Files
wordcraft/docs/gaps.md
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e71e2d1c52 Draw tab: draw with pen, pencil and highlighter, erase ink, and hide ink (#315)
* Draw Table and Eraser: draw tables and split or merge cells with a pen (#303)

Insert › Tables › Draw Table and Table Layout › Draw › Draw Table / Eraser.
table.draw takes a pen stroke in page points: a rectangle outside a table
inserts a one-cell table of that size at the paragraph under its start; a
straight vertical or horizontal line inside a table splits the cells it
crosses (new grid column or row; untouched cells span it). table.eraser
merges the two cells beside the border nearest a point. Each stroke is one
undo step. In the app the buttons toggle pen and eraser modes with a live
preview, a crosshair with the tool's icon, and Esc to stop; canvas clicks
don't move the caret while a tool is on. Splitting through part of a
vertically merged cell and erasing beside one are refused with a clear
error. Catalog 384/430 -> 387/430.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Draw tab: pen, pencil and highlighter ink, stroke eraser and Hide Ink (#307)

Ink strokes are floating freeform shapes: a new Freeform geometry (paths in
shape-local coordinates, opacity, and the pen that drew it) on
InlineObject::Shape with ShapeKind::Freeform. draw.stroke inserts one
anchored to the paragraph under the first point (one undo step; points
capped per stroke, strokes capped per page, NaN dropped); draw.erase /
draw.eraser with a point deletes the stroke under it; draw.pen, draw.pencil,
draw.highlighter, draw.eraser and draw.select set the Draw tab's tool in the
session view state; review.hideInk toggles showing ink on screen.

The canvas draws a live stroke while a pen is dragged and commits it on
release; the eraser deletes strokes it passes over (one undo step per drag);
Esc or Select goes back to selecting. Draw tab buttons show the tool in use,
with colour and thickness menus; Review gets an Ink group with Hide Ink.
Ink renders with round caps and joins on screen and in PDF; highlighters are
translucent and behind the text. DOCX writes freeforms as wps:wsp with
a:custGeom (moveTo/lnTo) in a wp:anchor and reads them back, along with
simple custom-geometry freeforms from other files.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* #315 review fixes: eraser undo test, sanitized tap dots, custGeom path cap, ink docs

- draw.eraser with a point erases through draw.erase: test that it is one
  undo step (undo/redo) and marks the document dirty.
- Render and PDF: a single-point stroke's dot is drawn at the sanitized
  point, not the raw first one.
- DOCX custGeom reading stops once MAX_PATHS paths (subpaths included) are
  collected, across a:path elements.
- docs/file-format-parity.md: ink is saved as custom geometry, not InkML, so
  Word shows it as a freeform.
- widgets test: theme::apply takes an Appearance (#317).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* fmt

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Draw tab: pen, pencil and highlighter ink, stroke eraser and Hide Ink (#307)

Ink strokes are floating freeform shapes: a new Freeform geometry (paths in
shape-local coordinates, opacity, and the pen that drew it) on
InlineObject::Shape with ShapeKind::Freeform. draw.stroke inserts one
anchored to the paragraph under the first point (one undo step; points
capped per stroke, strokes capped per page, NaN dropped); draw.erase /
draw.eraser with a point deletes the stroke under it; draw.pen, draw.pencil,
draw.highlighter, draw.eraser and draw.select set the Draw tab's tool in the
session view state; review.hideInk toggles showing ink on screen.

The canvas draws a live stroke while a pen is dragged and commits it on
release; the eraser deletes strokes it passes over (one undo step per drag);
Esc or Select goes back to selecting. Draw tab buttons show the tool in use,
with colour and thickness menus; Review gets an Ink group with Hide Ink.
Ink renders with round caps and joins on screen and in PDF; highlighters are
translucent and behind the text. DOCX writes freeforms as wps:wsp with
a:custGeom (moveTo/lnTo) in a wp:anchor and reads them back, along with
simple custom-geometry freeforms from other files.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-authored-by: Brandon Thomas <echelon@gmail.com>
2026-10-10 18:50:37 -04:00

12 KiB
Raw Blame History

Where WordCraft falls short of Word

Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-10 · Change: trivial (Draw Table and Eraser landed, #303; previously minor: beta distance restated: ~15 points, ~150–230 h; previously: first version; every known shortfall from the 2026-10-10 re-measure, ranked) · Target: Microsoft Word (Microsoft 365) for Mac 16.113.4

The work list. One entry per shortfall, ranked by how much it stops a Word user from switching (B = blocks beta). Each says what's missing, the evidence, who it hurts, an Opus 5.5 agent wall-clock estimate, and which parity document tracks it. Agents: pick from the top, check open PRs first (gh pr list), and update this file and the parity doc when a gap closes.

