> **Last reviewed:** 2026-10-10 · **Last updated:** 2026-10-12 · **Change:** minor (Portuguese proofing; previously trivial: English spelling knows common modern words, #520; previously trivial: all 12 bibliography styles, #383; previously trivial: formatting revisions landed, #41; previously trivial: Draw Table and Eraser landed, #303; previously minor: readiness table with hours per audience; full number back to the additive weighted sum, 60%; mainstream and essentials numbers added; alpha gate checked; previously major: full re-measure against Word for Mac 16.113.4; replaces the parity tables that lived in ROADMAP.md) · **Target:** Microsoft Word (Microsoft 365) for Mac 16.113.4
| Ribbon/menu catalog coverage | **485 / 500 (97.0%)** | **measured**: `cargo xtask parity` (re-derived this pass from `crates/engine/src/catalog.rs` against every `CommandSpec::new` id in the source; identical to the checked-in `parity-checklist.md`) |
| **Ready for real work** (full target) | **~60%** (range 55–63%) | estimated: weighted sum over the dimension table ([By dimension](#by-dimension)) |
| **Mainstream practitioner** | **~55%** | estimated, same method |
| **Essentials user** | **~63%** | estimated, same method |
| Remaining effort to beta | **~150–230 h** of Opus 5.5 agent wall-clock: the blocking beta list ([gaps.md](gaps.md) #1–#7), which lifts file formats, layout, stability and UI enough to reach ~75% | estimated |
| Remaining effort to full parity with Word desktop | **~750–1,250 h** | estimated |
| Commands | 431 engine commands (+ `ui.*` commands in the front end) | measured (source count) |
| Code | ~88,700 lines of Rust in 15 crates, 3 apps and xtask | measured (`wc -l`) |
**Stage: alpha.** All six core workflows pass the [alpha gate](roadmap.md#alpha-gate-core-workflows); see [`ROADMAP.md`](../ROADMAP.md) for why it isn't beta, and the distance.
## What we measured against
- **Microsoft Word for Mac 16.113.4** (Microsoft 365 subscription build, installed on the owner's Mac
at `/Applications/Microsoft Word.app`; version read with `mdls`, bundle modified 2026-10-06).
- Inspected black-box, by **file listing only**, as `AGENTS.md` § Clean room requires (no bundle file
was opened or read): 31 `.lproj` folders (30 interface languages plus Base), 120 proofing tools
under `SharedSupport/Proofing Tools` (spellers, grammars, hyphenators and thesauri for ~50
languages), 12 bibliography styles under `Resources/Style` (APA 6th, Chicago, GB 7714, GOST name
and title, Harvard Anglia, IEEE, ISO 690 author-date and numerical, MLA 7th, SIST02, Turabian),
11 Quick Style sets plus Word 2010, Office themes, a PDF print-dialog extension (`WordPDE.plugin`),
ink rendering (`InkRender.bundle`), a Copilot backstage bundle, and text converters (Excel 2.x–11,
Recover Text).
- Word's file formats, ribbon, dialogs and keyboard shortcuts from Microsoft's public documentation
and our knowledge of Word for Windows and Mac (Microsoft 365). Windows-only features (PDF Reflow
open, Works/WordPerfect import) are counted, because a Word user on Windows expects them.
- WordCraft as it is on origin/main today: source (catalog, command registry, readers/writers,
layout), tests, the i18n catalogs, open issues (62) and open PRs (~45), git history.
- **Not done this pass:** opening real-world .docx files in both apps and comparing pages. There is
no real-world corpus in the repo (Word-produced files can't be committed), and the disk budget
ruled out building. That comparison is the first gap in [`gaps.md`](gaps.md).
## Feature areas
Percent is depth and fidelity against Word, not presence. Weight is our estimate of the share of a
typical Word user's time spent in the area (sums to 100). Hours are Opus 5.5 agent wall-clock to
full parity for the area.
