An experimental word processor with only the features I actually need and a classic user interface inspired by ClarisWorks — a small, pleasant tool for writing letters, with rulers, tabs, and free placement of images.

Latest release: v0.6.0 · Download

Lucerne saves .luce files. A .luce file is a ZIP archive (it conforms to public.zip-archive), so the recovery story is literally "rename it to .zip and unzip." Inside:

document.json   canonical, lossless model — text runs + placed objects (the source of truth)
images/         the placed images as their original files
content.md      a derived, human-readable Markdown copy of the text (write-only escape hatch)
history/        optional dated Markdown backups, thinned with age, for recovery

content.md is regenerated on every save and never read back — it exists so a future human can recover the words and pictures even if this app is gone. A short overview is in docs/file-format.md; the complete, normative specification — enough to build a compatible tool, with a JSON Schema — is in docs/luce-format-spec.md.

Requires macOS (Ventura 13+) and the Swift toolchain (Xcode 15+ or the Swift.org toolchain). This repository was authored on Linux, where AppKit is unavailable, so it cannot be compiled in that environment — build it on a Mac. Compilation is verified by the macOS GitHub Actions workflow.

Quick development run (no app bundle, panels-based open/save work):

swift run Lucerne

Produce a double-clickable Lucerne.app (with .luce document-type registration):

Scripts/build.sh           # writes dist/Lucerne.app and reveals it in Finder
Scripts/build.sh --run     # …and launches it

Scripts/build.sh is the recommended local build: an incremental release build by default, wrapping Scripts/make-app.sh (the bundle assembler), then revealing the result in Finder. Use --clean to rebuild from scratch (wipes .build/ and dist/).

Run the tests (model, Markdown export, geometry — no GUI needed):

swift test

See docs/building.md for details and troubleshooting.