Ranked

# Gap B Evidence Impact Hours Doc
1 DOCX never tested on real-world files. No corpus of files from Word, Google Docs, LibreOffice and Pages has been opened, rendered and round-tripped and compared with Word page by page B No corpus in the repo; crates/docx/tests are synthetic fixtures; "DOCX fidelity corpus: not started" since 2026-10-06 Everyone: the files people receive are the files that break 30–50 file-format-parity.md
2 Ink and drawing canvases are dropped on open and lost on save, silently; OLE objects show only their picture B No ink or drawing-canvas (wpc) handling in crates/docx; group shapes (wpg) read and written (#267). Charts and SmartArt are drawn (#292) and, with OLE objects, written back with all their parts on save (#319) Documents with diagrams drawn in Word or pen notes lose content without warning 4–8 to preserve ink and drawing canvases; 45–70 to render and edit charts and SmartArt (#13) file-format-parity.md
3 Crashes and freezes in the field: startup crash on Intel UHD Graphics (#170) (lag on GPUs without a DirectX 12 driver fixed, #316), freezes (#77, #59 Thai fonts, #31 font selector), no writes without admin on Windows 11 (#218), broken shape tool (#142), images can't be moved (#82) B 62 open issues, ~15 of them crashes, hangs or data-path failures Anyone hit loses work or trust; the never-crash standard covers panics, not hangs or GPU driver faults 20–30 target-app-parity.md (Stability)
4 Pagination differs from Word: Aptos has no metric-matched substitute; columns don't balance; custom footnote continuation separators and notices aren't read; legacy compatibility options ignored; no page-by-page comparison harness B layout-parity.md; typing-parity.md Known gaps Page counts and line breaks differ, which matters for forms, legal and academic work 30–50 + owner (font) layout-parity.md
5 Formatting revisions, move tracking and content controls are lost (w:rPrChange/w:pPrChange absent; w:sdt unwrapped) B Issue #41; source grep Legal and editorial review workflows; templates with form controls 12–18 file-format-parity.md
6 No native printing on desktop: File › Print opens the PDF in the system viewer, which prints (#286); no print dialog of our own (printer, copies, ranges); web prints through the browser (#209) B ui.print → apps/wordcraft/src/print.rs; issue #15 Everyone who prints 5–8 hardware-parity.md
7 Dialog depth: 22 modal dialogs vs Word's ~100 (Define Multilevel List, Track Changes Options, Options panes…) B Dialog enum in crates/ui-egui/src/dialogs.rs Power users reach for dialogs the ribbon alone doesn't cover 20–30 ui-parity.md
7 Dialog depth: 19 modal dialogs vs Word's ~100 (Tabs, Borders and Shading, Define Multilevel List, Track Changes Options, Options panes…) B Dialog enum in crates/ui-egui/src/dialogs.rs Power users reach for dialogs the ribbon alone doesn't cover 20–30 ui-parity.md
7 Dialog depth: 18 modal dialogs vs Word's ~100 (Tabs, Borders and Shading, Columns, Symbol, Field, Options panes…) B Dialog enum in crates/ui-egui/src/dialogs.rs Power users reach for dialogs the ribbon alone doesn't cover 20–30 ui-parity.md
8 Proofing is English only; no language per run, no dictionaries for other languages crates/proof has one dictionary; Word ships 120 proofing tools; issues #25, #40, #100 Every non-English writer 25–45 localization-parity.md
9 Password-protected files can't be opened or saved #55; docbin detects and refuses RC4/XOR Corporate and legal users 6–10 file-format-parity.md
10 Objects: no group (#267 open), rotated text-box text (free rotation and flips landed, #332), contour (tight/through) wrap, shape effects, WordArt, connectors, Drawing Canvas, Icons parity-checklist.md (Shape Format 2/6, Layout › Group) Newsletters, flyers, reports with diagrams 20–30 target-app-parity.md
11 Interface languages: 8 of the 12 key languages missing (hi, ar, fr, id, de, ko, vi, pt-PT); no mirrored RTL interface; ~5% of strings still English in the six translated catalogs localization-parity.md Most of the world's writers 50–80 localization-parity.md
12 Draw tab / ink: pens, pencil, highlighter, eraser, Select and Hide Ink landed (#307); missing: Lasso Select, Add Pen, Ink to Shape, Ink to Math, Ink Replay, pressure, Word's own ink (w14:contentPart/InkML) parity-checklist.md (Draw 5/11) Pen and tablet users 8–14 hardware-parity.md
13 Charts and SmartArt editing (own renderer, chart data editing, SmartArt layouts) insert.chart, insert.smartArt missing Reports and business documents 45–70 target-app-parity.md
14 .doc can't be written; metafile pictures and Word 6/95 files refused crates/docbin is read-only Users exchanging files with old Word or legacy systems 25–40 file-format-parity.md
15 References depth: 4 of Word's 12 bibliography styles; sources not saved in DOCX (#169 open); no EndNote/Mendeley desktop integration Word's Resources/Style lists 12 styles Students and researchers 10–15 target-app-parity.md
16 Right-to-left completeness: RTL sections and tables, kashida, RTL in HTML/ODT/RTF; eight older RTL bug reports to re-verify after #207 (#215, #211, #199, #66, #63, #48, #19) layout-parity.md Arabic, Persian, Hebrew writers 10–15 layout-parity.md
17 East Asian typography: vertical text, ruby/Phonetic Guide, Enclose Characters, document grid, Asian Typography options Catalog misses format.phonetic, format.enclose, para.asianTypography Chinese, Japanese and Korean documents 20–30 layout-parity.md
18 Screen-reader access to the document canvas untested AccessKit enabled; no tests Blind and low-vision users; public-sector procurement 10–15 ui-parity.md
19 RTF and ODT depth: notes, comments, revisions, sections, RTL ~1,500 lines each in crates/formats Users exchanging with LibreOffice or older tools 18–27 file-format-parity.md
20 Performance on large real-world documents unmeasured (500+ pages, many pictures) Only the 188-page sample benchmark Thesis and book authors 10–20 layout-parity.md
21 Mail merge data sources: no Excel, Outlook/Contacts, email merge; CSV and typed lists only (#247) Office administrators 6–10 target-app-parity.md
22 Ecosystem: no VBA execution (macros preserved only), no Office add-ins, no cloud storage, no real-time co-authoring .docm keeps macros (#172) Enterprise users with macro templates; teams 40–80 + owner decisions target-app-parity.md
23 PDF Reflow (open a PDF as an editable document, Word for Windows) Users who edit PDFs they receive 30–50 file-format-parity.md
24 Customize Ribbon / Keyboard, Quick Access Toolbar customization; ~100 of Word's ~250 shortcuts ui-parity.md Power users 10–16 ui-parity.md
25 In-app AI assistant (Copilot-style draft, rewrite, summarize) Chat PR #178 open Users expecting Copilot 15–30 + owner (provider) target-app-parity.md
26 Minor formats: Flat OPC XML, Word 2003 XML, MHT, Works/WordPerfect Rare 20–35 file-format-parity.md
27 View windows: Side by Side, Synchronous Scrolling, Arrange All, Switch Windows parity-checklist.md (View 25/29) Comparing documents 3–5 ui-parity.md
28 Dictate tools.dictate missing Dictation users 8–15 + owner (speech model) hardware-parity.md
29 Equations: ink equations #191 notes; long display equations wrap at operators (#326) Maths-heavy documents 2–3 layout-parity.md

