vectorcraft/docs/development.md

Development

Web build

apps/vectorcraft-web runs the same VectorcraftApp in the browser through eframe's web runner. The renderer is wgpu: WebGPU where the browser has it, WebGL2 otherwise. It is Rust only; the only JavaScript is the glue wasm-bindgen generates.

brew install trunk                 # or: cargo install trunk --locked
rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown
cd apps/vectorcraft-web
trunk build --release              # writes ../../dist/web (index.html, .js glue, .wasm)
trunk serve --release              # dev server on http://127.0.0.1:8766

Any static file server works for dist/web, for example python3 -m http.server 8766 inside that directory. The release .wasm is about 17.5 MB, or 7.1 MB gzipped, so serve it with compression.

URL flag: ?webgl forces the WebGL2 backend.

How the web shell (apps/vectorcraft-web/src/web.rs) differs from desktop:

• Open sets Services::open_async, which shows rfd::AsyncFileDialog. The bytes arrive in Services::inbox, which the app drains every frame.

• Save / Save As / Export go through Services::download: a Blob, an object URL and a temporary <a download>, all created from Rust. There is no save dialog, so the suggested name becomes the download name.

• Drag-and-drop: WebShell takes the frame's dropped_files before the app sees them, reads each with DroppedFile::bytes_async and pushes the bytes into the inbox (files dropped on a canvas go to Services::place_inbox with their place::DropAt: the document they were dropped on, by uid, and the point; VectorcraftApp::drop_target decides from the position the page's drag events give). Desktop drags carry no position (winit 0.30 reports none, and the pointer position egui last had is stale), so the desktop app decides by kind: documents open, pictures and text are placed in the middle of the view. A file that arrives after another document became active still lands in its own document, which becomes active again; if that document closed meanwhile, the file is not placed and the status bar says so. (The app's synchronous drop path is compiled out on wasm32.)

• Data Recovery keeps its copies in localStorage (vectorcraft-recovery/<area>/<name>, shared by the site's tabs), so tabs can't lock their areas the way desktop apps lock a folder (RecoveryStore::lock). Each tab holds its area with a heartbeat it refreshes every minute and, where the browser has Web Locks (secure pages: https:// or localhost), with a Web Lock named after the area (apps/vectorcraft-web/src/locks.rs, through js_sys::Reflect since web-sys has them only as an unstable API). The browser releases the lock only when the tab is gone, not while its timers are paused in the background, which a heartbeat can't tell apart (#367). navigator.locks.query() is asynchronous, so the shell keeps a snapshot refreshed every 10 seconds (taken once before the first frame); a snapshot older than a minute counts every area as held. An area is offered as a crash's leftovers only when no tab holds its lock and its heartbeat is older than three intervals. Without Web Locks a paused tab can still be taken for gone; it repairs that when it resumes: its next heartbeat (or recovery save) writes again the copies missing from its area, and a heartbeat newer than the one the other tab wrote taking the area over makes the area running again for that tab.

• Losing the graphics (#369): the browser can drop the page's WebGPU device or WebGL context (a GPU reset, a driver update, too many tabs on the GPU; or a script calling device.destroy() / WEBGL_lose_context.loseContext()). The app goes on without it, so the shell watches for it: wgpu's device-lost callback for WebGPU, the canvas's webglcontextlost event for WebGL2. Both report to a graphics::GraphicsLoss, and the next frame of WebShell::logic handles it:

  1. VectorcraftApp::graphics_lost writes Data Recovery copies of the modified documents at once (to browser storage, also when Data Recovery is turned off).
  2. The shell puts a fresh <canvas> in place of the dead one (a canvas whose WebGL context is lost can't get another) and starts the same WebRunner again on it, with new graphics and a new egui context, handing over the same VectorcraftApp: documents, undo history, selection and panels stay as they were. Its Services are made again for the new context, and the status bar says the graphics were restarted.
  3. Textures belong to the egui context they were uploaded to. The app notices the new context (VectorcraftApp::adopt_context) and uploads everything again: fonts and theme, the canvas, the place cursor's thumbnails, and every per-thread texture cache (thumbnails, previews, font samples), which are graphics::TexCaches for that reason. A new texture cache must be a TexCache (or live in the context's ctx.data), or it shows stale or wrong pictures after a restart.
  4. If no new graphics can be had (no adapter, WebGL blocked after repeated losses) or the graphics were lost more than three times, the shell gives up: the dead canvas is removed, the app lets go of its recovery area but not its copies (recovery::leave: its heartbeat and Web Lock go, so the reloaded page offers the copies at once). The Web Locks are started once, before the first frame, and kept across graphics restarts, so a restarted tab stays the owner of its area and the page says to reload.

