Kinneyzhang 8a8e862098 feat(ebox): publish standalone low-level package

Split the verified renderer, layout engine, Grid support, native boundary, tests, examples, and paired documentation into the independent Ebox repository. Keep ETAF and application concerns outside this package.

2026-08-05 09:15:35 +08:00

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Ebox design

Ebox is the low-level rendering engine. Its job is to turn a declarative node tree into measured layout fragments and then publish those fragments into an Emacs buffer. 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.

Pipeline

node tree
  -> normalized style
  -> measured formatting context
  -> layout fragments and snapshot
  -> render context
  -> buffer patch/publication

The owners are ebox-tree.el for 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-buffer-backend.el for text properties and buffer edits, and ebox-incremental.el for dirty planning and publication.

Public boundary

Use ebox-create, ebox-column, ebox-row, ebox-flex, ebox-grid, ebox-build, ebox-render, ebox-render-to-buffer, ebox-commit, and selector entry points. 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 character and pixel dimensions, padding, margins, borders, colors, faces, overflow, wrapping, row/column/flex formatting, and Grid tracks including fixed, fractional, implicit, gap, placement, span, and alignment behavior. CSS compatibility is intentionally partial: browser cascade, percentages, absolute positioning, z-index, shadows, full typography, and browser-level bidi are outside this package.

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.

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