docspec-blocknote-writer

DocSpec events, written as BlockNote JSON.

Events arrive; BlockNote JSON leaves. docspec-blocknote-writer turns a DocSpec event stream into BlockNote JSON, writing tokens directly to any Write target as events arrive. Nothing accumulates beyond what bounded conversion details require — asset data URI encoding and lifting nested table substreams after their enclosing table closes. Streaming, like the rest of DocSpec. (See the Manifesto for why.)

Add it

[dependencies]
docspec-blocknote-writer = "1"

Write some BlockNote JSON

Wrap BlockNoteWriter in StackTrackingSink before feeding list events. The writer lazily opens the list item's content[] array when the first paragraph or inline content arrives, which lets it preserve non-default first-paragraph alignment on the list item while omitting BlockNote's default props. StackTrackingSink is still required because it normalizes paragraph boundaries (especially from sources that don't always emit an explicit StartParagraph inside list items), which is what lets the writer detect multi-paragraph items and transition emission into children[] for subsequent paragraphs.

use docspec_blocknote_writer::BlockNoteWriter;
use docspec_core::{Event, EventSink, ListStyleType, StackTrackingSink, TextStyleKind};

let mut buf = Vec::<u8>::new();
let mut writer = StackTrackingSink::new(BlockNoteWriter::new(&mut buf));

writer.handle_event(Event::StartDocument { id: None, language: None, metadata: None })?;

// Plain paragraph
writer.handle_event(Event::StartParagraph { alignment: None, id: None })?;
writer.handle_event(Event::Text {
    content: "Hello, world".to_string(),
})?;
writer.handle_event(Event::EndParagraph)?;

// Styled text uses wrapper events.
writer.handle_event(Event::StartParagraph { alignment: None, id: None })?;
writer.handle_event(Event::StartTextStyle { kind: TextStyleKind::Bold, id: None })?;
writer.handle_event(Event::Text {
    content: "Bold text".to_string(),
})?;
writer.handle_event(Event::EndTextStyle)?;
writer.handle_event(Event::EndParagraph)?;

// Bullet list item
writer.handle_event(Event::StartUnorderedListItem {
    id: None,
    level: 0,
    style_type: ListStyleType::Disc,
})?;
writer.handle_event(Event::Text {
    content: "First bullet".to_string(),
})?;
writer.handle_event(Event::EndUnorderedListItem)?;

// Numbered list item
writer.handle_event(Event::StartOrderedListItem {
    id: None,
    level: 0,
    start: Some(1),
    style_type: ListStyleType::Decimal,
})?;
writer.handle_event(Event::Text {
    content: "Step one".to_string(),
})?;
writer.handle_event(Event::EndOrderedListItem)?;

writer.handle_event(Event::EndDocument)?;
writer.finish()?;

let json = String::from_utf8(buf)?;
# Ok::<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>>(())

What it handles today

Inline styles are consumed from StartTextStyle/EndTextStyle spans around Text events. Bold, italic, code, strikethrough, and underline render as BlockNote style flags. Subscript and superscript are accepted but omitted because BlockNote's default schema has no equivalent representation. Inline links (StartLink/EndLink) emit a link inline type with the href. The optional title field is dropped (BlockNote's default link schema has no title).

List items support arbitrary nesting via BlockNote's native children: Block[] arrays. The start prop on numberedListItem is preserved when the first item in a sequence carries an explicit start number. The id field on Start*ListItem events is dropped — list items never emit an id key, regardless of source. Upstream readers such as docspec-docx-reader set this field to the OOXML numId, which is shared by every item in the same list and so is not a per-item identifier.

Color Styles

Two color-bearing style kinds emit JSON keys in the inline styles object:

• textColor — emitted when the reader sends StartTextStyle { kind: TextColor(Color) }. The RGB value is snapped to the nearest BlockNote palette color and written as a string, e.g. "textColor":"red".
• backgroundColor — emitted when the reader sends StartTextStyle { kind: Mark(Color) }. Same palette snap, written as e.g. "backgroundColor":"blue".

Pure black (0, 0, 0) and pure white (255, 255, 255) are both treated as BlockNote's default and produce no key for either style. White is filtered because it is the standard page-default color and the OOXML idiom for "no visible shading" (<w:shd w:val="clear" w:fill="FFFFFF"/>); without this guard, every such no-op shading would snap to the pastel "gray" palette entry. Non-RGB colors are also omitted. Any other RGB color is snapped to one of the 9 named palette entries.

Palette

Each style type has its own 9-entry palette of named colors. The names are the same for both, but the RGB values differ because BlockNote uses distinct pastel shades for backgrounds versus richer tones for text:

Palette snap algorithm

The palette snap uses squared Euclidean distance in 8-bit sRGB space. No perceptual weighting, no gamma correction. Ties are broken by iteration order. This mirrors the reference Elixir implementation.

The two palettes use different RGB values, so the same input color can snap to different names depending on whether it's a text color or a background color. For instance, the saturated red (224, 62, 62) snaps to background palette "orange" (not "red") because the background palette uses pastel colors and the Euclidean distance to pastel orange is shorter than to pastel red. This is intentional and matches the reference implementation.

See COLOR_SNAPPING.md for an example of how this snap can rename a source color end-to-end (OOXML <w:highlight w:val="yellow"/> → BlockNote "backgroundColor":"orange") and the mechanism behind it.

What it doesn't handle yet

• Footnotes — StartFootnote/EndFootnote/FootnoteRef are silently ignored; BlockNote's default schema has no equivalent
• Definition lists — StartDefinitionList/StartDefinitionTerm/StartDefinitionDetail (and their End* pairs) are silently ignored; BlockNote's default schema has no equivalent
• Captions — StartCaption/EndCaption are silently ignored
• checkListItem — requires upstream DocSpec event support not yet defined
• toggleListItem — no DocSpec event equivalent
• Custom list style markers — the style_type field on StartOrderedListItem/StartUnorderedListItem is always dropped (BlockNote's default schema has no equivalent); list kind is determined entirely by the event variant (ordered vs unordered)

Hard edges

Table cell content

BlockNote's tableCell.content is InlineContent[] and cannot hold block-level types. Block-level events inside a cell — headings, lists, blockquotes, code blocks, dividers, images, nested tables — are buffered and lifted and replayed as siblings of the enclosing table.

Lift destination: the buffered blocks are drained into the nearest still-open ancestor that accepts block children — a list item or blockquote when one is open, otherwise document root. List item levels are rebased during drain to preserve nesting consistency.

Inline text adjacent to lifted content stays in the cell. Paragraph boundaries are absorbed silently.

List item children

Headings, blockquotes, code blocks, tables, dividers, images, and nested lists inside a list item are emitted as blocks in the item's children[] array. The first paragraph's inline content populates the item's content[]; subsequent paragraphs become child paragraph blocks in children[].

Blockquote children

Headings, lists, code blocks, images, dividers, and nested quotes inside a blockquote are emitted as blocks in the quote's children[] array. Inline content (text, formatted runs) populates content[] until a block child arrives, at which point the writer transitions to children-only mode.

Image in links

Images inside a link span are emitted as plain text using the alt-text of the image. This is a BlockNote limitation: BlockNote's inline content cannot contain image nodes.

Related

• Architecture — the streaming pipeline and event model
• docspec-blocknote-writer on docs.rs