| Area | Weight | Parity | Was (2026-10-06) | Hours | Evidence and what's missing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Typing, selection, clipboard, undo, find/replace | 12 | 85% | 85% | 8–12 | Typing parity pinned by `tests_typing.rs` ([typing-parity.md](typing-parity.md)). Paste Special (#235), Advanced Find (#234) and Column Selection (#237) landed; Clipboard pane still missing (PR #264 open). |
| Character and paragraph formatting | 11 | 82% | 85% | 8–12 | Nearly every property, Font/Paragraph dialogs, character border, Phonetic Guide (#288), Enclose Characters (#297). Missing: Asian Typography, kerning/ligature/stylistic-set options in the Font dialog's Advanced tab. |
| Tables | 8 | 76% | 72% | 10–16 | Merge/split, styles (cell text takes style formatting, #104), custom table styles saved in the .docx (#256), Word 2013 edge, floating tables, rows split across pages, sort, formula, cell gridlines (#243), Draw Table and Eraser (#303). Missing: splitting or erasing around vertically merged cells, nested-table polish, table column markers on the ruler (#49). Dragging column and row borders and the resize handle on the page landed (#217); cell text direction landed (#245). |
| Headers, footers, page numbers, fields | 5 | 70% | 70% | 8–12 | First/even/odd, link to previous, TOC as an updatable field (#52), cross-references to real bookmarks (#227). Field coverage is a subset of Word's ~90 field codes; Field dialog missing. |
| Footnotes and endnotes | 3 | 60% | 60% | 3–5 | Placed and editable, numbers from Word files (#103); long notes continue onto the next page under the continuation separator (#352). Footnote and Endnote dialog with options per section: below text, end of section, number format, start at, restart each section or page, custom mark, convert (#385). |
| Review (proofing UI, comments, track changes, compare, protect) | 8 | 72% | 75% | 15–25 | Comment balloons, tracked insert/delete incl. paragraph marks (#244, #125), Compare / Combine with comparison settings (case, white space, formatting, tables, word or character level, #412), Restrict Editing pane with formatting and editing restrictions, exceptions for everyone and a password (#412). Formatting revisions (#41): kept in DOCX, recorded while tracking, accepted/rejected, "Formatted: …" balloons and change bars. Moves (#400): kept in DOCX, recorded on a tracked cut and paste, accepted/rejected at either end, green markup and "Moved from/to" balloons. Show revisions in balloons takes tracked deletions in the body out of the text into "Deleted: …" balloons (insertions stay inline, as in Word; deletions in headers, footers, notes and text boxes, and in print and PDF, stay inline). Missing: drag-and-drop moves, insert/delete balloons, Translate, Block Authors, modern comment threads/mentions. Lowered: these gaps are confirmed by source (no `rPrChange` anywhere). |
| Proofing (spelling, grammar, thesaurus, languages) | 5 | 42% | (in Review) | 20–40 | English, Polish and Portuguese, chosen per run from its language (`w:lang`): English word list (Moby plus our supplement of modern words such as "desktop", #520) and rule-based grammar; Polish against the installed Hunspell dictionary through a Hunspell-style affix engine, Polish grammar rules and TeX hyphenation patterns (2026-10-10); Portuguese (pt-BR) against the installed VERO Hunspell dictionary — the affix engine reads its `FLAG UTF-8` flags, continuation classes and forbidden spellings — with accent-first suggestions, conservative grammar rules and TeX patterns (2026-10-12). Other languages are left unmarked. The custom dictionary persists across sessions (#40). Word ships 120 proofing tools for ~50 languages plus Editor (style refinements, similarity). Issues #25, #40, #100. |
| Mailings | 2 | 70% | 70% | 6–10 | Mail merge from CSV, fields, rules (IF, SKIPIF, NEXT, NEXTIF, evaluated alike in preview and merge), fields in headers/footers (one section per letter), preview, envelopes, labels. Select Recipients takes a typed list or CSV (#247); no Excel/Outlook/Contacts data sources, no email merge. |
| Pictures, shapes, text boxes, WordArt | 6 | 60% | 60% | 20–30 | Insert, crop, recolour, styles, floating placement like Word (#136), wrap (square/top-bottom/behind/front), text boxes edit and overflow (#46), VML text boxes (#242), free rotation and flips with a rotation handle (#332), WordArt: text fill (solid, gradient, none), outline, shadow, glow and reflection with our own styles, and Transform warps along arch, circle, wave, slant, inflate/deflate, chevron and triangle (other presets kept and drawn flat), connectors (straight, elbow, curved, arrowheads) glued to shapes' connection sites and re-routed when those move (#416). Missing: tight/through contour wrap, rotated text-box text, group (#267 open), shape effects, WordArt 3-D/bevel and editing text in its bent form, connector routing around shapes, Drawing Canvas, Icons, online pictures, screenshot. |
