This is a famous "killer" feature from WordPerfect: the ability to view and edit the low-level formatting for a document. It's invaluable for fixing weird bugs.
However, it works only because WP uses the "text-stream" paradigm, where a document comprises a linear stream of text with formatting codes (Bold, Font, Hard Return, etc.) embedded directly at the point at which they're applied.
In contrast, Word uses the "nested containers" model (characters inside words, words inside paragraphs, paragraphs inside sections, etc.), where this feature can't be replicated.
I didn't look closely at your code, but just thought to mention this feature.
I don't see why the "nested containers" model would prevent this feature to be replicated, it's just a tree of nodes. Not edit-this-as-plain-text-simple but almost.
This took me down the nostalgic memory lane of the planet-source-code days. There were hundreds of such projects in Visual Basic, Delphi, C/C++/MFC etc., and text editors and paint clones were the most popular projects.
> - Real WYSIWYG editing (no HTML layer, no embedded browser) with styles, images and tables.
> - Clean, simple file format (human-readable, diff-friendly, git-friendly, AI-friendly)
Very nice!
Unfortunately, the UI menus seem to be broken when using a dark-mode GTK theme (e.g. Adwaita Dark).
Yes, I can see what you mean: There are hand coded colors together with system colors. With the dark mode this gives white text on white background for the side panel. Thanks for mentioning.
On MacOS, I'm seeing ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'miniword.core.utils' whether I run python3 -m miniword from src/miniword/ or from src/miniword/miniword/.
Thanks, and I got the main window open now, but I'm getting a second error that doesn't look OS related. Plugin error (txtfilter.py): No module named 'miniword.importexport'
Tables and images are the part where every "just use a rope" answer falls apart, so going B-tree feels right. I tried building a minimal rich text editor last year and got stuck exactly at the point where tables stopped being attachable as metadata and needed to live in the structure itself, ended up shelving it. Good to see someone actually push through it.
I've been looking for a simple word processor that will let me easily/quickly do basic things and which will let me export to markdown and HTML that isn't terrible like the type word processors create.
I recently found wordgrinder (https://github.com/davidgiven/wordgrinder), which is a terminal-based word processor that's very close to what I've been looking for. A wx-based thing like this might be a bit nicer. So I'll start with one suggestion: support for wordgrinder's .wg format would be real nice :)
at this point, a WYSIWYG just seems like a huge step backwards from just using markdown. I love having access to my files in a standard text format this is super easy to parse, and not being locked into whatever weird format that WYSIWYG decides to store it in.
I still don't understand why people still use ~~Microsoft Word~~Copilot document writer , I think they have gotten into some weird mindset that their documents require all this weird unnecessary formatting to look "official"
My prolific Typst use, along with quickly improving side-by-side editors like Typesetter, are rapidly diminishing (in my eyes) the reasons for WYSIWYG to be. Sure, normies need it, yadda yadda. Is it worth the staggering cost? The file format and GUI complexity?
Yes. These days, with plain text, pasrsers, Internet, mobile devices and LLM, we really get more than what we see. Only few case where paper print out is still more useful.
38 comments
This is a famous "killer" feature from WordPerfect: the ability to view and edit the low-level formatting for a document. It's invaluable for fixing weird bugs.
However, it works only because WP uses the "text-stream" paradigm, where a document comprises a linear stream of text with formatting codes (Bold, Font, Hard Return, etc.) embedded directly at the point at which they're applied.
In contrast, Word uses the "nested containers" model (characters inside words, words inside paragraphs, paragraphs inside sections, etc.), where this feature can't be replicated.
I didn't look closely at your code, but just thought to mention this feature.
> - Real WYSIWYG editing (no HTML layer, no embedded browser) with styles, images and tables. > - Clean, simple file format (human-readable, diff-friendly, git-friendly, AI-friendly)
Very nice! Unfortunately, the UI menus seem to be broken when using a dark-mode GTK theme (e.g. Adwaita Dark).
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'miniword.core.utils'whether I runpython3 -m miniwordfrom src/miniword/ or from src/miniword/miniword/.Plugin error (txtfilter.py): No module named 'miniword.importexport'I've been looking for a simple word processor that will let me easily/quickly do basic things and which will let me export to markdown and HTML that isn't terrible like the type word processors create.
I recently found wordgrinder (https://github.com/davidgiven/wordgrinder), which is a terminal-based word processor that's very close to what I've been looking for. A wx-based thing like this might be a bit nicer. So I'll start with one suggestion: support for wordgrinder's .wg format would be real nice :)
I still don't understand why people still use ~~Microsoft Word~~Copilot document writer , I think they have gotten into some weird mindset that their documents require all this weird unnecessary formatting to look "official"
Also wysiwyg doesn't mean it can't be back and forwards compatible with markdown, it might just mean that it's a markdown editor gui with a preview.
> at this point, a WYSIWYG just seems like a huge step backwards from just using markdown.
Not for a layperson. There’s a reason WYSIWYG word processors completely obliterated the previous “needs an explicit preview mode” generation ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_(data_structure)
Curious about the choice of toolkit: what led you to wxPython?
Looks like you missed a file, though.
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'miniword.core.utils'
I don't see it in my local clone of your repo, nor the repo iteslf.