Community Input Wanted on Direction for CalcpadCE

[imartincei]

Hello everyone, I wanted to put a couple things out there on how I plan to contribute to the future of the software. This is relevant to discuss upfront, as I plan to make a couple of major changes to how the software works.

1. I will not be making any changes to Calcpad.Wpf. I plan to archive it in a different branch for existing users or people who want to fork it and build upon it. However, all of my efforts will be going to Calcpad.Web and Calcpad.Highlighter in the current experimental branch. This is the baseline for the vs code extension I am working on.

2. I do not plan to implement the current UI system in Calcpad.Web. Instead, I am working on a "#UI" keyword system that allows you to make UI elements with far less code. I will have a working prototype soon if people want to see how it works and how it differs from the current UI implementation.

The main feedback I want from the community is to see if there is anyone who wants to maintain the C# frontend in the Calcpad.Wpf folder, or if people are okay moving forward with my web-based approach. It uses Typescript and a module that is shared between a pure web version (URL in a browser), a desktop version that is just a webview for the web version, and a more powerful vs code version for developers or people who are comfortable in an IDE. The pure web version would require a Docker-hosted server to work, but the desktop and vs code version can use a localhost C# background service or Docker-hosted server on another machine. The install process for the desktop version will look mostly the same as the current Wpf version, but it will be cross-platform by design and gain the option of local, hybrid, or cloud computing.

The other aspect I wanted people's thoughts on is if we want to remove compatibility for the old UI system as it complicates the source code, or if we wanted to keep it around.

We don't have to make these decisions any time soon (and I don't expect anyone to until I at least have a working prototype), but I wanted to get this in front of the community early to see your general thoughts. From a backwards compatibility standpoint, I don't plan to make any other significant changes to the project outside of these two areas. And the .cpd format will be largely unaffected by these changes outside of the "x = ? {5}" syntax, which would no longer be supported and instead would look like #UI x = 5.

[ExiMentor]

Hi imartincei,

Great roadmap! I’m 100% behind the move to a web-based, cross-platform approach.

Since I recently switched to Linux, this is exactly what I need. I also don't mind the syntax change if it makes the system cleaner.

Looking forward to the prototype!

Best regards,
Steffen

[Bersobis]

If it can run locally (maybe even on Android) and it is relatively optimized and not "bloated" then it should be OK.

[imartincei]

Yes, I am planning to support a mobile layout as part of the web version eventually. It will also work on tablets. I only plan to support PCs for the local running desktop and vs code versions though.

Regarding bloating, this is an area I 100% agreed with Ned on. If you can make something work using existing features, don't add a new one unless it majorly improves the end user experience. Optimization is something I am still working on, but I have been able to run fairly complex files instantly. Calcpad.Core is very optimized and I'm not adding much to it. Calcpad.Highlighter is less optimized right now (especially the linter), but you can also just turn this off for very large files and the calculation side will work fine. I do plan to get this more optimized in the future.

[fwolter]

I think this is absolutely the right approach! Building a web application makes it so much easier to support multiple platforms. WebView applications can feel exactly like real desktop applications, so there is no benefit to maintaining a dedicated desktop frontend.

I really appreciate you taking the initiative! As a software architect and former sponsor, I offer to help with code reviews for continuing this great project! Simply open a PR and I will have a look.

[imartincei]

Thank you so much for your support! Code review is a major challenge I am facing so this is very helpful. Let's talk in the upcoming days of how to get some of the experimental features I added into a stable build. My biggest concerns right now are optimizations, bugs, and security considerations with the new client and server approach, as I know enough to build it but not to check it in detail for these issues.

[jgagnonNT]

Hi, thank you so much doe taking over the project, I really like to software for my mechanical engineering application, mostly for easily juggling with multiple units. I agree that the web version is best to attract people to test the software. I really like having a proper installed version however which feels faster and makes it easier to manage my codes.

[VoltixSpark]

Thank you very much for kicking this community edition off. I was very surprised to see that the original project was killed when I checked yesterday. I use CalcPad desktop version often in my day-job with PCBA design workflow, and I have created a skill for Claude Code to hook into CalcPad via the CalcPad CLI. This is a major dependency for my current workflow. I think for now, using the final release of CalcPad pre-CE is OK, but I would like to keep up to date with the project as it improves.

I am no programmer, so my knowledge is limited, but I suspect that the CalcPad VSCode extension has some way for an LLM to write XML, check the results, and iterate? Currently I do that via the CLI, so I'm not sure how the LLM would work with the VSCode extension I will give it a try, but I think that CalcPad is a very powerful tool to give an LLM access to for deterministic calculations that are automatically exportable to a nice-looking PDF. Rather than integrate AI into the tool, I would advocate for exposing CLI or API style hooks for an LLM to utilize. I would be happy to contribute in this area, but my software architectural expertise is limited.

[imartincei]

Hello! This is exactly the approach I am taking. Claude Code works within VS code, so I wrote a skill for it to use. Within the VS code environment, the linter also gives real-time feedback to the LLM if it codes something wrong.

[VoltixSpark]

That's perfect, thanks so much! I will try it out 👍