| Mailings | 2 | 70% | 70% | 6–10 | Mail merge from CSV, fields, rules (IF, SKIPIF, NEXT, NEXTIF, evaluated alike in preview and merge), fields in headers/footers (one section per letter), preview, envelopes, labels. Select Recipients takes a typed list, CSV (#247) or a sheet of an Excel (.xlsx/.xlsm) or OpenDocument (.ods) workbook, with Select Table to pick the sheet (#334); no Outlook/Contacts/Access data sources, no email merge. |
| Pictures, shapes, text boxes, WordArt | 6 | 60% | 60% | 20–30 | Insert, crop, recolour, styles, floating placement like Word (#136), wrap (square/top-bottom/behind/front), text boxes edit and overflow (#46), VML text boxes (#242), free rotation and flips with a rotation handle (#332), text-box text direction (90°, 270°, stacked), Align Text and linked text boxes (#369), Icons: an original icon library drawn in code with a searchable picker, inserted as pictures and recoloured with Icon Color (#309), Drawing Canvas with Fit/Expand/Scale and DOCX `wpc:wpc` (#344; members edited by command, not yet dragged inside the canvas; the canvas rotates and flips as a whole). Missing: tight/through contour wrap, text in a freely rotated text box, group (#267 open), shape effects, WordArt, connectors, online pictures, screenshot. |
| Charts, SmartArt, Draw/ink, 3D models, icons | 4 | 3% | (20% with equations) | 70–110 | Icons landed (#309; an original library drawn in code). Draw: pens, pencil, highlighter, stroke eraser and Hide Ink (#307), ink saved as DrawingML freeforms; Lasso Select (move, recolour, delete), Add Pen gallery, Ink to Shape (line, rectangle, ellipse, triangle, polygon) and Ink Replay (#395); Ink to Math, pressure and Word's own InkML missing; charts: Insert › Chart makes column, bar (clustered and stacked), line, area, pie, doughnut and scatter charts with Chart Design (change type, Edit Data grid, title, legend, data labels) and saves them as real chart parts (#409); charts from Word are drawn (#292) and kept on save (#319) but stay read-only; SmartArt is drawn and kept (#292, #319); Insert › SmartArt (#497) creates and edits list, process, cycle, hierarchy, pyramid, radial, matrix and Venn graphics with our own layouts, a Text Pane and the SmartArt Design tab, saved as diagram parts with the drawing; SmartArt from other programs stays read-only. |
| View (modes, zoom, panes, windows) | 3 | 72% | 70% | 6–10 | Print/web/draft/read/focus, dark page (#194), pages side by side when zoomed out (#251), navigation pane; Outline view with the Outlining tab: levels, promote/demote, moving with collapsed content, expand/collapse, Show Level, first line only, text formatting (#493). Missing: View Side by Side, Synchronous Scrolling, Arrange All, Switch Windows, Master Document, Immersive Reader depth. |
| Backstage, printing, options | 3 | 58% | 55% | 12–20 | New/Home pages (#254), save prompts (#151), web printing via the browser (#209). Desktop printing still goes through PDF; Options has a fraction of Word's panes. |
| Right-to-left and complex scripts | 1 | 50% | 55% | 15–25 | UAX #9, Arabic shaping, RTL paragraphs (#207). No RTL sections/tables, kashida justification or mirrored UI; open bug reports (#215, #211, #199, #66, #63, #48, #19) need re-testing against #207. |
| East Asian typography | 1 | 25% | not rated | 13–22 | IME input works (winit fixes pending, #155–#164). Vertical text in sections, text boxes and cells with upright ideographs (#491; no `vert` glyph alternates). Ruby/Phonetic Guide with DOCX round trip (#288); document grid (lines per page, characters per line, #391). No `w:eastAsianLayout`, enclose characters, Asian line-break options. |
| Accessibility | 1 | 50% | not rated | 10–18 | AccessKit enabled in eframe. Alt Text pane for pictures, shapes, text boxes, groups, charts and tables with Mark as decorative, all round-tripping in DOCX (#386). The Accessibility pane groups errors, warnings and tips with jump-to and one-click fixes; rules for alt text, heading order, header rows, blank table rows/columns, merged cells, low contrast (WCAG ratio), floating objects and blank paragraphs. Screen-reader access to the document canvas is still untested (#18); no reading-order tools. The document canvas describes its text, headings, lists, tables, links, pictures and caret to screen readers through AccessKit (#488). |
| Agent control (CLI, MCP, control channel, macro record/playback) | 0 | beyond Word | 100%+ | — | Every action is a command id usable from CLI, MCP and a keyed control port. Word has VBA and Office.js instead (see Ecosystem). |
Weighted feature depth: **~68%** (Σ weight × parity / 100 over the table).
