dtourolle
d8f26fb5cd
The rendered manual was in the repository and nowhere else, so an installed application still had nothing to open. Each packager now carries docs/manual/index.html and its pictures, to where the application will look for them: /usr/share/darkroom/manual on Arch, manual\ beside darkroom.exe on Windows (where the models already are, and where dr_plat::system_data_dirs points), and assets/manual in the APK, stored rather than deflated since a GIF or PNG is already compressed. The manual is about 27 MB, which the APK and the installer both grow by; the pictures are 1600x1100 screenshots and short GIFs, and against an APK that already carries 170 MB of inference runtime and 70 MB of models they are not worth re-encoding for. The pictures are LFS objects, so each packager refuses a pointer where a picture should be, as it already does for the models: shipped, a pointer is a manual of broken images that nothing reports. The Android and Windows CI legs therefore fetch docs/manual/media, which they excluded while nothing they built read it, and the installer smoke test checks that the page and every picture were installed.
Documentation
Two audiences, two folders. Most people want the first table and never the second.
Using DarkRoom
| The manual | Every feature, pictured from the application itself — opening a library, rating and filing, developing, local masks, repair, film, panoramas, export |
| How it is driven | Every gesture and shortcut, by screen. Generated from the code, so it cannot describe one the application does not have |
The top-level README says what DarkRoom is, how to get it on each platform, and what is still missing.
Changing DarkRoom
Everything under dev/ is for someone working on the code. Start with
CONTRIBUTING.md, which says how to land a first change
without reading the rest.
The register and the record. What must be built, how it is built, and how far along it is.
| requirements.md | What the software must do — the numbered register, the decisions (D-numbers) and the spikes (S-numbers) |
| architecture.md | How it is built — crates, the GPU pipeline, the data model, sync |
| traceability.md | Generated: which requirement is claimed by which file. Never edited by hand |
| outstanding.md | What is specified and not built, and whether that is a decision or a gap |
| technical-debt.md | Compromises taken deliberately, each with the condition that retires it |
| code-health.md | What a contribution costs, per seam, measured |
Designs, one per subsystem. Each is the specification the code was built to, kept current as the code moved.
| catalog.md | The index, the library view, incremental scan, the job queue |
| storage.md | Storage backends: the seam a folder, a sync client and a Nextcloud account share |
| faces.md | Face detection, identity, clustering and the eye-state models |
| segmentation.md | How the application finds the regions a local mask snaps to |
| mask-editing.md | Painting, erasing and combining masks |
| spot-removal.md | Clone and heal as parameters in the edit graph |
| panorama.md | Alignment, projection, the chunked composite and the border fill |
| inference.md | The neural runtime and model chosen per device, with the measurements |
| display-and-extension.md | The display contract, and why the fused pipeline is already most of a plugin format |
| view-composition.md | A controller for the display layer |
| ui-navigation.md | Finding things in the interface once there are many |
Measurements. Numbers committed so a regression is a diff rather than a recollection.
| benchmarks.md | The per-commit suite: what it covers, what it does not, how to read a failure |
| bench-baseline.json | The committed numbers the suite checks against |
| frame-budget.md | What a frame costs on each device, and the decision those figures settled |
Platforms and distribution.
| distribution.md | Which channels v1 targets and what each one constrains |
| windows.md | The Windows installer, cross-built from the Linux CI |
| android-signing.md | Which key signs the APK, and keeping it |
Archive. Kept as the record of what was asked for, not as plans.
| milestone-v0.1.md | The first milestone, delivered 2026-08-30 and superseded |
| ui-refinement.md | How the interface should look; succeeded by ui-navigation.md |
Conventions
Two files here are generated and must not be edited by hand:
gestures.md and dev/traceability.md. Both come from
cargo run -p traceability and the pre-commit hook keeps them in step with
the tree. The manual's pictures are recorded by
tools/manual and live in LFS.
A design document links to the requirements it satisfies and to the code
that satisfies them. When the code moves, the link moves with it; a document
that has stopped being true goes to dev/archive/ with a note saying what
replaced it, rather than being deleted.