Roadmap: The “Galley Pro” Ambitions#
Galley is currently a focused, lightweight viewer. The following features are under consideration or in early exploration.
1. Universal SyncTeX Bridge: pandoc-synctex#
A bidirectional synchronization bridge between structured text formats and
Galley. By leveraging ASTs (like Pandoc’s +sourcepos) and custom Lua
filters, enabling Forward / Inverse Search from Typst, SATySFi, Vivliostyle
(VFM), AsciiDoc, and Re:VIEW sources.
2. Hybrid Rendering Engine & Typography Inspector#
A hybrid backend (Poppler + HarfBuzz + FreeType) to go beyond PDFKit’s screen rendering:
- Output Preview — CMYK and Spot Color extraction in
/Separationand/DeviceNmodes. - Typography Inspector — embedded font names, raw CIDs/GIDs, and subset statuses from the PDF stream.
- OpenType Shaping Validation — verify glyph positioning against kerning, ligatures, and complex text layout rules.
3. PDF/X & PDF/A Preflight and Fixup#
Native PDF/X (X-1a, X-4) and PDF/A validation and fixup, including transparency flattening, bleed box generation, color conversions via macOS ColorSync, and ICC profile tagging.
4. Extended URL Scheme API#
Expanding the galleypdf:// scheme for advanced navigation, build
integration, dynamic configuration, preflight visualization, document diff,
and export / conversion.
5. Command Line Interface (CLI)#
Viewer control landed in v0.4 as the
galleypdf command: opening a
PDF, jumping to a page, reloading, and SyncTeX forward search all work from
the terminal today.
What remains is the half that has to answer back — preflight, export and
imposition need to return results, not just fire an action. The groundwork is
there: galleypdf is a compiled client, so it can send the Apple Event
itself and wait for the reply, which costs about three milliseconds more than
not waiting.