HanziDraw GJS

HanziDraw is a native GTK 4/libadwaita port of the HanziDraw web app, written in GJS for GNOME mobile and the Purism Librem 5. Draw a Chinese character to get recognition candidates, CC-CEDICT English definitions with tone-colored pinyin, and stroke-order animation. Direct hanzi and pinyin lookup are also supported. Recognition and lookup work fully offline; the Flatpak has no network permission.

The application source and bundled data are self-contained in this repository; building its Flatpak does not require a separate upstream checkout.

Development run

Install GJS, GTK 4, libadwaita, and GLib development tools. Development runs use the host's CJK fonts. From the workspace root:

glib-compile-resources data/org.spacecruft.HanziDraw.gresource.xml \
  --sourcedir=data --sourcedir=src \
  --target=data/org.spacecruft.HanziDraw.gresource
gjs -m src/main.js

Flatpak

Install flatpak, flatpak-builder, and the GNOME 48 runtime and SDK:

flatpak install org.gnome.Platform//48 org.gnome.Sdk//48

Build and install the app for the current user, then run it (from the workspace root):

flatpak-builder --user --install --force-clean build org.spacecruft.HanziDraw.json
flatpak run org.spacecruft.HanziDraw

Validate the store metadata and inspect the sandbox permissions with:

appstreamcli validate data/org.spacecruft.HanziDraw.metainfo.xml
flatpak info --show-permissions org.spacecruft.HanziDraw

The manifest deliberately grants only Wayland, fallback X11, and session-bus sockets. It does not grant network access. The pinned Noto Sans CJK SC font is downloaded at build time and bundled in the Flatpak.

Tests

Run the ported logic tests from the workspace root:

gjs -m test-logic.js

Source layout

• src/ — application, widgets, recognition, dictionary, and drawing.
• data/ — committed runtime data, generated stroke shards, GResource definition, desktop/AppStream metadata, icon, and licenses.
• bin/ — installed Flatpak launcher.
• scripts/build-strokes-shards.mjs — deterministic shard generator.
• docs/ — port plan and phase specifications.

License and provenance

The port is licensed under GNU GPL v3 or later; see LICENSE. Bundled third-party code, data, and the font retain their own licenses. See UPSTREAM.md for complete provenance and data/licenses/ for the redistributed notices.