## Readiness numbers: full, mainstream practitioner, essentials user
Three numbers, each with its own hours (craftrules `standards/progress-docs.md`, "Numbers"). The
**full** number is the additive weighted sum over the dimension table below. **Mainstream** and
**essentials** average depth over the areas in scope, then multiply by written-down discounts for
what still stops real work. The stage follows the full number and the core-workflow gate.
| Audience | Ready | Opus 5.5 agent wall-clock hours to ~95% | Work that dominates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full target (ready for real work) | **~60%** | **~650–1,100 h** (70–80% parallelizes) | Breadth: charts/SmartArt/Draw, localization and proofing languages, East Asian and RTL typography, `.doc` writing, PDF Reflow, ecosystem; plus everything below |
| Interaction fidelity | ×0.93 | — | Typing pinned to Word (`tests_typing.rs`), ribbon, keytips, mini-toolbar; but 16 modal dialogs against Word's ~100, 125 of ~250 shortcuts, picture/shape handling complaints (#82, #142), lines wrap differently without an Aptos-metric font |
| Discoverability and UI clarity | — | ×0.95 | Word-style ribbon a Word user already knows, command search, keytips; some newer pane strings and tooltips terse or untranslated |
| Stability on real machines | ×0.90 | ×0.90 (launch and install) | Never-crash standard, hostile-param fuzzing, panic guard; but open startup crash on Intel UHD (#170), freezes (#77, #59, #31), Windows writes fail without admin (#218), installer conflicts with other Crafting Apps (#64, #73, #106, #51); 5 days of field history |
| Exchanging files with Word users | ×0.90 | ×0.92 (opening files people send) | Word opens our .docx; `.doc` import; but no real-world corpus test, charts/SmartArt/OLE dropped silently, pagination differs (Aptos, no column balancing or footnote continuation). Simple documents, which are most of what a casual user receives, come through well; double-click open on macOS is fixed on main but not yet released (#223, #279) |
#44, #45, #217, #95; files and saving: #187, #195, #279, #18; printing #15; several may already
be fixed on main), **~11 right-to-left and language** reports (#19, #48, #63, #66, #199, #211,
#215, #25, #40, #56, #100), **~24 feature requests or minor bugs** (catalog parity, macros,
passwords, cloud, theming).
- Reading: people are trying WordCraft as a Word replacement and report core-path problems more
than niche ones; the install and stability discount is earned.
## By dimension
Weights are our estimate of how much each dimension decides whether a professional can switch from
Word. Their weighted sum is the **full ready for real work** number.
| Dimension | Weight | Parity | Hours to full | Doc | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Features (depth, table above) | 30% | 68% | 210–335 | this file | Weighted table above. Hours: the area table sums to 290–460 h; the Page layout, Footnotes, RTL and East Asian rows (~50–85 h) are counted under Layout and the Proofing row (25–45 h) under Localization, so they aren't counted twice |
| File formats (DOCX fidelity first) | 20% | 60% | 185–300 | [file-format-parity.md](file-format-parity.md) | DOCX opens in Word and round-trips our own tests, but no real-world corpus test yet; charts, SmartArt, OLE and encrypted files are lost or refused (content controls kept since #381) |
| Stability | 10% | 50% | 25–45 | [gaps.md](gaps.md) | Never-crash standard and hostile-param fuzzing in place, but open reports of a startup crash on Intel UHD (#170), freezes (#77, #59, #31) and Windows write failure without admin (#218); no soak test; 5 days of field history |
| Performance | 5% | 75% | 10–20 | [layout-parity.md](layout-parity.md) | 61 ms cold layout and 1.4 ms relayout on a 188-page document (measured 2026-10-06, not re-run); font picker freezes fixed in #233; no large real-world documents measured |
| Platforms | 3% | 95% | 5–10 | [ROADMAP.md](../ROADMAP.md) | macOS (universal, signed), Windows x64/x86/arm64, Linux (AppImage/deb/rpm/Flatpak), FreeBSD, web. Beyond Word on Linux, BSD and the web; Word's iPad/iPhone/Android apps are out of scope |
| Hardware | 1% | 40% | 20–40 | [hardware-parity.md](hardware-parity.md) | No native printing on desktop, no pen/ink, no dictation; GPU drawing and HiDPI fine. Ink hours are in the Features row (Draw tab) |
| Ecosystem and plugins | 2% | 15% | 40–80 | [gaps.md](gaps.md) | Zotero built in, macros record/play commands, `.docm` macros preserved (#172). No VBA execution, no Office add-ins, no EndNote/Mendeley plugins, no cloud storage or co-authoring |
| AI features | 0% | 40% | 15–30 | [gaps.md](gaps.md) | Beyond Word for external agents (MCP, CLI). No in-app writing assistant like Copilot yet (chat PR #178 open). Weight 0: Copilot is a paid add-on and not what decides a switch |
**Ready for real work ≈ 0.30·68 + 0.20·60 + 0.15·55 + 0.10·65 + 0.10·50 + 0.05·75 + 0.04·25 +
0.03·95 + 0.01·40 + 0.02·15 ≈ 60%.**
## Methodology
- **Measured** numbers come from the source on origin/main: the catalog/registry diff (the same
computation as `cargo xtask parity`), `#[test]` counts, i18n catalog rows, reader/writer element
coverage (`grep` over `crates/docx`, `crates/docbin`, `crates/formats`) and the Word bundle
listing. Nothing was built or run this pass (disk budget).
