feat(docx-editor): edit Word documents without quietly eating what Word put in them
A .docx editor is easy to write badly: read the file into HTML, let someone
edit it, write a fresh document back, and hand them a file that lost its
headers, its page size and half its formatting without ever saying so.
Three things keep this one honest.
The reader doesn't use mammoth's HTML. mammoth's converter is deliberately
semantic, and HTML has nowhere to put a run's colour or a paragraph's line
spacing, so it drops them — and those are controls this editor puts in the
ribbon. Taking its parsed document model instead means what the ribbon offers
is what the file can actually carry. Six properties mammoth's model didn't
keep are added by build-time patches, each asserting its anchor so an upgrade
that moves the code fails the build rather than shipping a lossy reader.
The writer rebuilds the body but carries the rest of the package across:
headers, footers, footnotes, endnotes, the document's own style catalogue,
its theme and its page setup, with relationship ids and content types
re-wired. Word features the editor can't model are still lost, so they are
detected when the file opens and named in a banner before anyone edits.
Tracked changes get their own gate. mammoth renders insertions as ordinary
text and drops deletions, so saving would accept every pending revision
without Word ever asking. Such a document opens read-only until the user
says that is what they want.
Verified over 66 real documents: 65 round-trip with an identical model and a
structurally valid package, the one exception being a 7 MB WMF picture, which
no browser can display and the writer cannot emit. Also driven end to end
through a real Theseus over CDP — sidebar, ribbon, typing, save, reopen.
2026-09-20 20:46:29 +02:00
{
"name" : "docx-editor-vendor-build" ,
"private" : true ,
"version" : "0.0.0" ,
refactor(docx-editor): ship it as a community extension, not part of the browser
A .docx editor is a megabyte of vendored library. Bundling it would charge
that to everyone who wanted a browser, including the people who will never
open a Word document in it.
So it leaves the build: out of bundled-addons/, out of extraResources, absent
from a fresh profile. It arrives the way anyone else's extension does —
Settings › Extensions › Community, from the catalogue the gateway builds, and
listed on theseus.x/extensions alongside everything else published there.
That also means it is signed by the owner of a BNS name rather than by the
operator key, which is the right trust story for something that isn't part of
the browser.
`npm run pack` produces the tarball the publish page takes; the signature
needs the publisher name's wallet, so it isn't something the repo can do.
The end-to-end test now installs the extension into a throwaway profile the
way the community installer would, and asserts up front that a fresh profile
doesn't already have it — the bundling is what was being removed, so it is
worth a test that would notice it coming back.
2026-09-21 01:06:58 +02:00
"description" : "Build-time only: bundles mammoth + ProseMirror + docx into extensions/docx-editor/vendor/, and packs the extension for the community channel." ,
feat(docx-editor): edit Word documents without quietly eating what Word put in them
A .docx editor is easy to write badly: read the file into HTML, let someone
edit it, write a fresh document back, and hand them a file that lost its
headers, its page size and half its formatting without ever saying so.
Three things keep this one honest.
The reader doesn't use mammoth's HTML. mammoth's converter is deliberately
semantic, and HTML has nowhere to put a run's colour or a paragraph's line
spacing, so it drops them — and those are controls this editor puts in the
ribbon. Taking its parsed document model instead means what the ribbon offers
is what the file can actually carry. Six properties mammoth's model didn't
keep are added by build-time patches, each asserting its anchor so an upgrade
that moves the code fails the build rather than shipping a lossy reader.
The writer rebuilds the body but carries the rest of the package across:
headers, footers, footnotes, endnotes, the document's own style catalogue,
its theme and its page setup, with relationship ids and content types
re-wired. Word features the editor can't model are still lost, so they are
detected when the file opens and named in a banner before anyone edits.
Tracked changes get their own gate. mammoth renders insertions as ordinary
text and drops deletions, so saving would accept every pending revision
without Word ever asking. Such a document opens read-only until the user
says that is what they want.
Verified over 66 real documents: 65 round-trip with an identical model and a
structurally valid package, the one exception being a 7 MB WMF picture, which
no browser can display and the writer cannot emit. Also driven end to end
through a real Theseus over CDP — sidebar, ribbon, typing, save, reopen.
2026-09-20 20:46:29 +02:00
"type" : "module" ,
"scripts" : {
refactor(docx-editor): ship it as a community extension, not part of the browser
A .docx editor is a megabyte of vendored library. Bundling it would charge
that to everyone who wanted a browser, including the people who will never
open a Word document in it.
So it leaves the build: out of bundled-addons/, out of extraResources, absent
from a fresh profile. It arrives the way anyone else's extension does —
Settings › Extensions › Community, from the catalogue the gateway builds, and
listed on theseus.x/extensions alongside everything else published there.
