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
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# Word editor — a Theseus community extension
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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
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Opens, edits and saves Word documents (`.docx`) in a full Theseus tab, and
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exports them as PDF.
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Saving comes in three shapes. **Save** drops a copy in your downloads until the
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document has a home; **Save as…** opens a real file dialog where the extension
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you type — `.docx` or `.pdf` — decides the format, and from then on Save writes
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straight to that file; **PDF** is the one-click export. PDFs are rendered by
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Chromium's own print pipeline from `lib/doc-css.js`, the same stylesheet the
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editor displays, on the paper size the document itself specifies — so the
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export matches the preview rather than being a second opinion about it.
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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
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This is **not** a bundled add-on. It isn't in `bundled-addons/`, it isn't in
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the installer's `extraResources`, and a fresh Theseus profile doesn't have it.
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Users get it the same way they'd get anyone else's extension: from
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**Settings › Extensions › Community**, which lists whatever is in the
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catalogue at theseus.x/extensions.
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Living outside the browser build is the point. A .docx editor is a big
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dependency — a megabyte of vendored library — and nobody should carry it
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because they wanted a browser.
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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
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## The icon
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`icon.svg` is the one drawing. `npm run icons` rasterises it to
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`icon-16/32/48/128/256.png` and writes a minified copy into `addon.json`'s
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`icon` field, which is what the dock button and the catalogue card read — so
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there is never a second version to keep in step.
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It is deliberately not Microsoft's Word icon. That mark, and the blue sheet
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with a white W it belongs to, are Microsoft's trademarks; dressing our
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extension up as theirs would be both a legal problem and a dishonest one. The
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mark here says "text document" in its own words: a page with a turned corner,
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a heading rule, body lines, and a pilcrow badge in Silent Mode green.
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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
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## Building
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The vendored libraries (mammoth, ProseMirror, docx, JSZip) are bundled by a
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build step that lives outside this folder, because mammoth needs local patches
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before it can carry everything the editor edits:
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cd ../../addon-build/docx-editor
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npm install
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npm run build # writes vendor/docx-vendor.js here
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npm run pack # writes out/docx-editor-<version>.tar.gz
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`vendor/docx-vendor.js` is committed, so the extension is installable straight
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from a checkout; re-run `npm run build` after touching anything under
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`addon-build/`.
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## Publishing
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`npm run pack` produces the tarball and its sha256. Uploading it is a separate
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step, and this repo can't do it: a community extension is signed by the
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**owner of a BNS name**, using that name's wallet.
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The straightforward route is the publish page at
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**theseus.x/extensions/publish** — it unlocks a wallet in the browser, checks
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that the name is yours, then signs and `PUT`s the tarball to
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`/api/ext/<publisher-name>/docx-editor/<version>`. The gateway verifies both
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signatures against the name's current owner, stores the tarball on Sia and
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updates `catalog.json`, which is what Settings and the site both read.
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Version numbers must increase, and the id `docx-editor` belongs to whichever
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name publishes it first.
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## Testing
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Three levels, all re-runnable, all from `../../addon-build/docx-editor`:
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node test/roundtrip.mjs # the built-in fixture
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node test/corpus.mjs <folder of .docx> # real documents
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node ../../../scratchpad/verify-docx-editor/drive.mjs # a real Theseus, over CDP
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The last one installs this folder into a throwaway profile the way the
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community channel would, and is the only one that catches browser-only
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breakage.
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What survives a round trip, and what doesn't, is written up in
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[ROUND-TRIP.md](ROUND-TRIP.md). Read that before promising anyone a Word
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feature.
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