Litho parity with Adobe InDesign

Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-24 · Change: minor (Convert Variable to Text; list buttons with the default hanging indent; custom anchored objects honour Relative to Spine; PDF/X-4 visible unembedded font detection, #909; autoflow fills the following pages first; File ▸ Open Recent; .indd and .indt open through indd-utils; text threads by hand; image clipping paths from IDML; anchored objects wrap text; Tabs panel listed as present (#343); spring-loaded Zoom navigation; recovery checkpoint retention; cancelable macOS Dock Quit; Based on Parent; object styles carry effects; colour management on craft-cms, Coated FOGRA39 default CMYK; swatches on placed greyscale and bitmap images) · Target: Adobe InDesign 2026 (21.6.0.57, macOS)

The authoritative assessment of how close Litho is to Adobe InDesign. ROADMAP.md summarizes it; gaps.md lists every known shortfall one at a time; the feature-by-feature presence checklist is parity-checklist.md (cargo xtask parity).

Headline

How breadth was measured

Two measurements bracket it, and neither is the answer by itself.

• Checklist: 99% (upper bound, measured, self-graded rows). cargo xtask parity scores the 275 rows of parity-checklist.md, weighted P0 = 3, P1 = 2, P2 = 1: 269 done, 6 partial, 0 missing. The rows are a catalogue we wrote and were graded by the agents that built the features; "done" means the feature exists, not that it has all of InDesign's options.
• Menu dump: 69% (lower bound, measured 2026-10-10). The main menu tree of the running InDesign 2026 21.6, dumped through its scripting DOM during black-box observation (plan/indesign/screenshots/menus.txt, local, never committed: 1,121 entries, 798 leaf items), was matched by a script against every label in the Litho source (engine command labels, UI_COMMANDS, the MENUS table, dialog and panel strings; case, punctuation and "Show/Hide" variants normalized). Excluded as out of scope or dynamic: the installed-font list (490 items), Plug-Ins, Adobe cloud and AI services (Firefly, Generate, Rewrite, Auto Style, Stock, CC Libraries, Publish Online, Share for Review), InCopy, Help links, window tiling, recent files and workspace names. 331 of 482 in-scope items match (68.7%): File 19/26, Edit 28/31, Layout 21/27, Type 49/92, Object 81/110, Table 26/45, View 40/57, Window 50/73, app menu 17/20. It undercounts: some items exist under another label or only in a panel menu (Notes and Track Changes have panels and note.* / changes.* commands but not InDesign's Type ▸ Notes / Track Changes submenus).
• Menu tree from documentation: 75% (cross-check). The same match against the clean-room menu tree compiled from public documentation (plan/indesign/04-menu-tree.md, 689 items): 440 of 590 in-scope items (74.6%).
• Command surface (measured): 446 engine commands (188 placed in menus) + 99 UI commands; the menu bar has 9 menus, 49 submenus and 340 items. The original plan targeted ~1,000 commands.

The breadth figure is taken between them, at ~80%, because the checklist overstates (rows were written at a coarse grain and graded by their builders) and the label match understates (label differences, panel-only commands).

How "ready for real work" was estimated

Each dimension below was judged from the code, the tests, the issue tracker (124 issues, 79 open on 2026-10-10, most from people trying the 0.4/0.5 releases on real work) and the InDesign 2026 reference material. Weights reflect what an InDesign professional hits first: opening the files they receive, setting type exactly, and basic editing that never fails.

How the number is built: the plain weighted sum of the table above, per the craftrules standard: 25×55 + 15×45 + 20×40 + 15×45 + 10×45 + 5×65 + 3×45 + 3×55 + 2×45 + 2×15 = 47.2% → ~47% (range 42–52%, ±5 points of judgement in the dimension values). An earlier version today applied a further ×0.9 for cross-cutting core-path failures and reported 42%. That multiplicative step was dropped to match the standard (discounts belong only to the mainstream and essentials numbers). Those failures are already in the UI/UX (45%) and Stability (45%) rows, and the Primary Text Frame page fixes (#165) are what hold the stage at pre-alpha through the gate.

Mainstream practitioner and essentials user

Two narrower questions, computed with the craftrules method so every app's numbers compare. The stage still follows the full number (~47%) and the core-workflow gate. All three are estimates.

Hours are calibrated as in Remaining effort and calibration (1–2 h per feature arc, 2–4 h per behaviour cluster matched against an oracle). Each audience's work is a subset of the one above it: essentials ⊂ mainstream ⊂ full. Human needs: the owner's decision on INDD (#114), InDesign oracle captures on the owner's Mac, native-speaker review (full only).

Mainstream practitioner: ~42%

The typical InDesign professional (magazine, book, brochure, packaging-adjacent layout artist) uses these weekly: the alpha-gate workflows plus their everyday tools. Excluded: plug-ins and scripting compatibility, generative/cloud AI, InCopy and team workflows, specialist hardware, interface languages other than the user's own. Depth here is what the feature does when it works; interaction, stability and exchange problems are the discounts, so they aren't counted twice.

Discounts (multiplicative):

60.7% × 0.88 × 0.92 × 0.85 = 41.8% → ~42%. It is lower than the full number (47%) because the full number spreads weight over dimensions Litho does relatively well (performance, platforms, breadth of the long tail: 99% checklist presence), while the weekly core carries the gaps at full weight: threading, editing bugs and INDD exchange.

Essentials user: ~54%

Someone making a flyer, poster, newsletter or simple booklet: they touch only the core. Excluded: advanced options, pro workflows (preflight, separations, books, long-document features), exchange edge cases, and everything excluded above.

72.0% × 0.90 × 0.88 × 0.95 = 54.2% → ~54%.

User evidence (GitHub issues and comments, 2026-10-10)

126 issues and 94 comments; no issues were filed by the maintainer (echelon).

• Praise: 7 people in 6 threads (#32 "so damn impressive… InDesign open source for Linux", #77, #107, #113, #197, #328).
• Switched-from-InDesign reports: 0 completed switches. 2 former InDesign users trying real work: #348, a retired designer who lost an Adobe licence, laying out 18 pages; #140. Both were blocked by core-path bugs (paste to page, threading). #320 is an art director with 10 years of daily InDesign asking for a feature.
• Open issues (81):
  • 44 are core-path bugs (54%), clustering into a few root causes: copy/paste (8), context menus (5), threading (4), launch (6), fonts (5).
  • 9 are InDesign file-exchange bugs.
  • 26 are niche requests or polish (HTML export, QuarkXPress import, MCP gateway, theme options).
  • 2 are meta.

So the user evidence matches the numbers: interest and goodwill are high, and real work is stopped by a short list of core-path bugs.

Why the number went down

The 2026-10-04 estimate said "~83% including depth" and 170 h remaining. It was written before anyone outside the project had used the app. New evidence since then:

• 79 open issues, many about core editing on Windows and Linux (copy/paste, context menus, threading, fonts not found, startup crashes), filed against the 0.4 and 0.5 releases.
• The first measured menu coverage: 69% of the in-scope items of InDesign 21.6's own menu dump.
• The main file format: InDesign users receive .indd files, which Litho can't open. The previous estimate treated INDD as out of scope; a professional can't.
• No comparison of composition against InDesign exists, so typographic fidelity is unproven.

Features by area

Breadth is the checklist's measured score; Ready is this review's estimate of depth and reliability. Hours overlap with the dimension table (UI and format work sits in both views); the dimension table is the one summed.

PDF/X-4 export warnings and validate-pdf report unembedded fonts drawing visible text, including inside placed PDF forms, with font names and pages (#909). Invisible text (render mode 3) is exempt from the font-embedding check. Fonts are not embedded or outlined automatically; embedding, substitution or outlining of placed-PDF fonts remains missing (gap 28). A document-wide operation limit and a form-nesting depth limit report incomplete font checks rather than traversing pathological nesting. This is detection, not complete external PDF/X certification.

Remaining effort and calibration

Calibrated against this repo's history. The first commit was 2026-10-01 09:00; by 2026-10-10 origin/main had 470 commits (77 merged pull requests), 126,411 lines of Rust in 276 files and 1,122 #[test] functions. Commit timestamps show ~43 wall-clock hours of activity (gaps under 45 minutes), with one to five agents working in parallel, so roughly 100–150 Opus 5.5 agent-hours built the current app: ~0.25 h per commit, 1–2 h per feature arc (a command, dialog, IDML and PDF support, tests). The community fixes of 2026-10-09/10 (text composition edge cases #282–#298, 40–400 lines each) took about 1–2 h each. Depth work against an oracle (matching InDesign's behaviour exactly) is slower than adding features: 2–4 h per behaviour cluster, more when the oracle has to be built first.

With four to five agents in parallel and an integrator, the beta work is ~120–200 wall-clock hours.

