wordcraft/docs/hardware-parity.md

Hardware parity with Microsoft Word

Last reviewed: 2026-10-12 · Last updated: 2026-11-06 · Change: trivial (print helpers erase loaded plaintext inputs before driver work, #5710); previously trivial (Windows print submissions use isolated helpers so a cancelled driver cannot block a retry, #5710); previously trivial (print cancellation remains available without a document; sending-boundary limitation clarified, #5710); previously trivial (a print job waiting on its driver can be cancelled, and quitting doesn't wait for it, #5710); previously trivial (the printer list no longer waits on printer drivers, #5710); previously trivial (Linux Read Aloud: a sentence a screen reader cuts off is said again); previously trivial (ink page lookup work, #3614); previously trivial (only the PDF sent to the printer has no link annotations; Save these pages as PDF keeps them, #4734); previously trivial (a document with links prints: the print job's PDF has no link annotations, #4734; previously trivial: Pen / stylus row: two-stroke and closed-head arrows; previously trivial: Pen / stylus row: ink, eraser and Ink to Shape incl. arrows landed; previously trivial: a window too big for its screen shrinks to fit when it opens, #1215; previously trivial: 32-bit Windows starts on OpenGL; previously major: first version) · Target: Microsoft Word (Microsoft 365) for Mac 16.113.4 and Word for Windows

Printing update: 2026-10-12 · direct desktop printing through craft-print; details below.

Word is not a hardware-heavy app, but a few devices matter to its users: printers above all, then pens, microphones (Dictate) and speakers (Read Aloud), and displays.

Dimension: ~40% (estimated), 20–40 h to full (pen/ink hours are counted with the Draw tab in target-app-parity.md).

Hardware	Word	WordCraft macOS	Windows	Linux / BSD	Web	Parity	Hours
Printers: native print dialog, printer choice, copies, duplex, page ranges, tray, scaling	✅ (WordPDE.plugin print-dialog extension on Mac)	🟡 Direct CUPS printing; printer, copies, collation, duplex, ranges, grayscale, scale to paper size, N-up and booklets; on every desktop the PDF sent to the printer leaves out link annotations, which the spooler can't fit to the paper; Save these pages as PDF keeps them (#4734)	🟡 Direct spooler printing; printer, copies, collation, duplex, ranges, grayscale, scale to paper size, N-up and booklets; on every desktop the PDF sent to the printer leaves out link annotations, which the spooler can't fit to the paper; Save these pages as PDF keeps them (#4734)	🟡 Direct spooler printing; printer, copies, collation, duplex, ranges, grayscale, scale to paper size, N-up and booklets; on every desktop the PDF sent to the printer leaves out link annotations, which the spooler can't fit to the paper; Save these pages as PDF keeps them (#4734)	✅ browser print dialog (#209)	35%	5–8
GPU rendering, HiDPI/Retina, pixel-aligned text	✅	✅ wgpu + vello_cpu rasteriser, whole-pixel text (#110, #165)	✅ DirectX 12 default (#50), OpenGL when DirectX 12 has no GPU driver (#316) or on 32-bit; startup crash on Intel UHD (#170)	✅ (soft text on KDE at some zooms, #140)	✅	80%	3–5 (bugs)
Pen / stylus: ink, pressure, eraser, ink to shape/math	✅ (Draw tab, InkRender.bundle)	🟡 ink, stroke eraser, Ink to Shape incl. one- and two-stroke arrows with open or closed heads (#307, #395); pressure and Ink to Math missing	🟡 same	🟡 same	🟡 same	50%	(Draw tab, 15–25)
Multiple monitors, per-monitor DPI, remembered window position, a window that fits its screen	✅	✅ (#38, #76, #1215)	✅ (winit DPI fix pending, #155)	✅	—	85%	1
Microphone: Dictate	✅ (cloud speech service)	❌	❌	❌	❌	0%	8–15 + owner (speech model choice)
Speakers: Read Aloud	✅	✅ system speech, speed, sentence skip (#190)	✅	🟡 espeak-ng, then espeak, then Speech Dispatcher (over its socket), each sentence in its language's voice; packages recommend a speech program; silent in the Flatpak (no audio access, no speech program)	🟡	75%	1–2
Touch screens and touchpads: pinch zoom, inertial scroll	✅	✅ pinch (#179)	✅	✅ inertial scroll (#252)	✅	85%	0–1
Scanners/cameras (Insert from device / Continuity Camera on Mac)	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	0%	2–4

Ink replay, eraser picking, lasso selection and arrow-candidate discovery reuse the paragraph prefixes they have already scanned (#3614). Page item order, stroke geometry and saved data retain their behavior. This narrows the stability work; ink import fidelity, native pen input and broader corpus qualification remain open. File > Print offers 2, 4, 6, 9 or 16 logical pages per physical sheet side and left/right-bound booklets (#641). Preview and print PDF share the sheet plan, selected pages, parity, copy padding and markup geometry. Custom-range changes reset the preview to the first sheet; Print Markup invalidates preview layout and textures. Native jobs omit link annotations as required by upstream #4734, while saved print PDFs keep their remapped links. Native printing submits copies to the spooler without multiplying them in the PDF. Ordinary PDF export remains single-page by default. Translations are reviewed separately in craft-i18n#38. Physical-printer qualification and driver-specific options remain unverified.