That also means it is signed by the owner of a BNS name rather than by the
operator key, which is the right trust story for something that isn't part of
the browser.
`npm run pack` produces the tarball the publish page takes; the signature
needs the publisher name's wallet, so it isn't something the repo can do.
The end-to-end test now installs the extension into a throwaway profile the
way the community installer would, and asserts up front that a fresh profile
doesn't already have it — the bundling is what was being removed, so it is
worth a test that would notice it coming back.
2026-09-21 01:06:58 +02:00
"build" : "node build.mjs" ,
feat(docx-editor): Save as…, PDF export, and a mark of our own
Three gaps, one theme: the editor could produce a file but not decide where
it went, what format it was in, or look like anything in the dock.
**Save as…** opens a real file dialog, and the extension typed there picks
the format. Save then writes to that file instead of dropping another copy
in Downloads every time. The renderer never names a path: the dialog returns
an opaque token, and the add-on will only write to a path a dialog actually
returned. An extension page is the least trusted thing in the add-on, and
"write these bytes anywhere" is not a capability it needs.
**PDF** goes through Chromium's own print pipeline in a hidden window — the
same engine as Ctrl+P — on the paper size read out of the document's own
sectPr. For that to match what the user was looking at, the page's
typography had to stop living in editor.css, which the export window can't
reach: it moves to lib/doc-css.js and both surfaces read the one string. The
result embeds subsetted fonts, keeps images, and turns hyperlinks into real
PDF link annotations.
**The icon** is ours. Microsoft's Word mark is a trademark and borrowing it
to look official is not something a browser that talks about sovereignty
should do. icon.svg says "text document" in its own words — a turned corner,
a heading rule, body lines, a pilcrow badge in Silent Mode green — and
`npm run icons` derives the PNGs and addon.json's copy from it, so there is
one drawing rather than several that drift.
Also: the scratch folder follows the profile rename to extensions-data/ via
the api.dataDir the host now provides, instead of creating a stale
addons-data/ beside it.
2026-09-21 03:35:55 +02:00
"pack" : "node pack.mjs" ,
"icons" : "node make-icons.mjs"
feat(docx-editor): edit Word documents without quietly eating what Word put in them
A .docx editor is easy to write badly: read the file into HTML, let someone
edit it, write a fresh document back, and hand them a file that lost its
headers, its page size and half its formatting without ever saying so.
Three things keep this one honest.
The reader doesn't use mammoth's HTML. mammoth's converter is deliberately
semantic, and HTML has nowhere to put a run's colour or a paragraph's line
spacing, so it drops them — and those are controls this editor puts in the
ribbon. Taking its parsed document model instead means what the ribbon offers
is what the file can actually carry. Six properties mammoth's model didn't
keep are added by build-time patches, each asserting its anchor so an upgrade
that moves the code fails the build rather than shipping a lossy reader.
The writer rebuilds the body but carries the rest of the package across:
headers, footers, footnotes, endnotes, the document's own style catalogue,
its theme and its page setup, with relationship ids and content types
re-wired. Word features the editor can't model are still lost, so they are
detected when the file opens and named in a banner before anyone edits.
Tracked changes get their own gate. mammoth renders insertions as ordinary
text and drops deletions, so saving would accept every pending revision
without Word ever asking. Such a document opens read-only until the user
says that is what they want.
Verified over 66 real documents: 65 round-trip with an identical model and a
structurally valid package, the one exception being a 7 MB WMF picture, which
no browser can display and the writer cannot emit. Also driven end to end
through a real Theseus over CDP — sidebar, ribbon, typing, save, reopen.
2026-09-20 20:46:29 +02:00
} ,
"devDependencies" : {
"docx" : "^9.5.1" ,
"esbuild" : "^0.28.2" ,
"jsdom" : "^29.1.1" ,
"jszip" : "^3.10.1" ,
"mammoth" : "^1.12.3" ,
"prosemirror-commands" : "^1.7.1" ,
"prosemirror-dropcursor" : "^1.8.2" ,
"prosemirror-gapcursor" : "^1.3.2" ,
"prosemirror-history" : "^1.4.1" ,
"prosemirror-inputrules" : "^1.5.0" ,
"prosemirror-keymap" : "^1.2.3" ,
"prosemirror-model" : "^1.25.0" ,
"prosemirror-schema-basic" : "^1.2.4" ,
"prosemirror-schema-list" : "^1.5.1" ,
"prosemirror-state" : "^1.4.3" ,
"prosemirror-tables" : "^1.7.1" ,
"prosemirror-view" : "^1.40.0"
}
}