Methodology and sources

• Target: Adobe InDesign 2026, version 21.6.0.57, installed at /Applications/Adobe InDesign 2026/. Inspected without launching and without reading anything inside the bundle beyond names and listings (clean-room rule, AGENTS.md): Info.plist CFBundleDocumentTypes and UTExportedTypeDeclarations (formats), .lproj folder names (25 UI localizations), plug-in folder names (filters), Presets/ folder names (swatch libraries, workspaces, shortcut sets).
• Reference material: plan/indesign/01–11 (local, gitignored): overview, UI/UX, feature catalogue, menu tree, tools, panels, dialogs, file formats, shortcuts, typography, and observations of the running app.
• Litho measured from source on origin/main (92649ff, 2026-10-10): command registry, MENUS, i18n catalogs, crate line and test counts, format modules. No local build (disk).
• User evidence: GitHub issues #1–#352 and open PRs (65 open, including the INDD converter proposals #98 and #114).

Appendix: what works today

The inventory below was the "Working today" list of ROADMAP.md (moved here 2026-10-10, unchanged). It is evidence of breadth: each item exists. It is not a claim of InDesign-level depth.

• Document model: facing/non-facing spreads, parent pages with page-number markers, sections, layers, frames (text / graphic / unassigned), threaded stories, paragraph/character/object styles with based-on, swatches (process/spot/tints/gradients), corner options, text wrap, drop shadow, opacity/blend.
• Text engine: Knuth–Plass paragraph composer and single-line composer, dictionary hyphenation (public-domain Moby list + our own trained Liang patterns), justification with word/letter/glyph-scaling ranges, keep options (keep with next, keep lines together — at start/end of paragraph by default, as in InDesign — widows/orphans), balance ragged lines, optical margin alignment, hyphenation zone/limit, columns, threading across frames and spreads, tabs, bullets/numbering, rules, shading, baseline grid, first-baseline options, vertical justification, wrap exclusions, overset detection, caret/hit testing.
• FID2: IDML underline/strikethrough Text Color resets survive style inheritance and roundtrip. Raster and PDF paint underlines behind glyphs, retain strikethrough above, and center rules on their offsets; synthetic overlap tests cover both backends.
• Rendering: vello_cpu (SIMD, multithreaded) — pages, items, images with mip levels, gradients, composed text.
• UI (egui): application bar + menus, Control panel (object and text modes), Tools panel with flyouts and the Fill/Stroke proxy (D, X, Shift+X, / as color.* commands), document tabs, rulers, pasteboard, guides (margins, columns, bleed, baseline grid), document grid (View ▸ Grids & Guides, ⌘', on the snap positions, behind or in front of items), Lock Guides (⌥⌘;) and Lock Column Guides (View ▸ Grids & Guides; Lock Column Guides is saved with the document and in IDML), frame edges, selection handles, text ports and threads, Properties / Pages / Layers dock, Swatches (InDesign's header: Fill/Stroke proxy, Formatting Affects Container/Text, Tint; a swatch goes to the fill or stroke in front; New Color Group / New Swatch / Delete Swatch row), Styles, Character, Paragraph, Stroke, Text Wrap panels, New Document and Preferences dialogs, Quick Apply (⌘Return), 4 brightness themes.
• Pen tool, Direct Selection anchor/handle editing, rotate from corners, Rotate/Scale/Shear tools, Eyedropper, snapping & smart guides, Align/Distribute, Find/Change (text + GREP), Story Editor, Paragraph Style Options, Effects panel, hidden characters, native macOS menu bar, measured InDesign 2026 look (Medium Dark): Properties sections per selection state, 21 pt spinner fields with arithmetic, Contextual Task Bar, inverse (black) text selection, Pages panel with drag-and-drop reorder / parent apply, Layers panel with per-object rows, expandable groups and drag-and-drop reorder of layers and objects (the selection square moves the selection to another layer).
• Tools: Selection (click, marquee, move, Alt-duplicate, resize handles), Direct Selection, Type (draw frame, click caret, select, type; Option/Alt+Left/Right kerns at the caret or tracks a selection by the Kerning/Tracking increment, ×5 with Cmd/Ctrl; words move with Cmd+Left/Right on macOS and Ctrl+Left/Right elsewhere), Rectangle/Ellipse/Polygon (+ frame variants), Line, Hand, Zoom.
• PDF export (krilla): real selectable text with embedded font subsets, DeviceCMYK/RGB + spot Separations, bleed boxes, crop/bleed marks + page info, pages or spreads, PDF/A-2b (PDF/X-4 output intent pending) — file.exportPdf, File › Export PDF…, litho-cli run --export out.pdf. File › Export PDF… now opens an "Export PDF" options dialog (General / Compression / Marks and Bleeds / Advanced) and remembers the last-used settings across exports and sessions.
• IDML interchange (litho-idml): export and import of swatches, styles, fonts, preferences, parent spreads, spreads/pages, frames, groups, images (embedded or linked), formatted threaded stories; attributes a file leaves unset take InDesign's defaults (Keep Lines Together at start/end of paragraph, 12 pt corners, paragraph rules in Text Color, auto-sizing from the centre, numbered lists restarting in each story, alternating table fills Black 20 % / None; a tint of −1 is the colour's own; frames take the fill, stroke, corners and Text Frame Options they don't write from their object style chain, then [None]) — opens in InDesign 2026 and round-trips InDesign-exported files (file.exportIdml, file.openIdml, File → Export IDML…, CLI --in x.idml / --export x.idml).
• Tables (M8): tables anchored in stories (header/footer/body rows, merged cells, per-edge strokes, fills + alternating fills, insets, vertical justification, at-least/exact row heights); composed into the text column (columns scale to fit, rows break across columns/frames with repeating headers/footers, overset); rendered, exported to PDF (real text) and IDML (export + import); Table menu, Table panel, Create Table dialog, caret/typing/Tab navigation and cell selection in cells; Type tool drags of row and column borders (Shift keeps the table size, or scales every row/column on the outer edge; table.resizeBorder); table.* commands.
• Hyperlinks (text or frames → URL / e-mail / page) and bookmarks, exported as PDF link annotations and outline.
• EPUB 3 (reflowable) export: stories in reading order, CSS from paragraph/character styles, images, navigation (file.exportEpub, CLI --export x.epub).
• Data Merge (one linked CSV, TSV, text, or Excel file; text, image, QR, and hyperlink placeholders; preview; a new document with one record per page or records tiled on a single page), spell checking (public-domain Moby list + document dictionary, suggestions), Step and Repeat (count or grid, with a previewing dialog), snippets, object styles, Numbering & Section Options.
• Footnotes: Type › Insert Footnote (caret moves into the note), Document Footnote Options (numbering style incl. symbols, start/restart per page/spread/section, prefix/suffix, reference position/character style, paragraph style, separator, spacing, first baseline, rule above); notes composed at the bottom of the referencing column with the body text making room, or across all the columns of the frame with Span Footnotes Across Columns; edited in place on the canvas; rendered, exported to PDF (real text) and IDML (InDesign's structure, verified opening in InDesign 2026) and imported from IDML; footnote.* commands.
• Paragraph Rules: Rule Above / Rule Below (on, weight, colour, tint, column or text width, offset, left/right indent) set in the Paragraph panel menu and Paragraph Style Options › Paragraph Rules; inherited style values shown, and type.para / style.paragraph.edit change only the rule fields named.
• Cross-references and text anchors: Insert Cross-Reference (paragraph by style, or text anchor), 11 formats with InDesign's building blocks (full/partial paragraph, paragraph text/number, page number, anchor name, chapter, file name) plus user formats; resolved live at composition — never out of date, no Update step; unresolved destinations show ??; PDF link annotations to the destination page; IDML export/import as InDesign cross-reference sources, hyperlinks, text destinations and formats (verified in InDesign 2026); xref.* / anchor.* commands.
• Index: page references (topic from the selection or up to 4 levels, sort keys; current page, to end of story, next n paragraphs, suppressed, See / See also), Generate / Update Index (section headings, nested or run-in, page ranges merged, Index Title / Section Head / Level 1–4 styles); IDML export/import as InDesign topics, page references and topic cross-references (verified in InDesign 2026); index.* commands.
• Text clipboard keeps formatting (character/paragraph formats, footnotes, cross-references, index markers, tables) and falls back to plain text when the system clipboard changed; Paste without Formatting (⇧⌘V); Change Case (UPPERCASE, lowercase, Title Case, Sentence case — formatting kept); Type › Insert Special Character / White Space / Break Character submenus.
• Anchored objects: items flow in the text inline (on the baseline, with Y offset; lines grow to fit) or above the line (left/center/right, space before/after); paste copied items into text to anchor them; Anchored Object Options and Release (back onto the page where shown); rendered, exported to PDF and to/from IDML (InDesign anchored object settings; verified in InDesign 2026); copy/paste and threading carry them; anchored.* commands.
• Ruler guides: drag out of the rulers (page guides, or spread guides on the pasteboard), drag to move, drop on a ruler to delete; a dragged guide snaps along its axis to other guides, margins, columns, bleed, page and object edges and centers and the document grid (Shift: the ruler's ticks; Cmd suspends snapping); selected like objects with the Selection tools (click, Shift-click, a marquee that touches no object, Edit › Select All Guides ⌥⌘G), drawn highlighted, moved together by dragging or the arrow keys, deleted with Delete, and placed exactly with the X or Y field of the Control and Properties panels; Layout › Create Guides (rows/columns with gutters, fit to margins or page); Delete All Guides on Spread; guide.* commands.
• Column guides: with the Selection tool, drag an interior column guide to move its gutter (both guides together, keeping its width, stopped by the neighbouring guides and the margins), snapping to the document grid, guides and objects, or with Shift to the ruler's tick marks; Escape cancels; one undo step. Refused while Lock Column Guides is on (the default). A document page takes the result as its own columns; on a parent page it reaches the pages that follow it. Objects stay where they are (there is no persistent Layout Adjustment setting yet). layout.moveColumnGuide.
• Links panel: every placed graphic with status (OK / Modified / Missing / Embedded, checked against the file on disk), page and effective PPI (low resolution flagged); Relink…, Go To, Update, Embed; links.* commands.