Beta needs #1–#7 (~150–230 h with the stability and layout work they imply): they are the blocking gaps, and closing them lifts file formats, layout, stability and UI enough to take the full number from ~60% to ~75%. Everything else is depth on the way to full parity.

By kind

The same gaps grouped the way the parity documents are, for agents working in one area.

  • Feature gaps: #2 (preserve), #5, #10, #12, #13, #15, #17, #21, #25, #27, #28, #29; Clipboard pane, Manage Styles, Group (open PRs exist for the first three — review and merge before re-implementing). Paste Special, Advanced Find, Column Selection, Style Inspector, custom table styles, and Draw Table and Eraser (#303) landed on 2026-10-10.
  • UI/UX gaps: #7, #18, #24; crop handles on the canvas (rotation handle landed, #332); table column drag on the ruler (#49, #217); context menus for objects and tables; Linux title bar theming (#78).
  • File-format gaps: #1, #2, #5, #9, #14, #19, #23, #26; embedded fonts; glossary/building blocks.
  • Hardware gaps: #6, #12, #28; scanner/Continuity Camera insert; KDE soft text (#140).
  • Localization gaps: #8, #11, #16, #17; native-speaker review of every catalog (human).
  • Stability and performance gaps: #3, #20.

Revision history

Date Change Summary
2026-10-10 trivial Draw Table and Eraser landed (#303); removed from the feature-gap list
2026-10-10 trivial Tabs and Borders and Shading dialogs landed (#320); removed from the dialog-depth list
2026-10-10 trivial Columns, Symbol and Field dialogs landed (#321); removed from the dialog-depth list
2026-10-10 trivial #2 narrowed: charts and SmartArt drawn (#292), and with OLE objects kept on save (#319); group shapes landed (#267); ink and drawing canvases remain
2026-10-10 trivial #4: long footnotes continue onto the next page (#352)
2026-10-10 trivial Define New Multilevel List and Track Changes Options dialogs landed (#328); removed from the dialog-depth list
2026-10-10 trivial #10: free rotation and flips for pictures, shapes and text boxes, with a rotation handle (#332); text boxes rotate their frame; their text stays upright
2026-10-10 trivial #29: long display equations wrap across lines (#326)
2026-10-10 trivial #3: Windows lag on GPUs without a DirectX 12 driver fixed with an OpenGL fallback (#316)
2026-10-10 trivial #6: desktop File › Print opens the system PDF viewer (#286)
2026-10-10 trivial Table Properties dialog landed (#44); removed from the dialog-depth list
2026-10-10 trivial Merged main: landed features removed from the feature-gap list
2026-10-10 minor Beta note restated: full number back to the additive ~60% (method aligned with the standard, no new evidence)
2026-10-10 major First version, from the full re-measure: 29 ranked gaps with evidence, impact and hours
2026-10-10 trivial #307: Draw tab pens, eraser and Hide Ink landed; ink gap narrowed