ebox/DESIGN.md

Ebox design

Ebox is the low-level spatial rendering engine. Its job is to turn a declarative node tree into measured layout fragments and a generic TP surface plan. It is deliberately smaller than an application framework.

Design principles

• One source tree, one style normalizer, one layout pipeline, one buffer owner.
• A public node is data; rendering and mutation happen only at explicit entry points.
• Stable identity comes from node identity and explicit keys, never from visible text or selector strings.
• Layout changes are measured before publication; a failed candidate preserves the previous buffer state.
• The native module is an optional accelerator with an exact Elisp fallback.
• New abstractions must remove duplication or make an existing public workflow simpler.
• Public property schema, ECSS metadata, and used engine projection are derived from one property definition record.
• Cross-package framework integration is an additive versioned provider; consumer selection and fallback policy remain outside Ebox.

Pipeline

node tree
  -> normalized style
  -> measured formatting context
  -> layout fragments and snapshot
  -> render context
  -> pure TP surface plan

The owners are ebox-child-range.el for immutable child-sequence and key indexes, ebox-tree.el for Ebox identity and traversal, ebox-style.el for style semantics, ebox-measure.el for display-sensitive measurement, ebox-layout.el/ebox-flex.el/ebox-grid.el for geometry, ebox-fragment.el for fragment facts, ebox-render-context.el for the candidate/materialization input port, ebox-patch-plan.el for pure operation-antichain artifacts, ebox-surface.el for pure TP plan projection and retained publication, and ebox-incremental.el for dirty classification and live-fact adaptation. ebox-layout.el never loads or calls the surface/TP layer; the facade wires surface operations into its validated render-context port. The patch planner never reads a buffer or surface; its incremental adapter supplies immutable parent facts and tentative operations. ebox-buffer-backend.el only builds and reshapes propertized render strings; all public live buffer publication routes through the TP surface boundary.

Public boundary

Use the functions and properties in docs/user/ebox-api-reference.en.md; the facade inventory is ebox-public-api. Do not call ebox--* names from an application or a sibling package. Higher-level Component, reactive, behavior, data, and control concepts belong to ETAF.

Layout scope

Ebox supports explicit px, %, vw, vh, ch, and lh dimensions, padding, margins, borders, colors, overflow, wrapping, row/column/flex formatting, and Grid tracks including fixed, fractional, implicit, gap, placement, span, and alignment behavior. The public typography subset is :font-family, CSS-reference-pixel :font-size, :font-weight, and :font-style; :font-slant is only an exact parse-time alias of :font-style. Emacs faces and text properties belong to the final adapter and are not Ebox author properties. CSS compatibility is intentionally partial: absolute positioning, z-index, shadows, border radius, full browser typography, and browser-level bidi are outside this package.

Size composition

ebox-size.el owns pure length validation, dependency discovery, and resolution to fractional pixels, plus a pure cumulative quantization helper used at the display boundaries chosen by layout. Its context contains measured viewport axes, the property's percentage reference, zero-glyph advance, and line height. It does not read windows or nodes, evaluate arbitrary Lisp, choose property defaults, or publish buffers. This keeps unit arithmetic reusable across normal, Flex, Grid, spacing, and border geometry.

The author format is (unit number) and the composable functions are calc, min, max, and clamp. Property schemas own allowed units, keywords, and range rules. The shared unit-constraint table is the author contract: inline geometry, block geometry, and border paint have distinct unit domains. Validation traverses every function branch and track operand; Flex basis uses its parent main axis. Invalid unit combinations fail during construction, before layout or display.

Layout supplies containing-block and font measurements and resolves intrinsic/automatic sizes. fit-content is a bare keyword only. Removed bare lengths, singleton pixel lists, viewport keywords, and contain have no compatibility execution path.

Missing reference measurements defer resolution rather than becoming zero. Intermediate arithmetic keeps fractions until the formatting/display boundary. The buffer backend materializes block geometry in whole lines, matching the restricted block-unit contract. An empty Box contributes zero automatic content height; explicit height, padding, or borders supply any reserved extent.

Verification rule

Every behavior change needs a focused ERT test and a fresh make check. Changes to native source also require make native-rust-tests; changes to docs or the active file set require make docs-contract-tests.