Ooloi: An Organism Evolved

First Window

27/1/2026

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.

Not retrofitted later. Built in.

12 Comments

Ulrik

27/1/2026 21:45:41

Indeed exiting! 👍

Magnus Johansson

28/1/2026 15:09:36

Peter, will it be possible to have Ooloi's windows with Nord Light instead of Nord Dark?

Peter Bengtson

28/1/2026 16:44:28

Technically easy. Whether to offer it is a different question: Nord Dark may become part of Ooloi’s visual identity rather than a preference. Still undecided.

Magnus Johansson

28/1/2026 16:52:16

Offering Nord Light as an alternative to Nord Dark would be appreciated by me and others who have eyes that are not compatible with dark themes.

Peter Bengtson

28/1/2026 17:44:44

That’s an important aspect. I’ll keep it in mind.

Magnus Johansson

28/1/2026 17:52:52

Thanks.

Ant Djogich

31/1/2026 15:57:32

What is the realistic date for a beta release?

Peter Bengtson

31/1/2026 17:13:56

Thank you for the interest. The honest answer is: I don’t know yet.

I follow Knuth’s approach here: done when it’s done, no public timelines. The infrastructure phase took longer than expected; the current phase may surprise me either way.

For context, the window shown in this post is four days old, so things _are_ moving. When there _is_ something concrete to announce, this blog will be the first place it appears: it functions both as a development log and a record of the thinking behind the work.

Ant Djogich

1/2/2026 19:46:40

What is the percentage of original Igor code that you can use?

Scott Lannie

31/1/2026 21:58:12

There is plenty of darkness in the world, to enter into the light can be very revealing. It’s fantastic to see an open window, I can sense the essence through that open window!

Great work and for your perseverance in this venture! Thank you.

Peter Bengtson

1/2/2026 19:54:27

Ant,

Zero. Igor Engraver was Common Lisp; Ooloi is Clojure. Different language, different architecture, different era. More detail here:

https://www.ooloi.org/background-and-history.html

You may also want to take a look at this:

https://www.ooloi.org/home/category/death-of-igor-engraver

Ant

2/2/2026 19:53:32

I thought the whole enterprise was more of a 'transcription' of Igor. A lot of work from scratch actually. In theory, would it not have been easier just to code a decent GUI to Lilypond to get to a good open source notation software?

OOLOI

OVERVIEW

DOCUMENTATION

NEWSLETTER

First Window

Leave a Reply.

Author

Search

Archives

Categories