• Linked text files: file.place {link: true} or Preferences › File Handling › Create Links When Placing Text Files keeps a placed .docx/.rtf/.txt story linked to its file (path, size and hash, and the style map and conflict option used). The Links panel shows it OK / Modified / Missing; Update imports the file again into the same frames and thread with the saved style map, replacing edits made in the layout (the Links panel and menu ask first; the links.update command updates and returns a warning; undoable); Relink, Go To and Unlink. Saved in the native format; IDML exports the text unlinked.
• Missing fonts: highlighted pink on screen (never in output), listed by Preflight; Type › Find/Replace Font (fonts in the document, missing first; replace in text, cells, footnotes and styles); font.list / font.replace. Type › Reload Fonts (font.reload) scans the font folders again and reads again the installed font files edited or removed since they were read, then recomposes the open documents: a font installed or edited while Litho runs needs no restart (#328, #547). InDesign notices such changes by itself.
• Missing glyphs, as in InDesign: a character the applied font lacks is drawn as that font's missing-glyph box (its .notdef; a drawn box when the font's is empty), on screen and in PDF (as a path, so PDF/A and PDF/UA exports take it), and Preflight lists the characters by font. Preferences › Composition › Draw Missing Glyphs from Fallback Fonts (document.preferences {glyphFallback}, stored with the document) draws them from other fonts instead; it is off in new documents and IDML imports, on in documents saved before it existed. A missing font's substitute always uses fallback fonts.
• Damage-region repaint: after an edit the canvas re-renders only the frames whose composed text (or the items that) changed and patches its texture — pixel-identical to a full render; typing in a frame repaints in under a millisecond instead of a full-viewport render (22 ms measured on the sample).
• Native engine saves, Save a Copy, snippets, books, libraries, swatches and engine/MCP exports use same-folder atomic replacement through craft-libs/craft-atomic, as do desktop Services writes and CLI raster exports. Failed writes before replacement retain the original, and already-open readers retain the old bytes. On Unix a new file gets the permissions ordinary file creation gives it (the umask applies) and a replaced file keeps its permissions. Parent-folder flushing is best effort, so this is not a power-loss durability guarantee.
• Save As prepares destination-relative data-source paths before writing and installs them only after a successful save. Failed Save As retains the document, saved state and history; Save a Copy rebases only the saved copy. Library and book collection edits likewise update live values only after persistence succeeds.
• Crash recovery: unsaved documents are written every 30 s into a locked folder owned by that running app and reopened (unsaved, remembering their files) after a crash. Startup takes entries from ended runs and leaves live runs alone; writes and cleanup validate current folder and lock ownership. Failed isolation disables recovery with a warning. Recovered checkpoints remain available through another crash before autosave; restarting IDs and explicit recovery from another folder preserve unopened snapshots. Successful Save, Close or Revert clears the document's checkpoints, including manual recovery while autosave is disabled; failed republishing keeps the original. A folder given to file.recovery.save keeps other runs' entries: a run replaces or removes only the entries it wrote or recovered there, and refuses a folder whose run lock another app holds. Concurrent older versions still use unlocked root entries; mixed-version isolation remains open. File › Revert and Save a Copy…; file.recovery.*, file.revert, file.saveACopy.
• Window close, application/menu Quit and macOS Dock Quit ask about every unsaved document. Cancel or a cancelled/failed save keeps all tabs open; Don't Save approvals discard nothing until the complete plan is current. Later edits and new documents are checked before closing. Repeated native requests preserve an active dialog and partial approvals. Control-channel quit remains immediate.
• Graphics backend chosen before the window exists (DirectX 12 on Windows, Vulkan on Linux, Metal on macOS, OpenGL as the fallback; WGPU_BACKEND overrides) with a start-up fallback: a backend whose start never showed a frame is skipped at the next start and the status bar says so (gpu.json). Found on an AMD hybrid-graphics laptop whose Vulkan driver faulted at the first present.
• Graphics adapter chosen by the app: the GPU that drives the primary display (Windows EnumDisplayDevices, Linux sysfs), then the power preference (WGPU_POWER_PREF, WGPU_ADAPTER_NAME override). An adapter that fails or hangs while the window starts is left out and the app starts again on the next one, then on the next backend, with software renderers last; wgpu's indirect-call check is off (it lost the Metal device on an Intel Mac, #334); why the app stopped is logged, also when the window never opened (#273). Ported from Stylo.
• Edit › Paste Into (copied objects become a frame's content, clipped by it; rendered, PDF and IDML both ways — verified in InDesign 2026); Polygon Settings (sides, star inset; double-click the Polygon tool).
• Color panel (fill/stroke proxy, CMYK/RGB/Lab sliders with channel ramps, tint slider for swatches, spectrum ramp, Add to Swatches) and Color Picker (double-click the proxy; R/G/B, C/M/Y/K and hex fields; a CMYK colour stays CMYK unless R/G/B values are typed); mixed colours are unnamed (not listed in Swatches until added); object.color, swatch.addToSwatches, swatch.addUnnamed.
• Threading: click a selected text frame's in or out port (overset or not) to load the text cursor, then click a frame to thread it (stories merge), click empty space for a column-wide frame down to the bottom margin, or drag a frame; Shift-click autoflows, Alt-click stays loaded; click the linked frame or double-click a port to break the thread; Esc unloads. Link and unthread cursors show where a click threads or unthreads. text.thread, text.unthread, text.removeFromThread.
• Place text files: Word (.docx: styles by name with their attributes, bold/italic/underline/size/font, footnotes, tables, tabs, breaks), RTF and plain text, into the insertion point, the selected frame or a new frame; autoflow threads one frame per page column, on the pages that follow first, then adds pages at the end of the document until the text fits; Remove Styles option (litho-textimport).
• Gradient Feather (⇧G tool, object.gradientFeather): objects fade along a linear or radial opacity gradient, on screen and as a soft mask in PDF.
• Script Label (object.label, object.findByLabel), alt text (object.altText), Isolate Blending / Knockout Group (object.transparencyGroup; on screen, PDF isolates), Table ▸ Sort (table.sortRows, numeric-aware, header/footer fixed).
• File ▸ Export Text (file.exportText): a story as Text Only or RTF (fonts, styles, alignment, indents, tables as tab-separated rows); Export EPUB now asks for a path in the UI.
• Tagged PDF (file.exportPdf {tagged}, on by default from the UI): structure tree with stories as paragraphs in reading order, figures carrying their alt text, parent-page items and printer's marks as artifacts.
• Global Light (object.globalLight, globalLight on drop/inner shadows; Use Global Light in the Effects panel) and Generate Static Caption (object.caption: template over name, path, alt text, label, effective ppi, dimensions, format; any side, offset, style).
• Control panel scale X/Y, rotation and shear fields (transform.info, absolute transform.set {scaleX, scaleY, rotation, shear} about the reference point) and Preferences › Transformations are Totals for nested objects and placed graphics.
• Variable fonts: each named instance is a style (Font menu, shaping with feature variations, metrics, outlines) and embeds at its axis settings in PDF; free axis sliders still to come.
• Object ▸ Select (first/next above, next/last below, container, content, previous/next in group), full Object ▸ Convert Shape (object.convertShape), Table ▸ Split Cell Horizontally/Vertically.
• Attributes panel (object.attributes: Overprint Fill/Stroke/Gap, Nonprinting), with Overprint Gap in Overprint Preview and IDML.
• Page Numbering View (Preferences: section or absolute): page labels everywhere follow it; Go to Page takes section names, numbers or +n.
• Preferences › Advanced Type (document advancedType: superscript/subscript size and position; IDML TextPreference); subscripts now drop 33.3% like InDesign.
• Preferences › Composition › Highlight: keep violations, H&J violations (three shades), custom tracking/kerning, substituted fonts.
• File ▸ Export HTML (file.exportHtml): one self-contained page in reading order, styles as CSS, images inline, alt text from Object Export Options (also in EPUB).
• Swatches panel colour groups (swatch.newColorGroup, moveToGroup, ungroupColorGroup, renameColorGroup; folders and a row context menu; IDML ColorGroup).
• Object ▸ Generate QR Code (object.qrCode: web link, text, SMS, email, business card; vector modules as a compound path, into a frame or re-encoded in place).
• Conditional text (condition.new/options/delete/apply/list, Conditional Text panel): hidden conditions drop their text from layout and exports, indicators underline on screen, IDML Condition/AppliedConditions.
• Endnotes (endnote.insert/edit/delete/list/options, Type ▸ Insert Endnote): references number through the document, the endnote frame on a new last page lists them under a heading; IDML keeps the listed text only.
• Editorial notes (note.new/edit/delete/convertToText/convertFromText/list, Notes panel, Type › Notes › Convert to Note): anchored in text, flagged on screen, never printed or exported.
• File ▸ Print Booklet (file.printBooklet): saddle-stitch or 2-up consecutive printer spreads as PDF, padded with blanks, with a gap between pages.
• Edit ▸ Transparency Blend Space (edit.transparencyBlendSpace; RGB for web/mobile documents; IDML TransparencyPreference) — exported PDFs give pages with transparency a DeviceCMYK or DeviceRGB page group, so viewers and RIPs blend in that space. On screen, CMYK spreads with separable blend modes use two ink-channel passes through the working colour settings. Parent-page items, nested groups, effects and pasteboard share that path; 100% K in Color Dodge whitens coloured areas while paper stays outside the blend backdrop. Effect blend layers sit outside their clips and offscreen filters, preserving their backdrop in RGB too. The pass count is independent of blended-object count, and unchanged viewports reuse one cached raster (64 MiB cap). Spreads containing Hue, Saturation, Color or Luminosity still use the existing RGB blend followed by a CMYK proof approximation; full nonseparable CMYK blending remains open.
• High Contrast interface theme (fifth Interface Color Theme: black chrome, white text, yellow selection).
• Place Excel workbooks (.xlsx): the first worksheet's used range becomes a table (shared/inline strings, numbers, booleans).
• Object Library (library.new/open/add/place/remove/list/json/close, Library panel): .dclib files of snippets that keep stories, styles, swatches and images.