Revision history

Date	Change	Summary
2026-11-06	trivial	Print helpers remove loaded PDF/settings files before driver work, tolerate prior removal and report cleanup errors; a held-driver regression checks the files are already absent (#5710)
2026-11-06	trivial	Windows print submissions use a separate helper per job, preserving provider serialization inside the helper. An acknowledged cancellation stops that helper, so a stalled cancelled driver cannot block a later job; normal shutdown reaps helpers and removes temporary PDFs. The helper erases its plaintext inputs before driver work; a hard app crash during startup can still leave private temporary files. Startup requires an explicit start grant; after sending begins, jobs complete (#5710)
2026-11-06	trivial	File › Print: before sending starts, Cancel printing (ui.printCancel) stops a waiting job and frees the Print page while keeping its settings, including after the last document closes; a successfully cancelled job is never sent. Quitting cancels waiting jobs and joins jobs already sending (#5710). On Windows, winprint repeats the DEVMODE conversion after sending starts. A stall during that repeat prevents cancellation and can keep shutdown waiting, even before a native job exists.
2026-11-06	trivial	On Windows the Print panel lists printers without asking their drivers anything, removing the driver query a networked printer in power save could hold, which kept the list empty with Refresh unavailable (#5710; likely also behind the long "Finding printers" waits of #5645 and #5413): discovery uses craft-print's printer_queues (storytold/craft-libs#618), and printing still checks the job's options with the driver; physical sleeping-printer output remains to be confirmed by the reporter
2026-10-28	trivial	Ink page lookup work, #3614. Drawing order, geometry and saved data retain their behavior; no readiness estimate change
2026-11-01	trivial	N-up and booklet print imposition (#641): integrate current print-job link handling (#4734), preserve markup preview and sheet/copy planning; readiness estimates unchanged.
2026-10-30	trivial	Only the PDF sent to the printer leaves out link annotations; Save these pages as PDF (file.printPdf) keeps them (#4734)
2026-10-29	trivial	A document with links prints: the print job's PDF leaves out link annotations, which the spooler refused to fit to the paper (#4734)
2026-10-28	trivial	A window restored to a place no monitor covers opens centred on the primary monitor. The check compared monitor sizes only, so when a monitor was replaced by one of the same size (a dock unplugged, a display rearranged), the window opened off screen and the app looked like it quit at once
2026-10-26	trivial	Linux Read Aloud: a sentence another program's message cancels (a screen reader's announcement) is said again after a short pause, twice at most; cancelled again, paused by another program, or never begun, it pauses reading with a message
2026-10-21	trivial	Linux Read Aloud review fixes: Speech Dispatcher is found at SPEECHD_ADDRESS (unix_socket, inet_socket) or the default socket, gets the sentence's language and region, and a sentence another program cancels or pauses (a screen reader's message, a stop for every program) pauses reading on it with a message instead of being skipped or said over the other program
2026-10-18	trivial	Linux Read Aloud: Speech Dispatcher (over its socket, with the sentence's language; stopping cancels only WordCraft's own speech) when neither espeak-ng nor espeak is installed, a message naming the program to install when none is, and a speech program recommended by the .deb (espeak-ng or speech-dispatcher) and .rpm (espeak-ng) packages
2026-10-15	trivial	Pen / stylus row: Ink to Shape also makes two-stroke arrows and arrows with a closed triangle head
2026-10-17	minor	File › Print's Scale to paper size (#2108): pick Letter, Legal, A4 or any Layout › Size paper and every page is scaled to it and centred, the paper turned to each page's orientation, in the preview, the print job (with the spooler's media) and Save these pages as PDF; the document keeps its page size. paper param on ui.print/file.printPdf
2026-10-14	trivial	Pen / stylus row corrected: ink, eraser and Ink to Shape (with arrows) work; pressure and Ink to Math missing
2026-10-13	trivial	A window too big for its screen shrinks to fit when it opens (#1215): eframe sized the first window to the whole monitor, frame and taskbar not counted, so on a laptop screen its bottom, with the end of the scroll bar, was past the screen edge. A window saved that size is fitted on its next launch too
2026-10-12	trivial	32-bit Windows starts on OpenGL: DirectX 12 graphics pipeline creation returns "The parameter is incorrect" and the app exited before the window appeared
2026-10-12	minor	Desktop File > Print now discovers printers and submits PDF jobs through pinned craft-print with printer choice, copies, duplex and grayscale; browser printing and PDF export remain available. The upstream preview, page ranges, parity and Print Markup remain available. Remaining print parity includes driver-specific tray/options and pages-per-sheet UI; physical printer fidelity needs hardware validation.
2026-10-10	trivial	Windows falls back to OpenGL when DirectX 12 offers only the software adapter (#316)
2026-10-10	trivial	Desktop File › Print opens the PDF in the system viewer (#286)
2026-10-10	trivial	Inertial touchpad scrolling landed (#252)
2026-10-10	major	First version