After three years of ProseMirror, I replaced its view layer to get real pagination

Description and use

QuireKit replaces ProseMirror’s view layer to provide true pagination, IME support, and multiple synchronized views while keeping the original document model and plugins.

Problem

ProseMirror’s contenteditable view cannot paginate like Word or Google Docs, making it hard to create page‑oriented documents.

Outcome

QuireKit delivers a true paged editor by replacing ProseMirror’s view layer, enabling incremental layout, accurate IME handling, and multiple synchronized views while preserving the original model and plugins.

Workflow

• 1. Keep ProseMirror’s document model, plugins, and commands.
• 2. Replace EditorView with a custom view that renders pages via Canvas or SVG.
• 3. Implement recursive layout routines for body, paragraphs, tables, and cells to decide page breaks.
• 4. Use a temporary state during IME composition to avoid affecting undo history or collaboration.
• 5. Compute decorations against the temporary state to keep highlights correct.
• 6. Provide multiple views (paged, block, Markdown) sharing the same editor state.
• 7. Export the editor as an npm package and provide example code for initialization.

Evidence

The request I could never really deliver was "can it paginate like Word / Google Docs?"

Source

ProseMirror splits an editor very cleanly: document model, transactions, plugins, commands, undo, input rules, keymaps and collaboration don't care how anything is displayed.

Source

QuireKit keeps everything above that line and replaces the view.

Source

During composition, layout and painting use a temporary state that is never dispatched, as if the preedit text were really in the document.

Source

On a 1 MiB document, over 20 consecutive edits: new tree fragment visits 107,760 → 1,380 (−98.7%)

Source