• Ink Manager (ink.list, ink.options; Swatches panel menu): All Spots to Process, per-ink conversion and ink aliases in PDF output; IDML ConvertToProcess/AliasInkName.
• Appearance of Black complete: Printing/Exporting rich black for RGB output (PNG), Overprint [Black] Swatch at 100% (document, IDML OverprintBlack).
• Hyperlinks and Bookmarks panels (Window ▸ Interactive): new from the selection, edit (hyperlink.edit), go to source (hyperlink.goToSource), rename bookmarks (bookmark.rename), go to page, delete.
• Nested line styles (nestedLineStyles paragraph attribute, Paragraph Style Options › Drop Caps and Nested Styles, IDML AllNestedLineStyles): the first lines restyle until the line breaks settle.
• Drop caps (type.para {dropCapLines, dropCapChars, dropCapStyle, dropCapAlignLeft, dropCapScaleDescenders}, Paragraph panel, Paragraph Style Options › Drop Caps and Nested Styles; IDML DropCapLines/DropCapCharacters/DropcapDetail, the drop cap style as the leading "through 1 Dropcap" nested style): the first characters (code points, as InDesign counts them, never splitting a letter from its combining marks; up to 150) are enlarged from the first line's cap height down N − 1 leadings of the text after them (up to 25 lines; grid steps on a baseline grid), the lines beside them are indented by their advance (on the right in right-to-left paragraphs), spaces right after them are set at their size without widening the indent, baselines don't move; a one-line drop cap keeps a smaller size of its own and sets its tabs at the paragraph's tab stops; Align Left Edge (on by default) moves the drop cap left by its first letter's side bearing so its ink starts at the indent; Scale for Descenders is kept but doesn't change the layout yet; a drop cap character style, and nested styles through the drop cap (Dropcap delimiter). Drawn on screen and in PDF (text in order), with caret, hit testing and selection over the enlarged letters. Vertical text sets no drop caps.
• User dictionary hyphenation exceptions (hyphenation.addException/removeException/list, Edit ▸ Spelling ▸ User Dictionary): ex~am~ple breaks only at ~, a plain word never hyphenates.
• Frame Fitting Options (object.fittingOptions, Object ▸ Fitting ▸ Frame Fitting Options…): Auto-Fit refits on resize, fitting, Align From reference point, crop amounts; IDML FrameFittingOption.
• Paragraph borders (per-side weights, colour, tint, offsets) and shading offsets, drawn per column part of split paragraphs (also when overset); Paragraph panel controls; IDML ParagraphBorder*/ParagraphShading*Offset.
• Font menu laid out like InDesign's: search, a Filters row (classification: serif, slab serif, sans serif, script, monospaced, decorative, symbol, read from PANOSE, the OS/2 family class, the name, else the shape of the "l"; Show Favorites Only; Show Recently Added, fonts added in the last 30 days), the sample text (the selected text, Sample, pangrams) in three sizes, Recently Used fonts at the top (recentFonts preference), favourites (stars, favoriteFonts), and each family previewed in its own face with its format (TrueType, OpenType, variable, colour). A family of several styles shows how many and opens to list them, each previewed in its own face, and a style picked is applied as it is; Show Similar Fonts (≈) lists the families of the same class nearest by PANOSE. Western (and other-script) families come first, then Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean ones, each group alphabetical and set off by a separator; the group comes from the font's own data (meta languages, family names in a CJK language, OS/2 code pages, else what it covers), read once (installed fonts by the font scan, without loading them). CJK families show their native names, the English name on hover; Preferences › Type › Show Font Names in English (showFontNamesInEnglish) shows English names throughout. Search matches either name; documents store the English name. Every family list (Character panel, Control bar, Properties, style dialogs, Find Font, Glyphs) follows this order.
• Application preferences (engine Prefs) now persist across launches (desktop: prefs.json beside ui.json).
• View ▸ Fit Selection in Window (⌥⌘=) and Find/Change ▸ Object (find.objects, find.changeObjects: by fill, stroke, weight, opacity, kind, layer, label).
• Custom workspaces (window.newWorkspace/deleteWorkspace/resetWorkspace; workspace switcher shows the current one): bars and panel arrangement saved by name. Essentials Classic shows the Control panel and InDesign's iconic panel groups with names. The Window menu follows InDesign's: Arrange, Workspace, then the panels alphabetically with their Color, Editorial, Interactive, Object & Layout, Output, Styles, Type & Tables and Utilities groups.
• Word/RTF Import Options (File ▸ Place with Import Options…, place.styles, file.place {styleMap, styleConflicts}): map imported styles onto the document's, use existing / redefine / auto-rename on conflicts, or remove formatting.
• Custom anchored objects (anchored.insert/options {position: custom}): placed relative to the anchor, frame, column, page margins or page edge with reference points and offsets, no space in the text, keep within column, Relative to Spine (mirrored on right-hand pages); IDML Anchored position. Their text wrap pushes aside the text of other stories they overlap and the lines of their own story after the anchor's line.
• Variable font axes: Character panel sliders; any axis values (fontStyle: "Bold {wght:650}") make that instance for layout, screen and PDF.
• Image Import Options › Crop to for placed PDFs (file.place {pdfCrop: crop|trim|bleed|art|media}, Place PDF dialog): the frame shows that page box.
• Stroke styles: striped (thick-thin… and custom bands), wavy and straight-hash strokes now draw on screen and in PDF; named custom stripe/dash/dot styles (strokeStyle.new/delete/list, Stroke panel Type list; IDML Striped/Dashed/DottedStrokeStyle).
• Object ▸ Primary Text Frame (object.primaryTextFrame): any text frame's story can become (or stop being) the primary story Smart Text Reflow follows.
• Column rules (Text Frame Options › Column Rules, object.textFrameOptions {columnRule, columnRuleWeight, columnRuleColor, columnRuleTint, columnRuleOffset, columnRuleTopInset, columnRuleBottomInset}, reported by document.inspect): a bar centred in each gutter of a multi-column frame, inside the insets and between the columns of right-to-left and vertical frames too, broken around paragraphs that span columns, with weight, colour, tint, horizontal offset and top/bottom insets; on screen, in PDF (tagged as an artifact) and in IDML (ColumnRule… attributes of TextFramePreference, also in object styles). The dialog shows the frame's options and changes only the fields edited. Rule stroke types and overprint aren't there yet.
• Auto-size (Text Frame Options › Auto-Size, object.textFrameOptions {autoSize: off|heightOnly|widthOnly|heightAndWidth|heightAndWidthProportionally, autoSizeReference, useMinimumHeight, minimumHeight, useMinimumWidth, minimumWidth, noLineBreaks}): the frame fits its text exactly after every edit (typing, pasting, style changes, option changes) in the same undo step (opening a file keeps the frame sizes it gives); it grows and shrinks around the reference point, which stays put in spread space for rotated frames too, never below the minimum height/width and never past 10,000 pt. Width Only and No Line Breaks set each paragraph on one line; Height and Width without No Line Breaks keeps the width; Keep Proportions scales both sides until the text fits. IDML keeps all the options (AutoSizing…, …ForAutoSizing attributes). Not covered: frames of a thread other than the last, vertical frames, type on a path, and multi-column balancing in Keep Proportions.
• Balance Columns (Text Frame Options › Balance Columns, object.textFrameOptions {balanceColumns}, IDML VerticalBalanceColumns): in the frame the story ends in, the columns after the last explicit column break fill to about the same depth (the last may be shorter by a line per column); keep options hold, spanning and split paragraphs keep their own balancing, vertical justification then applies to each column as usual, and vertical frames balance their bands. A frame the text runs on from, or that is overset, fills normally.
• Place a page of an IDML or Litho document (file.place {layoutPage}): its objects, stories, styles and swatches as one group (INDD files are not readable).
• Articles panel (article.new/add/remove/options/delete/list): reading order and content of EPUB and HTML exports.
• Object ▸ Clipping Path (object.clippingPath {type: alpha|edges, threshold, tolerance}): traces the placed image and makes the outline the frame. Clipping paths saved in IDML (Detect Edges, Alpha Channel, Photoshop Path, User-Modified Path; Invert) hide the image outside the path on screen and in PDF and survive IDML export; object.clippingPathOptions reports, inverts or removes one (Object ▸ Clipping Path ▸ None).
• Gridify: arrow keys while dragging a frame or shape tool add columns/rows (frame.grid), one undo step.
• Gap tool (U, gap.move): drag the space between objects (or an object and the page edge) and both sides resize.
• XML basics (xml.newTag/deleteTag/tag/mapStyle/structure, file.exportXml, file.importXml; Tags panel with structure; View ▸ Show Tagged Frames): tagged frames export in reading order, mapped paragraph styles become elements, imported elements flow into frames with matching tags. Inline text tagging (xml.tagText, an xmlTag character attribute, exported as nested elements) and tag markers (View ▸ Structure ▸ Show Tag Markers) too. DTDs (xml.loadDtd, xml.validate, xml.deleteDtd; Tags panel): loading one adds its elements as tags and names the root; validation checks content models (sequences, choices, ?*+, mixed content, EMPTY/ANY, parameter entities) and required attributes, and lists each problem with its element path.
• Adjust Layout / Layout Adjustment (adjustLayout on Document Setup and Margins and Columns): objects follow each page's margin box to its new size and position.
• Content Collector and Placer tools (B; conveyor.collect/place/list/clear): copies of objects (with stories, styles, images) ride a conveyor between pages and documents; Alt-click keeps them on it.
• Linked stories (Edit ▸ Place and Link, story.placeAndLink/links/updateLink/unlink): child stories copy a parent, show out of date in the Links panel and update.
• Edit ▸ Menus (window.hideMenuItem): hide menu items; menus with hidden items end in Show All Menu Items.
• View ▸ Separations Preview (view.separations): one process plate as ink density, or areas over an ink limit in red (a GCR preview of the rendered view; spot plates and the flattener preview aren't there).
• Separations Preview plates now come from each object's own colour (CMYK as authored; RGB and images through the colour settings, images via a cached 17³ table), so pure black shows only on the black plate.
