restructured to the craftrules standard (this page, docs/target-app-parity.md, gaps.md, ui-parity.md, the format, hardware, localization, effects and type checklists). Same day: v0.8.0; Effect › Distort, Pixelate and Texture filters (13); German interface; Variables (data merge); Graph Type value axes and tick marks; restart when the first frame never reaches the screen (#964)
2026-10-09 Radial Blur, Smart Blur, Unsharp Mask (gap 2 begins); 340 commits, the busiest day
2026-10-08 v0.5.0–v0.7.0; community contributions: Pen and shape-tool modifiers, Layers, Artboards, Japanese composition, Hebrew/Arabic type, interface languages, saved selections
2026-10-07 v0.4.0; issue fixes; Layers panel rework
2026-10-06 M8 transform and distort fidelity pass (M8.1–M8.20)
2026-10-05 M4 files done (M4.14–M4.98); M3 paint and appearance done (92 tasks over two days)
2026-10-02 First weighted parity estimate (22 areas); look and feel measured against public screenshots
2026-10-01 Renamed from DrawCraft to VectorCraft
2026-09-30 Repository history begins

The full pre-standard record of what landed is kept in docs/roadmap.md.

Revision history

Date Change Summary
2026-10-10 minor Method aligned with the standard, no new evidence: full ready for real work is the additive weighted sum, ~62%; hours per audience; beta ~13 points away
2026-10-10 minor Added the essentials-user readiness score (~75%)
2026-10-10 minor Ready for real work re-examined against the issue tracker and user feedback: 50% → 55% (full), 65% mainstream added; see target-app-parity.md
2026-10-10 minor Applied the core-workflow gate (docs/roadmap.md › Alpha gate): passes, stage stays alpha
2026-10-10 major Re-measured against Illustrator 2026 (30.x) from code counts, 71 open issues and public docs; stage set to alpha; moved the parity estimate, honest assessment and "Shipped so far" to docs/target-app-parity.md, the gap list to docs/gaps.md, milestones to docs/roadmap.md, the .ai scope to docs/file-format-parity.md
2026-10-05 major Honest assessment by dimension and the prioritized gap list
2026-10-02 major First 22-area weighted parity estimate