The Publishing project

In 2021 I thought of building a text editor based on Monaco and built as an Electron application was a good idea.

Rather than wrap Electron around the app, I will try to build an editor again but make it a PWA.

A PWA presents many of the advantages of a native app without many of the disadvantages.

• Don’t require downloads There is no app store to download from
• Updates are automatic since there is no app store to download from
• Installation is optional you can either run it in your browser or install it on your computer as a standalone app

So the goals for the project are:

• Evaluate if Monaco is (still) a good editor for a PWA
  • If not then what would make a good alternative?
• Integrate the following APIs into the process and evaluate how they integrate with Monaco
  • File System Access API to provide open/save functionality
  • Async Clipboard API for copy/paste
  • File Handling API to let the editor open files of a given type
• Integrate a testing framework to the project where it doesn’t exist already
• Evaluate if module bundling is still a good idea
• Test if ES2017 is still a good target for compilation
• Test if there’s a way to make the editor save to remote locations like Dropbox, Google Drive, or an S3 bucket?

Throughout the year I will document the process, challenges, and learnings from building the project. By the end of the year, I hope to have a working prototype of the editor ready for use and review.