• Language (Character panel ▸ Language, Properties ▸ Character, type.char {language}): text in other languages isn't hyphenated or spell-checked with the English dictionaries, typographer's quotes follow the language (German „…“, French and Russian «…», Swiss, Spanish, Dutch, Nordic, Japanese and Traditional Chinese 「…」, Simplified Chinese “…”), the font's localized forms (OpenType locl: Turkish i, Bulgarian Cyrillic, Japanese / Chinese / Korean glyph variants) follow it too, and so does the fallback for CJK characters the font lacks (with Draw Missing Glyphs from Fallback Fonts on): Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean each try their own installed system fonts (Japanese starts with the craft-fonts Japanese faces, Mincho first, when built with them; Hangul, kana and Bopomofo pick their language's fonts whatever the language). Language names from IDML keep their spelling; locale codes as InDesign writes them for some languages (de_DE_2006, nl_NL_2005; any ll, ll_CC, ll-CC) are their language and region for all of the above, and Chinese is also recognised in its common spellings ("Simplified Chinese", "Chinese (Traditional)", zh_CN, zh-Hant). Spanish is hyphenated with Javier Bezos's Liang patterns (hyph-es.tex 5.0, MIT), Portuguese with hyph-utf8's hyph-pt.tex 1.4 (BSD-3-Clause) and Norwegian with hyph-utf8's hyph-no.tex (permissive), all through the hypher crate; hyphenation for other languages isn't bundled yet.
• Books (book.new/open/add/remove/list/styleSource/paginate/syncStyles/exportPdf, Book panel): .dcbook files, continuous page numbering, chapter numbers resolved in book order (Automatic, Start Chapter Numbering at, Same as Previous Document; layout.chapterNumbering, with a style for Chapter Number variables and cross-references), style sync from a style source, one merged PDF. Section prefixes follow InDesign's rule (up to 8 characters, no + or comma).
• Numbering & Section Options window as in InDesign (Start Section, automatic or explicit page numbering up to 99999, prefix, style, marker, Include Prefix; the document's chapter numbering and its book); OK applies both in one undo step (layout.numberingOptions).
• Book numbering/style updates validate and serialize all targets before changing the first chapter. They write only closed native chapters, checking canonical paths for open aliases; IDML remains a read-only style source and PDF input. Snapshots are staged on disk with at most 4,096 chapter records in memory. Each replacement is atomic; a later write failure explicitly lists completed chapters rather than claiming whole-book rollback. Import/serialization memory limits and advanced book TOC/index work remain separate.
• Track Changes (changes.track/list/acceptAll/rejectAll, Type ▸ Track Changes): typing is marked added (highlighted on screen), deletions are kept but hidden from layout and exports until accepted or rejected. Per-change accept/reject and authors aren't there yet.
• Track Changes: per-change Accept / Reject (changes.accept, changes.reject) and a Track Changes panel listing every change.
• Move table rows and columns (table.moveRow, table.moveColumn, Table panel buttons; with whole rows or columns selected, drag them with the Type tool — table.dropCells).
• Cell strokes: with cells selected (or the cursor in a cell) the Stroke panel edits the chosen cell edges, picked on a drawn edge proxy (top, bottom, left, right, inner horizontal, inner vertical); Table › Cell Options › Strokes and Fills… does the same with the cell fill. Weight, every stroke type, colour, tint, gap colour and gap tint draw on screen and in PDF and round-trip through IDML (table.setCell stroke.edges, table.getCellStroke).
• Distribute Rows Evenly (table.distributeRows, Table menu and panel): selected rows receive equal fixed heights preserving their composed total height, with undo/redo. Row-spanning merges and rows outside the composed frames are rejected; shrinking tall cells can overset their text.
• Object States (states.create/show/rename/release/list, Object States panel): multi-state objects show one state on screen and in PDF.
• Buttons (button.set/clear/list, Buttons and Forms panel): go to page / next / previous / first / last / URL as PDF link annotations. Form fields too (form.set/clear/list: text fields, check boxes, combo and list boxes, signature fields; required, multiline, defaults) exported as AcroForm widgets through an incremental update (not in PDF/X or PDF/A).
• Power Zoom (Hand tool: press and hold still for half a second, or Alt-press): zoom out to the spread, aim the red view rectangle, release to zoom back in there.
• Graphic cells (table.placeGraphic, table.textCell, Table › Convert Cell Type, Table panel): images in table cells, fitted or filled, clipped to the cell on screen and in PDF; IDML export writes them as an inline graphic in the cell.
• Live Distribute (Space while dragging a selection handle; transform.resize {distribute}): objects keep their size and spread with the bounds.
• Flex Layout (InDesign 2026; flex.add, flex.convert, flex.remove, flex.set, flex.reorder, Window › Flex Layout and the Properties panel's Flex Layout section): a frame lays out its objects in rows or columns by direction, wrap, justification (Flex Start, Center, Flex End, Space Between, Space Around, Space Evenly), the alignment grid, Fixed/Auto width and height, padding and spacing; aligned objects are detected on Add (direction, Auto, Space Between); resizing a container reflows it; dragging an object in one reorders it. Not yet: item sizing (Fixed/Auto/Fill Space per object), object styles with Flex Layout settings, IDML (a container exports as a frame with pasted-in objects), nested selection cues on the canvas.
• Liquid Layout (liquid.pageRule/object, guide.liquid, layout.createAlternate, Liquid Layout panel): scale / re-center / guide-based / object-based page rules applied on page resize and Document Setup; dashed liquid guides; alternate layouts as resized page copies in a named section. Text in an alternate layout stays linked to the original stories (Links panel shows them out of date; story.updateLink).
• Split Window / New Window (window.split, window.newWindow, Window ▸ Arrange): two side-by-side views of the document with their own zoom, scroll and render cache. New Window puts the second view in its own OS window (an egui viewport; a floating window on the web).
• Transparency flattener (file.exportPdf {flatten: high|medium|low|ppi}, Edit ▸ Transparency Flattener Presets): each object involving transparency becomes an opaque image of its area over what's beneath it, so everything else stays vector (spreads with transparent parent items are rasterised whole).
• Video and sound (place .mp4/.mov/.webm/.mp3/.wav…, media.options/get, Media panel): media frames show a poster or placeholder on screen, in print and in PDF, and export as HTML5 <video>/<audio> in EPUB. Interactive PDF export (file.exportPdf {media: true}, File ▸ Export PDF (Interactive)) embeds each file and plays it in a Screen annotation through a rendition action (controls, loop, play on page load). No in-app playback.
• Right-to-left text (World-Ready basics): right-to-left runs are shaped right to left, lines are reordered by the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (matched against the reference implementation), Paragraph Direction (type.para {direction}, Paragraph panel menu, IDML ParagraphDirection, EPUB dir). Digits (digits: Default, Arabic, Hindi, Farsi, Native by language; Character panel and Character Style Options; IDML DigitsType) draw 0–9 in another script. Kashidas (kashidas paragraph attribute, on by default; IDML Kashidas): justified Arabic lines stretch at one join per word (after seen/sad when possible, never inside lam–alef) with a drawn tatweel before word spaces widen. Carets follow the drawing: the caret before a right-to-left glyph sits at its right edge, arrow keys move as drawn (by words in the line's direction), clicks find the nearest drawn caret position and selections highlight the selected glyphs. Binding: Right to Left (Document Setup, layout.documentSetup {binding}, IDML PageBinding) makes page 1 a left page and lays spreads out right to left.
• Interface language (Preferences ▸ General ▸ Interface Language, app.language; each language listed by its own name): German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Arabic menu titles, common menu items and panel names (our own translations). Common dialog, panel and tooltip labels are also localized, with English fallback for untranslated strings. Arabic translations cover every key in the shared interface translation table, including menu commands and utility labels. The Type menu's Story Direction, Horizontal/Vertical, Tate-Chu-Yoko, Ruby… and Kenten are translated too. Arabic labels use Unicode bidi run ordering and contextual shaping; welcome and new-document form layouts follow RTL direction independently of document binding. CJK and Arabic glyphs come from craft-fonts when built with CRAFT_FONTS_DIR (all releases): BIZ UDPGothic and Noto Sans CJK SC for the UI (Chinese forms first in the Chinese interface), Noto Sans Arabic, and Mincho for Japanese documents (the web build embeds BIZ UDPGothic only); otherwise from system fonts. Ukrainian covers all 1,430 existing catalog keys, including publishing dialogs and built-in names, with persisted selection, grammatical count captions, English fallback and bundled Cyrillic UI glyph coverage. Polish covers 1,717 catalog keys with the same category-first count captions and English fallback.
• Page transitions (page.transition/transitions, Page Transitions panel): twelve transition types with speed and direction per spread, written into exported PDFs as /Trans entries through an incremental update.
• PDF/X-4 export (file.exportPdf {standard: "x4"}): an output intent with the working CMYK space's profile (by default craft-cms's Coated FOGRA39 profile, identifier FOGRA39; Generic CMYK and Device CMYK embed our Generic CMYK profile, lut16 tables generated from the parametric press model), GTS_PDFXVersion in Info and XMP, pdf:Trapped in XMP as in Info, xmp:MetadataDate and xmpMM:VersionID in XMP, RGB images without a profile tagged sRGB, no image interpolation (none in PDF/A either), and built-in PDF/X-4 checks reported as warnings. qpdf finds no errors in the result.
• EPS place: placed at its (high-resolution) bounding box and shown, printed and exported through its TIFF preview, or a placeholder when it has none. PostScript itself isn't interpreted.
• Preferences: Dictionary (user dictionary; spelling.setWords/words), Spelling (Dynamic Spelling: red squiggles on the canvas, also Edit ▸ Spelling), Autocorrect (word list, applied as you type), Notes, Track Changes, Story Editor Display and File Handling (recovery interval) sections.
• Colour management exposed (ICC through the craft-libs craft-cms crate): Edit ▸ Color Settings (color.settings: RGB/CMYK working spaces, default CMYK Coated FOGRA39 with CMYK swatches shown relative colorimetric with black-point compensation, Generic CMYK and Device CMYK still selectable, intent, black-point compensation; color.loadProfile for ICC files; color.convert through the working spaces, with gamut checks) and View ▸ Proof Setup / Proof Colors (press, sRGB, legacy Mac RGB, colour-blindness simulations, simulate paper) on the canvas. Placed images are shown through their embedded ICC profiles, and CMYK images through their own profile or the working CMYK space, with the settings' intent and black-point compensation.