- **Estimated** numbers are judgements from that evidence plus Word's documented feature set. The
| 2026-10-12 | minor | Portuguese proofing (pt-BR spelling from the installed VERO dictionary, accent-first suggestions, grammar, hyphenation; Review › Language gains Português (Brasil)): Proofing 40% → 42%; other dimensions unchanged at this precision |
| 2026-10-11 | trivial | Proofing: runs in a language without a dictionary are skipped instead of flagged against the English dictionary (#100); no percentage change |
| 2026-10-11 | trivial | Tables: column and row borders and the resize handle drag on the page (#217); Tables row and interaction-fidelity evidence updated, no percentage change |
| 2026-10-11 | trivial | Review: Show revisions in balloons takes tracked deletions in the body out of the text into "Deleted: …" balloons (it drew like the comments-and-formatting mode before); Review row updated, no percentage change |
| 2026-10-11 | trivial | Accessibility 35% → 50%: Alt Text pane for every object and tables, decorative flag, deeper checker with an Accessibility pane (#386); weight 1, headline unchanged |
| 2026-10-11 | trivial | References: Caption, Index, Mark Entry, Custom Table of Contents and Create/Edit Source dialogs, with the field switches they write honoured on update (#402); no percentage change |
| 2026-10-11 | trivial | Footnotes and endnotes: Footnote and Endnote dialog, options per section (position, format, start, restart each section/page), convert notes (#385); no percentage change |
| 2026-10-11 | trivial | Pictures, shapes, text boxes: text direction, Align Text and linked text boxes (Create Link / Break Link), DOCX `bodyPr``vert`/`anchor` and `wps:linkedTxbx` (#369); no percentage change |
| 2026-10-11 | trivial | English spelling (#520): common modern words ("desktop", "download", "email"…) recognised via our supplement list; Proofing row updated, no percentage change |
| 2026-10-10 | minor | Readiness table: hours to ~95% per audience (full ~650–1,100 h, mainstream ~300–500 h, essentials ~90–140 h). Full number restored to the additive weighted sum, ~47% → ~60%: method aligned with the standard, no new evidence; beta distance back to ~15 points and ~150–230 h |
| 2026-10-10 | minor | Added mainstream practitioner (~54%) and essentials user (~63%) numbers with written weights and discounts; full ready-for-real-work recomputed with the same multiplicative discounts: 60% → ~47% (method change, not new product evidence; stage stays alpha: above 40% and the gate passes); beta now ~450–700 h to the 75% bar; user-evidence counts from GitHub |
| 2026-10-10 | minor | Stage checked against the core-workflow alpha gate: passes, stays alpha |
| 2026-10-10 | major | Created from ROADMAP.md's "Parity by area" and "Estimate to 100%" sections; full re-measure against Word for Mac 16.113.4 (bundle listing, catalog diff from source, issue tracker); split into feature depth (67%) and ready for real work (60%); added proofing, East Asian, accessibility areas and the dimension table; hours re-calibrated from PR history |
| 2026-10-06 | major | First estimate in ROADMAP.md: ~62% real feature parity, 120–150 h to 100% |
