Libration

Overview

Libration is a canonical reference implementation of a longitude-first world time visualization system.

It is a high-fidelity world time instrument built on a render-plan architecture and currently delivered as a local-first desktop application.

It uses:

• a longitude-first time model
• 24 fixed structural sectors (15° each)
• UTC as canonical time
• display-time derived via reference-time logic
• a renderer-agnostic rendering pipeline

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Project Philosophy

Libration is intended to be a canonical, publicly accessible, user-freedom-preserving reference implementation of this system.

This project prioritizes the freedom of users to:

• inspect the software
• study how it works
• modify it
• share it
• benefit from improvements made by others

To preserve those freedoms downstream, Libration is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0).

Libration is independently developed and is not affiliated with any existing commercial product.

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Current UI Direction

Top band consists of:

• Hour markers
• Tickmark tape (hour / 15 / 5)
• NATO timezone strip (continuous rectangular band)

The top instrument strip uses one built-in appearance for now; future tweaks will be direct config controls, not bundled palette presets.

Top chrome is now treated as real application layout:

• the top chrome stack reserves vertical space above the map
• the scene viewport begins below the visible top chrome
• hiding top-band areas reclaims that space instead of leaving map content hidden underneath chrome

Chrome editing is now organized by major area rather than one long mixed panel. Current major areas include:

• 24-hour indicator entries
• 24-hour tickmarks tape
• NATO timezone area

Recent simplification:

• top-band alignment and timing behavior are unchanged

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Hour Marker Direction

Top-band hour markers now use a clean, explicit model:

• Behavior — how markers move or stay anchored
• Realization — text or procedural glyph mode
• Layout — size and placement semantics
• Appearance — realization-scoped styling layered on top

At semantic runtime, hour-marker content is still derived as part of the resolved plan (for example hour24 vs localWallClock), but it is no longer treated as a persisted editor-owned axis.

Implemented realizations:

• Text
  • bundled font asset selection
  • size and styling overrides layered on top
• Procedural glyphs
  • analog clock markers
  • radial wedge
  • radial line

Bundled font inventory currently includes:

• Zeroes One
• Zeroes Two
• DSEG7Modern-Regular
• DotMatrix-Regular
• COMPUTER
• Flip Clock
• Kremlin

Hour markers now persist through a single structured config surface:

chrome.layout.hourMarkers

That model is authoritative for:

• editor authoring
• normalization
• runtime resolution
• persistence

Current top-band visibility is also structured and persisted directly in chrome layout state, including:

• chrome.layout.hourMarkers.visible for the indicator entries area
• chrome.layout.tickTapeVisible for the 24-hour tickmarks tape
• chrome.layout.timezoneLetterRowVisible for the NATO strip

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Data Mode Default

On a fresh deploy or first application load, the default data mode is:

static

That default is defined at the canonical config layer and is only used when no persisted user configuration exists. Existing saved user state continues to take precedence.

The current data model is intentionally local-first:

• no live network feeds
• no background refresh

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Font / Typography Status

The project has:

• a preprocessed font asset manifest
• runtime font asset lookup by stable ID
• semantic typography roles
• glyph/text emission through RenderPlan

Current Canvas rendering still uses native Canvas text realization at the backend edge, but bundled fonts are loaded and registered at runtime so changing fontAssetId visibly changes output in the active Canvas backend.

So today the live text path is:

fontAssetId -> FontAssetRegistry -> resolveTextStyle -> RenderPlan text -> Canvas text bridge -> Canvas native text rendering

The project does not yet use a custom glyph-outline or atlas-based text renderer.

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Architecture

Resolver / Planner / Layout / Adapter → RenderPlan → Executor

All rendering intent is resolved before backend execution.

Current backend:

• Canvas

Planned future backend:

• native / NVIDIA RTX-class renderer

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Status

Initial public release: v1.0.0
Architecture stable.
Top-band hour-marker runtime migration complete for the supported production path.
Hour-marker editor and persistence migration complete.
Typography + glyph subsystem implemented.
Canvas bundled-font realization working.
Top chrome major-area editing is in place for indicator entries, tick tape, and NATO strip.
Top chrome now reserves real layout space above the scene instead of overlaying map content.
Current engineering focus: feature-forward top-band chrome work on top of the completed structured hour-marker model and the newer chrome-area editor structure.

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Saved Configuration — Hour Markers (Breaking Change)

Hour-marker persistence now requires:

chrome.layout.hourMarkers

Older saved configs that only used legacy flat hour-marker fields are no longer compatible. This was an intentional full cutover.

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Run

npm install
npm run tauri dev

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License

This project is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0).

The AGPL is used so that users retain access to the source code and improvements made to the software, including in network-hosted deployments.