paperclip-editor

[crcn]

Need to create paperclip editor package which handles all of the funcitonality around editing Paperclip source code. This includes:

• providing a data format to UI editors that allows them to display editable information
  • style inspections
  • canvas information
• CRDT document syncing and such. This is high prio.
• handling various editing behavior
  • dragging & dropping elements to a slot
  • displaying slots in a canvas
  • updating PC files to include imports

This should basically be the engine for editors. Emitted data from this engine should be immutable so that it can be connected to a deterministic UI.

[crcn]

Some thoughts on the CRDT. We can establish a few things:

1. text document will need to be synchronized between clients
2. Clients will only have access to AST ids
3. FE state will become out of date with the BE
4. I think this is okay. If FE makes a change to an AST that doesn't exist anymore, then it will be a no-op
5. BE will need to keep a record of what state FE has in order to make edits

Possible high-level solutions:

Store AST as CRDT documents

• will need to diff text & patch AST documents with new IDs
• When edits are coming from the FE, we can just modify the node associated with the ID in the tree

Store virtual elements as CRDT documents

• Diffing already occurs here
• virtual objects can contain additional information about source ASTs that's stored locally. Edits to virtual elements can be redirected to AST / element
• virtual objects are basically a 1:1 map with AST. for cases where they're not, we can include additional metadata about original AST and how things were computed to arrive at virtual object.
• If FE deletes a virtual object that's missing, that results in a no-op
• virtual objects (and their IDs) are sent to the front-end
• (problem) If a child is inserted somewhere in the document, all proceeding siblings will have new IDs. This should be okay.

☝️ I think editing virtual objects is the winner