This is the very first window Ooloi has opened. Ever.

Not a console command or REPL experiment - a window created through the infrastructure completed yesterday (ADR-0031), using the new UI Specification Format (ADR-0042) that amongst other things makes all UI elements accessible to plugins as first-class citizens.

Another quiet decision: localisation from the start. ADR-0039 establishes that every UI string is translatable from day one, using GNU gettext's standard .po format. The tooling ecosystem is mature: Poedit, Crowdin, Transifex, Weblate, Lokalise, POEditor, OmegaT. Translators know these tools. Workflows exist. Nothing proprietary, nothing invented here.
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Not retrofitted later. Built in.

Well, that was quick! The multi-tiered frontend event infrastructure is complete and implemented. One evening's work added the Event Router, the Rendering Data Manager, and the Fetch Coordinator. This implements ADR-0031 and shows that having the implementation architected in detail before writing the code saves a lot of time. I'd expected to be busy with frontend events for some time.

Now that that's out of the way comes what it enables: windows, dialogs, menus, notifications. I'll be working with JavaFX, cljfx, AtlantaFX: what's called 'UI chrome'.

It's concrete work without semantic subtleties for a change: does the window open? Does the NordDark theme apply correctly? Does the dialog render? Aesthetic decisions instead of semantic ones.

I expect these blog posts will turn quite practical in tone for a while, as this is standard engineering, plumbing, connecting things, turning detailed ADRs into working code. Quite relaxing, as a matter of fact.

And I can now, after 18 months, finally give in to that desire to actually open a window. Fresh air!