Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python

4/10/2026 at 10:12:28 PM

The hardest part of WYSIWYG editors is always cursor positioning and selection across mixed content. How did you handle that? Also curious if you considered using a canvas-based renderer vs DOM — what made you go with your current approach?

by kabir_daki

4/11/2026 at 8:50:58 AM

I came from the TeX-Approach where all layout elements are boxes which contain other boxes. This box-tree is a kind of DOM if you want. But the box-tree only represents the layout, not the data itself. For the data you usually have a separate object. In Word this used to be the piece table structure, now it is probably something else. I described my approach here, if you want to know how and why: https://codeberg.org/chrisecker/texeltree/src/branch/main/do...

by chrisecker

4/11/2026 at 6:52:40 AM

Cursor positioning is simple. The layout is a tree of nested box. Each box knows the x,y-position of its children. There is also an index dimension which numbers possible cursor positions. A box lies from i1 to i2 in index space. You just iterate over all boxes holding cursor position i to find the cursor coordinate x,y. Selection is simple as well. It is defined by a start index s1 and end index s2. Some objects have a special selection, e.g. tables where you select a rectangular range of table cells.

by chrisecker

4/10/2026 at 8:32:47 PM

This took me down the nostalgic memory lane of the planet-source-code days. There were hundreds of such projects in Visual Basic, Delphi, C/C++/MFC etc., and text editors and paint clones were the most popular projects.

by vishnuharidas

4/10/2026 at 8:03:03 PM

I adore anything that avoids using a browser. <3

by chjail-11

4/10/2026 at 10:34:03 PM

> - Real WYSIWYG editing (no HTML layer, no embedded browser) with styles, images and tables. > - Clean, simple file format (human-readable, diff-friendly, git-friendly, AI-friendly)

Very nice! Unfortunately, the UI menus seem to be broken when using a dark-mode GTK theme (e.g. Adwaita Dark).

by Georgelemental

4/11/2026 at 7:00:03 AM

Yes, I can see what you mean: There are hand coded colors together with system colors. With the dark mode this gives white text on white background for the side panel. Thanks for mentioning.

by chrisecker

4/11/2026 at 6:53:55 AM

Tables and images are the part where every "just use a rope" answer falls apart, so going B-tree feels right. I tried building a minimal rich text editor last year and got stuck exactly at the point where tables stopped being attachable as metadata and needed to live in the structure itself, ended up shelving it. Good to see someone actually push through it.

by emanuele-em

4/10/2026 at 8:00:47 PM

On MacOS, I'm seeing `ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'miniword.core.utils'` whether I run `python3 -m miniword` from src/miniword/ or from src/miniword/miniword/.

by mttpgn

4/10/2026 at 8:13:52 PM

My mistake. Now it works (on linux).

by chrisecker

4/10/2026 at 10:32:48 PM

Thanks, and I got the main window open now, but I'm getting a second error that doesn't look OS related. `Plugin error (txtfilter.py): No module named 'miniword.importexport'`

by mttpgn

4/10/2026 at 8:31:00 PM

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

This is a famous "killer" feature from WordPerfect: the ability to view and edit the low-level formatting for a document. It's invaluable for fixing weird bugs.

However, it works only because WP uses the "text-stream" paradigm, where a document comprises a linear stream of text with formatting codes (Bold, Font, Hard Return, etc.) embedded directly at the point at which they're applied.

In contrast, Word uses the "nested containers" model (characters inside words, words inside paragraphs, paragraphs inside sections, etc.), where this feature can't be replicated.

I didn't look closely at your code, but just thought to mention this feature.

by fractallyte

4/11/2026 at 12:21:30 AM

I don't see why the "nested containers" model would prevent this feature to be replicated, it's just a tree of nodes. Not edit-this-as-plain-text-simple but almost.

by nomdep

4/10/2026 at 8:33:08 PM

at this point, a WYSIWYG just seems like a huge step backwards from just using markdown. I love having access to my files in a standard text format this is super easy to parse, and not being locked into whatever weird format that WYSIWYG decides to store it in.

I still don't understand why people still use ~~Microsoft Word~~Copilot document writer , I think they have gotten into some weird mindset that their documents require all this weird unnecessary formatting to look "official"

by analogpixel

4/10/2026 at 8:59:23 PM

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

Also wysiwyg doesn't mean it can't be back and forwards compatible with markdown, it might just mean that it's a markdown editor gui with a preview.

by httpsterio

4/10/2026 at 9:35:32 PM

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

by layer8

4/11/2026 at 12:59:47 AM

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

by shakna

4/10/2026 at 9:57:44 PM

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

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

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

by yummybrainz

4/10/2026 at 10:06:31 PM

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

by layer8

4/11/2026 at 2:34:48 AM

> at this point, a WYSIWYG just seems like a huge step backwards from just using markdown.

Not for a layperson. There’s a reason WYSIWYG word processors completely obliterated the previous “needs an explicit preview mode” generation ones.

by loloquwowndueo

4/11/2026 at 8:21:19 AM

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

by pjmlp

4/10/2026 at 9:11:44 PM

Yes. These days, with plain text, pasrsers, Internet, mobile devices and LLM, we really get more than what we see. Only few case where paper print out is still more useful.

by sakesun

4/10/2026 at 10:27:34 PM

My prolific Typst use, along with quickly improving side-by-side editors like Typesetter, are rapidly diminishing (in my eyes) the reasons for WYSIWYG to be. Sure, normies need it, yadda yadda. Is it worth the staggering cost? The file format and GUI complexity?

by netbioserror

4/10/2026 at 8:26:21 PM

I thought the data structure part is solved:

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

by kubb

4/10/2026 at 8:43:35 PM

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

by chrisecker

4/10/2026 at 7:21:42 PM

Love to see wxPython!

by LoganDark

4/10/2026 at 9:02:22 PM

This is great!

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

by __d

4/11/2026 at 7:10:09 AM

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

by chrisecker

4/10/2026 at 9:16:46 PM

I love seeing new word processor projects!

by subdomain

4/10/2026 at 8:01:18 PM

Looks like a nice project.

Looks like you missed a file, though.

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'miniword.core.utils'

I don't see it in my local clone of your repo, nor the repo iteslf.

by avryhof

4/10/2026 at 8:10:29 PM

My apologies. I added the missing file.

by chrisecker

4/10/2026 at 8:35:12 PM

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

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

by avryhof

4/10/2026 at 10:45:20 PM

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

by pbronez

4/10/2026 at 9:00:23 PM

[dead]

by johnwhitman