• Keyboard: Tab / Shift+Tab hide and show all panels / all but Tools (window.hidePanels, window.hidePanelsExceptTools); Cmd+F6 / Cmd+Shift+F6 cycle documents; panel fields are reached with Tab and Escape returns to the layout.
• Smart guides and snapping (View ▸ Snap to Guides / Snap to Document Grid / Smart Guides, view.snapPreferences and Preferences ▸ Guides & Pasteboard): moving, drawing, resizing, rotating and pen/anchor drags snap in order to the document grid, ruler guides (a page's own and its parent page's), margins and columns, other objects' edges and centres (parent-page items too, by visible stroked bounds), equal spacing (centred between two neighbours too), matching dimensions, the baseline grid and matching rotation, with guides, gap marks and measurements drawn on the canvas. Shift and Cmd constrain the gesture.
• View ▸ Rotate Spread (view.rotateSpread, layout.rotateSpreadView): the spread in view turns in quarter turns on screen (stored with the document and in IDML's spread transform; output is unaffected). The canvas maps each spread through its own transform, so tools, snapping, resize handles, guides, overlays and rendering all follow the turned spread.
• Vertical type (Vertical Type Tool, Type ▸ Story Direction type.storyDirection, IDML StoryOrientation): the direction belongs to the story, so every frame of a thread is vertical or horizontal together and a frame threaded onto a story takes its direction (object.textFrameOptions {vertical} sets the frames' stories); lines run top to bottom and follow each other right to left; the arrow keys follow them (Down and Up along the line, Left and Right to the next and previous line, keeping the position along it); CJK characters stay upright and other text turns, on screen and in PDF; CJK line breaking with basic kinsoku (also in horizontal text); Korean breaks at spaces, word by word (Hangul in any language, hanja in Korean text), or between syllables when the paragraph asks for it (type.para {koreanCharBreaks}, Paragraph Style Options ▸ Justification; not written to IDML). Upright text is shaped top to bottom: punctuation and brackets take their vertical forms (OpenType vert; vkrn and vpal through OpenType features), glyphs advance by their vertical metrics (vmtx) and hang from their vertical origins (VORG) on the centre of the ideographic em box (BASE, else OS/2), which the first line's ascent follows; turned text keeps its horizontal forms. Tate-chu-yoko (Type ▸ Tate-Chu-Yoko, type.tateChuYoko, IDML Tatechuyoko) sets a run such as "12" side by side within one em of the line. Ruby (Type ▸ Ruby…, type.ruby, IDML RubyString; group ruby spread 1-2-1 or centred) and kenten emphasis dots (type.kenten, IDML KentenKind) are set over their text — to its right in vertical frames — without changing line breaks. Warichu and ruby options (per-character ruby, positions, overhang) aren't there yet.
• Math expressions (Type ▸ Insert Math Expression…, math.insert, math.svg): a LaTeX subset (fractions, scripts, roots, big operators with limits, Greek, relations and operators with math spacing, \left…\right, \text) typeset by our own engine into SVG, placed inline at the cursor or as a frame; the LaTeX is kept as alt text and can be edited.
• Object Layer Options for placed PDFs (object.pdfLayers, object.layerOptions, Object ▸ Object Layer Options…): the file's optional-content layers listed and shown or hidden per frame on screen; in exported PDFs such graphics go out as 300 ppi images of their visible layers.
• Effects: Inner Glow (edge or centre), Bevel and Emboss (inner bevel lit from the light angle), Satin (object.innerGlow, object.bevel, object.satin); PDF export now keeps soft effects: objects with shadows, glows, feathers, bevels or satin go out as 300 ppi transparent images of their appearance (threaded text frames excepted).
• Directional Feather (object.directionalFeather {widths: [top, left, bottom, right]}): each side fades over its own width.
• View ▸ Flattener Preview (view.flattenerPreview): objects involving transparency highlighted in red; knockout groups export as images (PDF output has no knockout groups).
• Live captions (object.caption {live: true}, Object ▸ Captions ▸ Generate Live Caption): the caption text is re-filled from the source object's metadata after every edit (same undo step).
• Style Export Tagging (style.exportTag, Paragraph Style Options ▸ Export Tagging): paragraph and character styles choose their HTML element and class in EPUB/HTML.
• Tagged Text: export (file.exportText {format: "tagged"}) and place (detected by its header; ASCII, UTF-8 or UTF-16) with paragraph and character styles, font, typeface and size, and <0x…> characters.
• Tagged PDF: one structure element per paragraph (H1–H6 and BlockQuote from Export Tagging, else P) in reading order, frame fills, strokes, rules and tables as artifacts, figures with alt text.
• EPUB: cover image from the first page (file.exportEpub {cover}), and Fixed Layout export (file.exportFixedEpub, File ▸ Export EPUB (Fixed Layout)…): pre-paginated pages as 144 ppi images with their text kept for search and read-aloud.
• Interactive PDF options (file.exportPdf {fullScreen, bookmarksPanel, pageLayout, view, advanceSeconds}, File ▸ Export PDF (Interactive)…): page mode, layout, opening view and page timing in the catalog and pages.
• Object Export Options (object.exportOptions): tagged-PDF artifact, EPUB/HTML rasterize (the object as an image), alignment and page break before, alt text.
• Scripts panel (Window ▸ Utilities ▸ Scripts, script.run): saved command scripts (with $N.path references to earlier results) run as one undo step; edit, add, load and delete them in the panel. Scripts use Litho's command language, not ExtendScript.
• Drag and drop text editing: drag selected text to move it (Alt copies) with its formatting (text.release).
• Input methods (IME) in the Type tool: a Chinese, Japanese or Korean composition shows its marked text in place in the story, underlined (the clause being converted twice), with the IME's candidate window at the caret through zoom, scrolling, view rotation and vertical text; the commit is one text.insert and one undo step, a cancelled composition leaves the document as it was; keys, shortcuts, the clipboard and Undo wait while the IME composes, and a click or another command keeps the marked text as typed. The control channel's ui.ime and the MCP ime tool (headless too) send IME events. Not yet checked by hand with a system IME (macOS, Windows, Linux, web).
• Image Import Options: place any page of a multi-page PDF (file.place {pdfPage}; the app asks which page), shown on screen and embedded as that page in PDF export.
• Bulleted and Numbered List buttons (Properties › Bullets and Numbering; Type › Bulleted & Numbered Lists › Apply Bullets / Apply Numbers, ✓ when the selection has them; list.bullets, list.numbers): as InDesign's, a paragraph with no indents gets the default hanging indent (Left Indent 0.25 in, First Line Indent −0.25 in), so the bullet or number sits at the margin and the text after its tab at the indent; pressed again, the list goes and so does that indent if the button set it (listHang) and it is still as applied (a hanging indent the paragraph had before, or its style gives, stays). A selection ending right after a return leaves the next paragraph out. One undo step; values equal to the paragraph style's are left to the style.
• Define Lists: named numbered lists that continue across stories in page order (list.define, paragraph listName / startAt), round-tripped through IDML; null in type.para / type.char now removes an override.
• View › Overprint Preview (⌥⇧⌘Y): overprinting fills, strokes and 100% [Black] text mix with what's beneath on screen.
• Type on a Path (⇧T tool, type.onPath): a story along any line, curve or shape on screen and in PDF; Type on a Path Options (start, flip, baseline/ascender/descender/centre) and Delete Type from Path. Round-trips through IDML as TextPath; on-path caret drawing is still to come.
• Preferences › Appearance of Black: 100% K on screen as rich black (InDesign's default) or accurately as dark grey (window.richBlack); the printing/export side is still to come.
• Spreads of up to 10 pages: Add to Previous Spread and Allow Spread to Shuffle (Pages panel; layout.pages.toSpread, layout.spreadShuffle); inserted pages go around kept spreads.
• Page tool (⇧P) and layout.pageSize: pages of their own size (or a preset); the spine stays put and objects keep their place on their page. A click selects a page (handles, its liquid page rule tagged above it); dragging a handle previews the liquid rule and springs back, Alt-drag resizes, Shift keeps proportions, with a W/H readout; anchor keeps a reference point in place; double-click for exact sizes. With the Page tool the Control panel shows the page (reference point, W/H, preset, orientation, Liquid Page Rule including Controlled by Parent, Show Parent Page Overlay); X/Y and Objects Move with Page are shown, but pages don't move within their spread yet. On an object-based page it selects objects and shows their pins and width/height locks on the canvas (click to toggle, with tooltips).
• File › Print (⌘P): printer, copies, page range, spreads, marks, bleed; printed as PDF through the system spooler (file.print, file.printers, dryRun for agents). Shortcuts now act like choosing the menu item (dialogs open), and UI commands win shortcut ties (⌘N opens New Document).
• Nested styles (through/up to N sentences, words, characters, letters, digits, tabs, breaks, spaces or given characters) and GREP styles (regex → character style), edited in Paragraph Style Options and composed under local formatting; ui.dialog.open for agents. Nested line styles are still to come; nested and GREP styles round-trip through IDML.
• Table and cell styles (round-trip through IDML): cell styles (fill, insets, vertical justification, strokes, paragraph style) and table styles (region cell styles, border, alternating rows, spacing); apply from the Table panel, edits re-apply to every user; style.cell.*, style.table.*.
• Style groups: paragraph and character styles shown in group folders, Move to Group (new, existing, none); style.group renames every use (styles, stories, table cells, footnotes, object styles).
• Object styles carry effects: style.object.create keeps the selection's effects, style.object.apply sets them, and style.object.edit {name, dropShadow?, feather?, …, effects?: null} changes them on the style and on every item whose effects still match it (items with their own effects keep them; style.object.clearOverrides returns them to the style). New frames take their default style's effects. Effect values that aren't finite numbers are refused and the others clamped, in these commands and in the object.* effect commands. IDML carries only the drop shadow and feather, for ObjectStyles (read per effects category flag, settings from the BasedOn chain) as for items; the other effects stay in .litho files. There is no Object Style Options dialog yet.
• Scrubby zoom: drag the Zoom tool left or right to zoom continuously around the press point.
• Spring-loaded Zoom: hold Cmd+Space (Ctrl+Space on Windows/Linux) for the Zoom cursor and click/scrubby zoom; Alt-click zooms out. Release returns to the previous tool without changing the document or undo history. Text-frame and text-field typing suppress the shortcut; Space remains Hand.
