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[mkoskim]

Issues

First things first. I use MaweJS daily for writing my stories. That's why I priorize my time to features I happen to need urgently for some draft I am editing. Sadly this means, that features I don't need just right now tend to stay in issues for long, long time. More sadly, many of these features would be pretty mandatory for all the other possible users.

Second, the project is still at its early phase. Many issues will need architectural changes before they can really be implemented. These changes can be laborous.

In last few days, I have marked some issues as "good first issue". These issues have certain properties:

• They are useful! I have picked issues that really add some useful functionality
• At least quickly thought, they have limited scope. They don't involve any big changes all over the sources. Of course, sometimes issue that looked simple grows complex, but that we can't help before trying to complete it.
• They are not urgent. They are issues that are really useful, but they are not desperately needed right this second e.g. for other issues. They are not bugs or such. So, you can take your own time with them.

Sources

Quick overview of source locations:

examples/ Example .mawe files which can be used for testing.

https://github.com/mkoskim/mawejs/tree/master/examples

src/document/ https://github.com/mkoskim/mawejs/tree/master/src/document

This directory contains all sorts of generic document (story) handling, like loading (reading file, converting XML to internal representation and so on) and saving (producing XML, writing it to file). Some issues related to these files:

#75 - currently exporting functions (converting internal tree to selected file format) are located in Export UI folder. Their right location would be here with loading and saving documents.

src/gui/

GUI sources are separated inside their own directory tree. In fact, I could rename "gui" to "react". There are few reasons for this.

1. First, foremost and most importantly: for testing purposes, we need underlaying functions - like all related to document object manipulation - to be usable in plain NodeJS environment. At some point, we need to run test cases that loading & saving works, that filesystem functions do what is expected, and finally - we might want a "headless" editor to be used with scripting.
2. We might need GUIs at the top of different frameworks. At just right now, it seems that we can go with React and Material UI, but that can change in the future.

src/gui/app/ https://github.com/mkoskim/mawejs/tree/master/src/gui/app

The top-level components, with view select. Some related issues:

#79 - top-level render performance is quite crucial, because top level components will be rendered at every single keystroke in editor. Squeezing out some milliseconds will ensure, that the editor responsiveness remains also with large files.

There is dead code in state/ folder related to Redux state. It is still there, because I am pretty sure I will take Redux back at some point.

src/gui/editor/ https://github.com/mkoskim/mawejs/tree/master/src/gui/editor

Editor view with SlateJS editor component is the core component of the editor. Quite many issues are related to this view, in way or another.

src/gui/organizer/ https://github.com/mkoskim/mawejs/tree/master/src/gui/organizer

Organizer shows the story in blocks, where you can drag'n'drop parts and scenes. This view is very under-developed. There should be much more tools to edit your story structure (like creating new parts and scenes), and the view itself needs polishing. Related issues:

#29 - generic improvements.

src/gui/chart/ https://github.com/mkoskim/mawejs/tree/master/src/gui/chart

Chart view shows the blocks relative to their sizes (in word counts). It also shows a "template" which you can compare your story. This view need tools to edit the story.

Chart view has its own project to implement "fillers" for story speculation: https://github.com/users/mkoskim/projects/5

src/gui/export/ https://github.com/mkoskim/mawejs/tree/master/src/gui/export

Export view handles story exporting to other formats (RTF, LaTeX, ...). It has basic head info editing (title, author). Issues related to exporting or export view are collected in a project:

https://github.com/users/mkoskim/projects/7

#60 - export view needs some basic editing features. When you are in preview, you are many times also proof-reading the story. It would be nice, if you can fix typos and such in the preview directly, without needing to switch to editor side and then back.

One thing is that preview is generated by ExportHTML() - for purpose. Using the same engine which will eventually generate the file gives us pretty good certainty that the export result will be what we wanted. But to add fancy features, we might want a "formatter" that outputs JavaScript objects to be rendered by React:

#144 - Dedicated formatter for preview

Dead code

There are currently some dead code around.

src/gui/filebrowser/ https://github.com/mkoskim/mawejs/tree/master/src/gui/filebrowser

This is currently dead code. It is there waiting for Workspace implementation. We currently use host system file dialogs, but I want more advanced features for searching and adding files to workspaces.

Currently, MaweJS uses system file open & save dialogs. At some point I replace them with React implementation. Reasons: first, united user experience accross platformas. Second, system dialogs vary a lot by features. Some have search, some have not. In some you can remove files, in others you can't.

src/gui/workspace/ https://github.com/mkoskim/mawejs/tree/master/src/gui/workspace

This is currently dead code. I like first to implement the basic features before diving in implementing workspaces. Workspace development has its own project waiting:

https://github.com/users/mkoskim/projects/9