Keyboard shortcuts

Press ← or → to navigate between chapters

Press S or / to search in the book

Press ? to show this help

Press Esc to hide this help

10 — Learning Path for the Owner

You do not need to become an expert in Rust, C++, TypeScript, typography and cryptography. You need enough to steer: read a pull request’s explanation and the code it points to, ask good questions, and recognize when something smells wrong. Your DevOps background already covers a large part of what keeps this project healthy (CI, supply chain, containers, releases). This path builds on it in the order the project needs it. Every resource listed is free unless marked otherwise.

Phase 0 — now

GoalResources
Read Rust comfortablyThe Rust Programming Language chapters 1–10, with Rustlings exercises alongside. Then Rust by Example as a reference.
Understand why text is hardAlexis Beingessner’s essays “Text Rendering Hates You” and “Text Editing Hates You Too” (search the titles); Nikita Prokopov’s “The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Must Know About Unicode in 2023”.
Understand what a .docx isUnzip any .docx and look inside word/document.xml, styles.xml and numbering.xml. Then skim the WordprocessingML introduction in ECMA-376 Part 1, free from Ecma International.
Know how decisions are made hereadr/README.md and three ADRs of your choice; 06-agent-workflow.md.

Phase 1 — while the viewer is built

GoalResources
Rust beyond the basicsThe Rust Book chapters 11–20 (testing, iterators, smart pointers, concurrency); the Cargo Book sections on workspaces and features.
Server-side Rust (your strongest leverage, given DevOps)The Tokio tutorial; the axum examples; Zero To Production in Rust by Luca Palmieri (paid book, excellent for API services).
Layout fundamentalsThe Fidelity Lab spec and the first Word Behavior Notes the agents write; HarfBuzz’s “What is text shaping?” documentation.
Supply chain in Rustcargo-deny documentation; SLSA levels overview.

Phase 2 — while the editor and interfaces are built

GoalResources
Modern C++ for reading Qt codeBjarne Stroustrup, A Tour of C++ (3rd edition, paid, short); cppreference as a reference.
Qt and QMLQt 6 QML Book (free online); Qt’s “Getting started with Qt Quick” documentation.
TypeScript and ReactTypeScript Handbook; react.dev/learn.
AccessibilityWAI’s WCAG 2.2 at a glance; try NVDA (free) or VoiceOver on the viewer yourself.

Phase 3 — while collaboration is built

GoalResources
Local-first and CRDTsInk & Switch, “Local-first software” (2019 essay); Martin Kleppmann’s talk “CRDTs: The Hard Parts”; crdt.tech; the Peritext paper (Ink & Switch).
End-to-end encryption with MLSRFC 9750, The MLS Architecture (readable overview); then skim the introduction of RFC 9420.
Prior artCryptPad’s and Proton Docs’ public descriptions of their designs; the USENIX Security 2026 paper “End-to-End Encrypted Collaborative Documents”.
Application securityOWASP ASVS overview.

Habits that pay off

  • Ask the reviewer agent to explain any pull request “as if to a DevOps engineer new to Rust”; it will.
  • Keep a personal glossary next to 11-glossary.md.
  • Once a month, read one Word Behavior Note end to end: they are the project’s unique knowledge.
  • Run the desktop and web apps yourself after each merge from Phase 1 on. A non-expert user is the best smoke test.