• Guides belong to the active layer: hidden with it (or with its Show Guides off) and locked with it.
• Pencil tool (N): freehand strokes, shown as you draw in the layer's colour, simplified to smooth paths (Alt closes); Smooth and Erase tools re-fit or remove the stretch you drag along (path.smooth, path.erase).
• Edit › Keyboard Shortcuts: every command, click and press the new keys, conflicts shown, per-command and global reset; window.setShortcut. Import InDesign Set… reads a set saved by InDesign's Show Set (.txt) and reports what it changed and what it could not match; window.importShortcuts.
• Primary Text Frame (New Document) and Smart Text Reflow: pages are added while the primary story oversets and empty ones at the end removed, in the same undo step (Preferences › Type).
• Glyphs panel: every character of any font (rendered by our renderer), search by character or U+code, click to insert, recently used.
• UI scaling (Preferences › Interface, 50–200%; window.uiScale); the window title steps aside when the bar is crowded.
• Underline / Strikethrough Options: weight, offset, colour and tint (Character panel; screen, PDF and IDML).
• Relink to Folder and Relink File Extension (links.relinkFolder; missing links found by name).
• Paths a document names (links, data sources, book chapters) are followed only on this computer or on the document's own network share, relative ones beside the document; a link to another computer or a device is Missing, with the reason in links.list (refused) and Preflight. An IDML or INDD package's linked files are read from where the link points on this computer, then from the link's trailing names beside the package, and only regular files up to 256 MB that hold an image or a graphic. Images inside an SVG come only from data: URLs.
• File › Package (⌥⇧⌘P): the document relinked to a Links folder, the placed files, the font files that draw its text in a Document Fonts folder (the fonts it names and any fallback fonts that draw characters those lack; except fonts whose licence restricts it, OS/2 fsType), an IDML copy, an optional PDF and a report (fonts, fallback fonts, links, preflight, instructions); Copy Links To (links.copyTo).
• Document fonts: opening a .litho or .idml file loads the fonts in the Document Fonts folder beside it (as Package writes it), ahead of installed fonts with the same name, so a packaged document opens with its fonts on another machine. Damaged, oversized (over 256 MB per file, 512 MB in all) and surplus (over 200) font files are skipped and listed in file.open's warnings; font.list gives each font's source. Document fonts belong to their document, as in InDesign: other open documents don't see them (each document with a same-named font draws with its own), and closing the document (or reverting it, or a book chapter's export ending) makes them unavailable. Their files stay in memory until Litho quits, so reopening a document doesn't read or load them again; on the web there is no folder to read.
• Load Swatches / Save Swatches for Exchange (.ase: CMYK, RGB, Lab, Gray; spot or process) from the Swatches panel menu; swatch.load / swatch.save.
• Load Paragraph Styles / Load Character Styles / Load All Text Styles from the styles panels' menus: the styles of another .litho or .idml document, chosen in a dialog, with the styles, swatches and lists they name; a style the document defines differently is redefined, kept or loaded under a new name; style.load / style.load.list.
• Pathfinder (Object › Pathfinder and a Pathfinder panel): Add, Subtract, Intersect, Exclude Overlap, Minus Back; curves stay curves (flo_curves); the result keeps the frontmost object's look and content, so a photo intersected with shapes behind it shows through them (Subtract keeps the backmost); object.pathfinder.
• Pathfinder panel as InDesign's: Paths (Join Path path.join, Open/Close Path, Reverse Path), Pathfinder, Convert Shape, Convert Point (path.convertPoints: plain, corner, smooth, symmetrical).
• Make / Release Compound Path (⌘8; nested paths become holes), Create Outlines (⇧⌘O; one path per text colour), Scissors tool (C) with path.split.
• Transform Again / Individually / Sequence Again (⌥⌘3; a moved copy repeats like Step and Repeat), Clear Transformations; Layers: Merge, Delete Unused, Hide/Lock Others, Show/Unlock All; Break Link to Style (paragraph and character).
• Floating panels: tear a panel off the dock (its float button, or drag its header away) into a movable, resizable window; Dock puts it back; positions persist; window.floatPanel / window.dockPanel.
• Place SVG (vector in PDF export via krilla-svg, resvg on screen, text in the bundled fonts), Photoshop (.psd/.psb composite in its colour mode — Bitmap, Grayscale, Duotone, Indexed, RGB, CMYK, Lab, 8/16-bit — with merged transparency; extra alpha and spot channels don't change the image), BMP, and Illustrator files saved with PDF compatibility (.ai). A swatch on a placed greyscale or bitmap image (IDML <Image FillColor>) colours it on screen and in PDF. New litho-images crate (L2) for sniffing, sizes and decoding. EPS is still missing.
• View › Display Performance: Fast (grey boxes, no effects, ⌥⇧⌘Z), Typical (72 ppi proxies, ⌥⌘Z), High Quality (⌥⌘H, our default — the renderer is fast enough).
• OpenType menu (Character panel): discretionary ligatures, fractions, ordinal, swash, titling, contextual alternates, slashed zero, the four figure styles and stylistic sets 1–20; type.openType; mapped to IDML's OTF attributes.
• Add Anchor Point (=), Delete Anchor Point (-) and Convert Direction Point (⇧C) tools (click toggles smooth/corner, drag pulls out handles), with path.addAnchor, path.deleteAnchor, path.convertAnchor.
• Gradients: the Gradient Swatch tool (G) drags a gradient's start and end across objects (Shift: 45°); the Gradient panel (InDesign's layout: thumbnail, Type, Location, Angle, Reverse) sets type, angle, reverse and edits stops and midpoints on a ramp (drag, add, drag off to remove, location; drop a swatch from the Swatches panel on a stop or the ramp; stops keep their CMYK), and follows the Fill/Stroke proxy. Edited gradients are unnamed swatches until the Swatches panel's New Swatch names one "New Gradient Swatch" (swatch.new, which also duplicates a named swatch); swatch.create {gradient} builds one from colour swatches; object.gradient (target: stroke for a stroke's gradient, drawn across the path's box on screen and in PDF); the vector round-trips through IDML (GradientFill…/GradientStroke…). A radial gradient stretches with the object's box as InDesign's does (an ellipse reaching the sides of a non-square frame, on screen and in PDF). Text takes a gradient swatch as its fill or stroke, laid across its frame's box as in InDesign (screen and PDF).
• New Document (⌘N) as in InDesign: Recent, Saved, Print, Web and Mobile tabs of page cards (double-click creates) beside the preset's details: document name, size with arrows, units, orientation, pages, start page #, facing pages, primary text frame, columns, margins, bleed and slug per edge (linked or not); Save Document Preset (file.savePreset, file.deletePreset; saved presets are kept with the preferences, listed by file.presets and made by file.new {preset: name}); file.new takes intent, units, startPage and per-edge bleed/slug. Preview shows a document with the window's settings in the workspace while it is open; Create keeps it, Close removes it.
• Document Setup (⌥⌘P), laid out like InDesign's: intent, number of pages, start page # (an even start begins with a left page), facing pages, binding, Page Size (presets keeping the orientation, width and height with arrows, orientation), margins for every page and parent page, bleed and slug per edge (each group linked or not), and Adjust Layout (objects follow the new page size and margins), all in one undo step; measures are read in the document's units, and a value that can't be read keeps the dialog open; layout.documentSetup {} reports the setup, margins included.
• Stroke panel: cap, join, miter limit, alignment, type, Start/End arrowheads (12 kinds, drawn on screen and in PDF; the path is shortened under pointed heads) and gap colour under dashes and dots; with text selected (or text frames selected with Formatting Affects Text on) it shows the text's stroke weight, colour and Stroke Behind Fill.
• Preferences (⌘K: General, Type, Units & Increments, Grids, Guides & Pasteboard, Display Performance) backed by prefs.set (application) and document.preferences (units, increments, grids — undoable, saved with the document; right-click a ruler to pick its units, the horizontal and vertical rulers each have their own); scaling applies to content and scales stroke weights (Include Stroke Weight), and X/Y/W/H measure the stroke's outer edge (Dimensions Include Stroke Weight). Quick Apply (⌘Return) finds paragraph, character and object styles as well as commands.
• Parent item overrides: Cmd+Shift-click a parent item on a page (or Override All Parent Page Items, ⌥⇧⌘L) makes an editable local copy that hides the parent's; Remove All Local Overrides and Detach All Objects from Parent in the Pages panel menu.
• Based on Parent (layout.parents.options {parent, basedOn}): a parent shows its base parent's items under its own, on its pages and on the parent itself; chains work, cycles are refused, and items from any parent in the chain can be overridden. IDML carries it as the parent pages' AppliedMaster; a cycle or missing base in a file is cleared with a warning on open. The Pages panel has no Parent Options dialog yet.
• Place PDF: placed PDF pages are sized by their crop box, drawn on screen through hayro (with mip levels) and embedded in exported PDFs as vector form XObjects (krilla), <PDF> in IDML.
• Menus expose the engine's features (TOC, numbering & sections, text variables, hyperlinks, cross-references, footnotes, step and repeat, spelling, fitting/content, effects, Data Merge, Preflight, EPUB); any menu command with parameters gets a dialog generated from its parameter documentation.
• Table of contents (Layout ▸ Table of Contents dialog: included styles, per-style entry style, page number position and its character style, separator and its character style, alphabetical sorting and level, title style, Replace Existing; generate/update, dot leaders; the definition round-trips through IDML as a TOC style) and text variables (running headers, last page number, chapter number, file name, dates, custom) resolved per page; Convert Variable to Text turns the selected instances, or every instance of one variable, into the text they show on their page.
• Soft effects: blurred drop shadow, inner shadow, outer glow, basic feather.
• ~200 commands, all reachable through the JSON control channel; headless CLI rendering to PNG.
• MCP server (litho-cli mcp [--connect PORT], docs/mcp.md): headless engine or the running app; commands, batch, document/story inspection, page renders as images, window screenshots, pointer/keyboard/dialog input.
• Web build (apps/litho-web, trunk): the same UI on WebGPU with a WebGL2 fallback; open/place via the browser file picker or drag-and-drop, save/export as downloads.

