kherveDOC

A WYSIWYG document editor that produces beautiful PDFs via LaTeX, with Git-based version history.

The title bar shows kherveDOC v<major>.<minor>.<commits>+<sha7>.

Features

Editor

• Word-style page card sized to real A4 / Letter / Legal paper at 96 DPI; switchable from the toolbar.
• Single editable surface with visible dashed page-break lines at every layout pagination.
• Paragraph-style picker: Body text · Title · Heading 1-5.
• Inline marks: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, code, smallcaps, subscript, superscript.
• Inserts: inline math, math block (LaTeX-typed), bullet / numbered lists, hyperlinks, footnotes, citations (cite / citep / citet), cross-references (ref / eqref / pageref), figures (with caption + label), tables, page break, horizontal rule, raw LaTeX escape hatch.
• Three tabs: Formatted (WYSIWYG), LaTeX (live read-only syntax-highlighted source), PDF (live preview).

File

• Native format: .kdoc.json (a JSON serialisation of the document model) plus a sibling .tex.
• Import: .tex (regex-based subset parser, falls back to RawLatex), .docx (uses python-docx, embedded images are extracted into a sibling folder and inserted as Figure nodes).
• Export: .tex, .pdf.
• Document properties dialog: title, author, document class, package list.

Git

• Each document gets its own git repo via pygit2.
• Saving auto-commits and pushes to origin (best-effort).
• History viewer under the History menu.

Setup

pip install -r requirements.txt
winget install TectonicTypesetting.Tectonic  # or download from https://tectonic-typesetting.github.io/
python -m khervedoc

Optional for .docx import:

pip install python-docx

Run the test suite:

python -m pytest tests/

Project layout

khervedoc/
  model.py        # typed document tree (dataclasses)
  serializer.py   # model -> LaTeX
  importers.py    # .tex and .docx -> model
  compiler.py     # tectonic subprocess + PyMuPDF rasteriser
  git_backend.py  # pygit2 auto-commit + push
  editor.py       # WYSIWYG editor widget
  paged_edit.py   # PagedTextEdit with page-break overlay
  page_sizes.py   # A4 / Letter / Legal constants
  latex_view.py   # syntax-highlighted .tex view
  preview.py      # PDF page renderer
  mainwindow.py   # app shell, menus, toolbar
  icons.py        # toolbar icons drawn at runtime with QPainter
  __main__.py     # entry point (forces light Fusion palette)
tests/
  test_model.py
  test_serializer.py
  test_importers.py
examples/
  demo.kdoc.json

Architecture in one paragraph

The document model is the single source of truth. The editor (a Word-style PagedTextEdit) reads and writes it. On every edit, the model is re-serialised to .tex and tectonic compiles it to PDF; PyMuPDF rasterises pages into the preview pane. pygit2 auto-commits the .tex (the human-readable artefact) on save and pushes to origin. No component edits LaTeX strings directly — they all go through the model.

Known limitations

• Pages render as one continuous editable surface with break lines marked — not yet separate floating page cards (would need a custom QAbstractTextDocumentLayout).
• Math equations are typed as LaTeX in a dialog; no visual equation editor.
• LaTeX errors appear in the preview pane as the log tail; not mapped to editor positions.
• .doc (old binary Word format) is not supported — convert to .docx first.