  To try it, in the browser console: for WebGL2 (?webgl), document.querySelector('canvas').getContext('webgl2').getExtension('WEBGL_lose_context').loseContext(). For WebGPU, keep the device the page creates (wrap GPUAdapter.prototype.requestDevice before the page loads) and call its destroy().

  The desktop app can't make a new device for its window (eframe can't), so on a lost device (a driver reset) it logs the reason, writes the recovery copies, and says in the status bar to save and restart. Once the copies are written, closing the window skips the Save Changes question, which it can't show: the next launch offers the changes back.

• No control server: browsers can't listen on TCP. To automate the web build, drive headless Chrome with --remote-debugging-port.

• Quick smoke test: "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome" --headless=new --enable-unsafe-webgpu --screenshot=web.png --window-size=1440,900 --virtual-time-budget=15000 http://127.0.0.1:8766/ (headless Chrome on macOS gets a real WebGPU adapter).

Desktop graphics processor

The canvas is rasterized on the CPU (vectorcraft-render, vello_cpu); the GPU (wgpu, through eframe) only composites the canvas texture and draws the UI. The desktop app (apps/vectorcraft/src/main.rs) therefore asks wgpu for the power-saving adapter by default, which is the integrated GPU on hybrid-graphics laptops. Presenting frames rendered on a discrete GPU through the integrated one made the window flicker on some laptops (#306). A machine with one GPU gets that GPU either way.

• Preferences › Performance › Graphics Processor (gpuPreference: powerSaving or highPerformance) picks the other one. The adapter is chosen when the window opens, so a change applies after a restart.
• The WGPU_POWER_PREF environment variable (low, high or none) overrides the preference.
• Help › About and the control channel's ui.inspect (graphicsAdapter) show the adapter in use, and the app logs it at startup.

Logs

The desktop app writes its log records to standard error and to logs/vectorcraft.log next to the preferences (Linux $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vectorcraft/logs/, by default ~/.config/vectorcraft/logs/; macOS ~/Library/Application Support/VectorCraft/logs/; Windows %APPDATA%\VectorCraft\logs\). A start launched from a desktop menu or the Dock has no terminal, so this file is what to attach to a bug report: the graphics adapter in use, a lost graphics device, panics the engine's guard recovered from and clipboard formats that couldn't be made land there. Each launch moves the previous log to vectorcraft.1.log (and that one to vectorcraft.2.log), so the log of a run that crashed survives the next start. The file stops growing at 16 MiB. --version writes no file, and runs with VECTORCRAFT_NO_PREFS log to standard error only.

By default VectorCraft's own crates log at info and everything else at warn. RUST_LOG replaces that with env_logger-style directives, for example RUST_LOG=debug, RUST_LOG=warn,vectorcraft_render=trace or RUST_LOG=info,wgpu_core=warn; a directive ending in * covers every target starting with it (vectorcraft*=debug). The logger is apps/vectorcraft/src/logging.rs. vectorcraft-cli mcp has its own logger, which sends records to the MCP client (docs/mcp.md).

Environment variables (desktop app)

Variable	Effect
VECTORCRAFT_CONTROL_PORT	Same as --control <port>
VECTORCRAFT_NO_PREFS	No preferences read or written, no default Data Recovery folder and no log file (agents' test runs)
WGPU_POWER_PREF	Graphics adapter: low, high or none (see Desktop graphics processor)
RUST_LOG	Log levels for standard error and the log file (see Logs)

Linux: Wayland and X11

The window runs natively on Wayland (eframe's wayland feature) and on X11. The system clipboard (apps/vectorcraft/src/clipboard.rs) is arboard with its wayland-data-control feature:

• Clipboard: under Wayland arboard talks to the compositor through the data-control protocol (wlroots compositors such as Sway and Hyprland, KDE Plasma), so bitmaps (image/png), SVG markup and text copied in any app paste (#398). Where the compositor lacks the protocol (GNOME's Mutter, arboard#223), arboard falls back to the X11 clipboard through XWayland, which only holds what X11 apps copied. egui's own text paste into fields goes through smithay-clipboard and works either way.
• Copied files: files copied in a file manager (text/uri-list; CF_HDROP on Windows, file URLs on macOS) paste as the first one that is art (SVG, PDF, EMF/WMF or a bitmap), before the clipboard's other formats (which include the files' paths as text).
• Dropping files on the window does not work under Wayland: winit 0.30, which eframe 0.36 runs on, has no Wayland drag and drop (winit#1881, added in winit 0.31; egui#1563), so no dropped_files arrive. Until eframe moves to winit 0.31: copy the files in the file manager and paste them, use File › Place or Open, or run the app under XWayland, where drops work (WAYLAND_DISPLAY= vectorcraft).

Fonts: craft-fonts (optional build input)

Font files are never committed to this repository. Fonts shared by the Crafting Apps live in storytold/craft-fonts; the rules are in craftrules standards/fonts.md. To add a font, add it there. (The Latin fonts in assets/fonts/ predate the rule and stay.)

VectorCraft builds, tests and runs without craft-fonts. To embed its Japanese fonts (BIZ UDPGothic for UI text, Shippori Mincho and BIZ UDMincho for document text), point the CRAFT_FONTS_DIR build option at a checkout:

git clone https://github.com/storytold/craft-fonts ../craft-fonts
CRAFT_FONTS_DIR="$PWD/../craft-fonts" cargo run --release -p vectorcraft
CRAFT_FONTS_DIR="$PWD/../craft-fonts" cargo xtask ci   # also runs the Japanese-glyph tests

• crates/text/build.rs reads the checkout's fonts/manifest.txt and embeds every font it lists as vectorcraft_text::CRAFT_FONTS (empty without CRAFT_FONTS_DIR). Give it an absolute path: build scripts run in the crate's directory (a relative path is taken from the workspace root as a convenience, but CI and the docs always use absolute paths). Nothing is downloaded, and craft-fonts is never a Cargo.toml dependency. A bad path is a build warning, or an error with CRAFT_FONTS_REQUIRED=1 (release builds).
• Web (wasm32) builds embed only BIZ UDPGothic Regular (+4.7 MB of .wasm), to stay well under static hosts' per-file limits (Cloudflare Pages: 25 MiB). Shippori Mincho, which this repo used to embed everywhere, was 8.7 MB, so the web build is still smaller than before.
• Document text: the Japanese faces join the font database after the bundled fonts (Mincho first), so they are the fallback for Japanese after the requested font; installed system fonts come after.
• UI: theme::install_fonts adds them at the end of every egui family (BIZ UDPGothic first), after the UI fonts and before the installed fonts ui_fonts.rs discovers for other scripts.
• Tests that need Japanese glyphs skip with a message when built without craft-fonts. The FreeBSD CI job and every release job (release.yml) check craft-fonts out at a pinned commit; release packages carry each embedded font's OFL-<family>.txt.

Localisation

Strings in code stay English and are the default lookup keys. crates/ui-egui/src/i18n maps them to display text at render time from one catalog per language (i18n/<code>.tsv; the format is documented in the header of zh-hant.tsv). Command ids, menu paths used for logic, ui.menu.list, the control channel, the CLI and MCP always use the English ids and labels, so agents and scripts never see translated text.

Languages shipped: English (en, the source), Traditional Chinese (zh-hant, complete, in the vocabulary used in Taiwan; zh-TW, zh-HK, zh-MO and zh-Hant-* locales all resolve to it), Simplified Chinese (zh-hans, complete, in the vocabulary used in mainland China; zh-CN, zh-SG, zh-Hans-* and a bare zh resolve to it, so the two scripts never mix), Japanese (ja, complete), Spanish (es, complete, in neutral international Spanish; every es-* locale such as es-ES, es-MX, es-AR or es-419 resolves to it), Czech (cs, every menu label) and Brazilian Portuguese (pt-br, every menu label and every tl! literal). Untranslated text falls back to English until its rows are added.

