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Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python

codeberg.org

91 pointschrisecker38 comments

Hi all,

Finding a good data structure for a word processor is a difficult problem. My notebook diaries on the problem go back 25 years when I was frustrated with using Word for my diploma thesis - it was slow and unstable at that time. I ended up getting pretty hooked on the problem.

Right now I’m taking a professional break and decided to finally use the time to push these ideas further, and build MiniWord — a WYSIWYG word processor in Python.

My goal is to have a native, non-HTML-based editor that stays simple, fast, and is hackable. So far I am focusing on getting the fundamentals right. What is working yet is:

- 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)

- Markdown support

- Support for Python-plugins

Things that I found:

- B-tree structures are perfect for holding rich text data

- A simple text-based file format is incredibly useful — you can diff documents, version them, and even process them with AI tools quite naturally

What I’d love feedback on:

- Where do you see real use cases for something like this?

- What would be missing for you to take it seriously as a tool or platform?

- What kinds of plugins or extensions would actually be worth building?

Happy about any thoughts — positive or critical. Greetings

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One feature missing from almost every mainstream word processor: REVEAL CODES! (https://kb.corel.com/en/127364)

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.

I adore anything that avoids using a browser. <3

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/.

My mistake. Now it works (on linux).

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'`

Fixed it. Thanks for reporting.

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.

You had me at "non-HTML-based" ;)

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"

Markdown without formatting isn't usually the nicest to read imo. I actually appreciate a well laid out and formatted document myself.

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.

It’s also not nice to write longer text in monospace. Or to have long URLs interrupt the text just because you want a hyperlink on some word. Or having to lay out tables by hand like ASCII art. Seeing *this* isn’t the same as seeing this. And you need custom editor software anyway to have affordances like TOC navigation.

> long URLs interrupt the text just because you want a hyperlink

This annoyed me until I realized pandoc supports separating [the link text] from the link location.

  [the link text]: </url/to/resource>
      "`title` parameter of the <a> tag, if converted to HTML"

Yep, but (a) that isn’t portable Markdown, (b) your editor probably doesn’t support opening the link from the link text in that case, and (c) whenever you want to modify the link text you have to modify all occurrences. A word processor can handle that automatically for you. It can also offer completion (like tab completion) for references that you use repeatedly. It can show as a tooltip what a given link text links to. Conveniences like that is what computers are for, let’s not relapse to the stone age here.

Tables by hand, I hate. But I don't quite agree with the first sentiment. For longform prose, it isn't that unusual for people to work with all editing marks visible. Writing novels, I absolutely write using monospace, because it allows you to more concisely control large amounts of formatting easily.

  > Markdown without formatting isn't usually the nicest to read imo

Or to write! I use a bunch of features of markdown rarely enough that I can't remember the format for them half the time, and so I'm always looking at markdown references/cheatsheets. Add to that all the variations and incompatibilities between markdown versions and I'd much rather just use a wysiwyg word processor with nice keyboard shortcuts and a toolbar, and save in markdown format if I need to.

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.

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?

> Is it worth the staggering cost? The file format and GUI complexity?

I was kind of also wondering something like this as I read about different countries switching to linux, and them needing overly complex office software because they are entrenched in the thinking that that need Microsoft office.

Why do you NEED an office clone, what is it in your job that requires anything more than simple text and formatting that something like markdown provides.

I always envy people that can use computers as tools (like scientists/math people) and not fancy distraction devices. Those people, from what I see, don't care about the os, what it looks like, etc... they just want to use the computer as a tool to help them solve problems.

on a third tangent from the point, once I was given a PDF of data to process (instead of just the csv) , because people don't understand computer formats, and try to use things that they think make them look "professional"

> 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.

Most of the reason was corporate decisions. My wife was perfectly happy writing a novel in WordStar under CP/M on our Osborne. But in offices you have to use what you are given so when our company switched from WordPerfect to Microsoft Word that's what everyone had to learn to use.

That is only for techies. WYSIWYG has won for a reason.

I thought the data structure part is solved:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_(data_structure)

Ropes are for strings. In a word processor you need text with formatting, and structures as tables, images and math.

Love to see wxPython!

Check out Typst. It’s a markup language focused on print with HTML layout as a secondary target.

This is great!

Curious about the choice of toolkit: what led you to wxPython?

When you want to develop cross platform apps which use the native widgets, there are not so many options. The two big players are qt and wx.

I love seeing new word processor projects!

Looks like a nice project.

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.

My apologies. I added the missing file.

Thanks. I got it to run on my work laptop that runs Windows. Selections don't work, and cairo spits out a bunch of errors during the screen redraws.

I'll give it a shot on my own Ubuntu laptop.

I have been able to install MiniWord under Windows. It is a bit more challenging.

You should use cairocffi instead of pycairo:

  pip install cairocffi

You also need to install the Cairo DLL. The easiest way is to install the full GTK3 runtime from: https://github.com/tschoonj/gtk-for-windows-runtime-environm...

You must add the directory containing libcairo-2.dll to your PATH environment variable. In my case, this is:

  C:\Program Files\GTK3-Runtime Win64\bin

Note that MiniWord is not yet optimised for Windows. While it mostly works, the rendering quality is lower and startup is slow.

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