Task notes that headed ROADMAP.md:

• FID1: PDF export normalizes mixed emitted gradient color spaces to RGB with an explicit warning; homogeneous device-space gradients retain their components. Process stops (CMYK, grey) blend as inks on screen and at midpoints, so a midpoint keeps the shading CMYK. Linear/radial, midpoint, archival and print policies have synthetic regression coverage.
• AR1.1: Kashida justification tests verify space fallback without Tatweel fonts using an isolated font database, while retaining elongation assertions when fonts support it.
• AR1: Arabic IDML controls now retain character direction, kashida switches, diacritic offsets/forms, paragraph policy values and independent story/table directions. Shaping preserves joining context and script/language selection; paragraph-level bidi, contextual digit conversion, mark-safe elongation, RTL columns/tables and physical column insertion have regression coverage. Vendor-specific justification and diacritic presets remain explicit preflight warnings; see docs/arabic-typography.md.
• CJK1: IDML composite fonts now retain character mappings and metrics; explicit aki, tsume, jidori, em alignment/leading, named/custom kinsoku boundaries, hanging punctuation, tate-chu-yoko offsets and kenten symbols flow through composition and IDML export. Automatic kerning no longer imports inactive numeric values as enormous manual spacing. Composite definitions are editable through commands with undo/cache invalidation. Mojikumi definitions are retained and unsupported spacing-table / push-in-push-out policies are reported by preflight. Full InDesign CJK composition parity, frame-grid layout and detailed ruby remain unfinished. Warichu sets the selected run in smaller lines inside the line after the line is broken.

Revision history