• tl!("…") translates a literal into the language the UI is drawn in; i18n::t(s) is the same for a &str. tr(lang, s) takes the language; tr_ctx when one English word needs different translations; tr_id(lang, command_id, label) for menu items (keyed by command id, English label as the fallback); tn / trn(lang, n, one, other) for plurals; fmt fills {name} placeholders, which a translation may reorder.
• The shared widgets (widgets::check, dropdown, menu_item, the buttons, label_row, tooltips of icon_button…), the menus, the dock, the toolbar, the dialog frame and panels::empty_state translate the text they are given, so a panel mostly needs its literals wrapped in tl! to be covered by the tests.
• The language is VectorCraft › Language (the app.language UI command, {lang: auto|<code>}) or Edit › Preferences › User Interface › Language; both set the interfaceLanguage preference (auto or a language code; auto follows the system locale: VECTORCRAFT_LOCALE, then LC_ALL/LC_MESSAGES/LANG/LANGUAGE, the macOS preferred languages, the Windows user locale; on the web, ?lang=<code> in the address, then the browser's navigator.languages). The Preferences dialog previews the chosen language before OK.
• To add a language: add <code>.tsv and one row in i18n::LANGUAGES (code, native name, catalog, plural rule). The Language menu, the dropdown, locale matching and the catalog tests (well-formed, no duplicates, placeholders and ellipses agree, command ids exist, every row of a partial catalog is a string the UI shows, the UI fonts have every glyph, no Simplified characters in zh-hant) pick it up. Set complete_menus once every menu string and tl! literal is translated; i18n::tests then enforce it (VECTORCRAFT_I18N_DUMP=strings.txt cargo test -p vectorcraft-ui-egui dump_source_strings lists them).
• Translations are clean-room: written from the meaning of the English text in ordinary vocabulary, never from another product's localisation resources. Product and technology names stay in Latin letters.
• Status-bar messages and errors stay English where they are made (app.ui.status, EngineError: the control channel, MCP and tests read them) and are translated only where the status bar draws them (i18n::msg). @msg catalog rows hold a whole message or a template such as Couldn't open {name}: {e}; {_1}, {_2} … stand for the format string's {}, and the values in the placeholders are translated in turn (the reason after : {e} is often a message too). Spanish covers every message literal the test scan finds (complete_languages_translate_every_message, languages listed in COMPLETE_MESSAGES): a new Err("…"), Other(…), #[error(…)] or status(…) message needs an es.tsv row (VECTORCRAFT_I18N_DUMP_MESSAGES=messages.txt cargo test -p vectorcraft-ui-egui complete_languages_translate_every_message lists them all). Other languages show messages in English until they add @msg rows.
• Not translated on purpose: names that are user data (layers, swatches, fonts, documents), the tab title's colour mode, command ids and parameter names inside messages. Not done yet: locale-aware number and date formats, right-to-left layout. Chinese and Japanese UI text is drawn with craft-fonts' BIZ UDPGothic when the build embeds it (see Fonts above), else with an installed system font; the glyph test checks Latin-script catalogs always and the CJK ones only with craft-fonts. A Traditional Chinese UI font is still to be added to craft-fonts for the web build.

Vendor names gate

cargo xtask brands (part of cargo xtask ci) fails when user-visible text names another vendor's products or company: string literals in Rust sources (command labels and params docs, menus, panels, MCP tool definitions), Cargo.toml descriptions and packaging files. Comments and test code are not checked. Say "the reference app" or name the feature itself. A line that must keep an old name, such as an alias that files or preferences from earlier versions still use, carries a brand-ok comment.

Robustness: VectorCraft never crashes

A crash takes the user's unsaved work with it, and much of what the app reads is untrusted: SVG, PDF, .ai and .vectorcraft files, pasted data, MCP and control-channel messages, command parameters. Shipped code therefore never panics. Anything that can fail returns Result (or Option), the caller handles or propagates it, and the user sees an error message.

Enforced by lints

Cargo.toml denies these clippy lints for the whole workspace, and cargo xtask ci runs clippy with -D warnings:

Banned in shipped code	Use instead
x.unwrap(), x.expect("…")	x?, x.ok_or(err)?, let Some(v) = x else { return … }, if let, unwrap_or / unwrap_or_default / unwrap_or_else
v.last().unwrap(), v.pop().unwrap()	if let Some(l) = v.last_mut(), let Some((last, rest)) = v.split_last() else { … }
panic!, unreachable!() in a match arm	return an error (EngineError::Other, bad(C, "…")) or a sensible default
todo!, unimplemented!	don't merge unfinished paths; return an error that says what isn't supported

clippy.toml allows unwrap, expect and panic inside #[test] and #[cfg(test)] code. Integration-test files under tests/ and examples/, and the testkit crate, opt out with #![allow(clippy::unwrap_used, clippy::expect_used, clippy::panic)]. Tests use panic!("…") instead of unreachable!().

Not caught by lints: avoid implicit panics too

• Indexing and slicing: v[i] and &s[a..b] panic when out of range. When the index comes from data (a file, a parameter, another document), use v.get(i) / s.get(a..b). Slicing a &str also panics off a UTF-8 boundary.
• Arithmetic: integer division or % by zero, usize subtraction that can go below zero (write i + 1 == n instead of i == n - 1, or use saturating_sub), and as casts from non-finite floats.
• Unbounded work: cap counts, sizes and allocations read from input. Image dimensions, repeat counts, line breaks and recursion depth all need a limit.
• Encoders and decoders: propagate their errors. Writing an empty file is a silent failure, not a fix.

Don't silence the lint by discarding errors. let _ = … and .ok() are for failures that really don't matter, with a comment saying why.

The safety net

vectorcraft_engine::guard::catch_panic wraps every entry point:

• Session::execute restores the active document, selection and interaction as they were before the top-level command and returns EngineError::Internal.
• Tool events (Session::pointer, tool_key, tool_text) reset the tool and cancel its drag.
• The MCP server answers the request with a JSON-RPC internal error and keeps serving.
• VectorcraftApp::logic and ui lose one frame and show the error in the status bar; each control-channel request is guarded on its own.

The net exists for bugs, not as a substitute for Result. On wasm a panic aborts the app, so the web build has no net at all.

Fuzzing

Untrusted input has property tests that must never panic:

• crates/engine/tests/import_fuzz.rs: garbage, hostile and mutated SVG and PDF, and swatch (.vcswatches, .gpl), graphic style (.vcstyles) and flattener preset (.vcflattener) libraries, loaded and used, then rendered and exported.
• crates/engine/tests/command_sweep.rs: every command with junk parameters.
• crates/format/tests/prop_format.rs: garbage and mutated .vectorcraft files.
• crates/mcp/tests/protocol_props.rs: malformed MCP messages.

CI runs a few dozen cases each. Before touching an importer, run a deeper search, e.g. PROPTEST_CASES=20000 cargo test --release -p vectorcraft-engine --test import_fuzz. When it finds a panic, fix the code and add the input as a regular test.

Bidirectional type

Point, area and path type lay out Hebrew and Arabic with the Unicode bidirectional algorithm (unicode-bidi, in crates/text/src/layout.rs). Each paragraph's base direction is its ParaStyle::direction (Paragraph panel › Left-to-Right / Right-to-Left Paragraph Direction, shown with Preferences › Type › Show Indic Options; text.setFormat {direction}), else its first strong character. Text is shaped in logical order, right-to-left runs right to left (shape.rs splits segments by bidi level and script), lines are broken in logical order and then each line's whole shaping clusters are put in visual order. Stored text, undo and style ranges stay logical; the caret, selection, hit testing and arrow keys follow the visual order. A paragraph with nothing right to left in it skips the algorithm, so plain text pays nothing for it.

Alignment buttons are physical (Align Left is left in either direction). New type (text.create, the Type tools) is aligned Justify::Auto, the start of each paragraph's direction: Hebrew grows to the left of a point type's anchor. Imported text keeps its own alignment, and SVG import pins the direction SVG implies (left to right unless direction: rtl).

Vertical type keeps its logical order down the column. SVG export outlines text with right-to-left lines (with a warning) until it is written with direction/unicode-bidi; PDF and raster exports use the laid-out glyphs. No font is bundled for these scripts: the installed fonts' fallback covers them (the web build needs a font with that coverage).