Revel

Infinite canvas for notes and visual thinking.

What it does

Everything lives in a single SQLite file. Search uses BM25 ranking. Canvas is infinite with nested spaces you can organize however you want.

Content:

• Text notes (plain or formatted)
• Shapes (circles, rectangles, triangles, diamonds, bézier curves, graphs)
• Stroke styles (solid/dashed/dotted), fill patterns (solid/hachure/cross-hatch)
• Freehand drawing
• Images, videos (MP4), audio (MP3)

Connections:

• Arrows between any elements (curved or straight)
• 4-point attachment system

Working with stuff:

• New elements find empty space automatically (spiral search)
• Clone things: fork for independent copies, or link by text/size/position/color
• Layer ordering, rotation, colors
• Add private notes to elements

Automation:

• DSL for scripting layouts
• Animations: move, resize, color, fade
• 8 interpolation curves (linear, bezier, ease-in/out, bounce, elastic, back)

UI:

• Right-click menus, keyboard shortcuts (F1 for list)
• Space tree sidebar
• Undo/redo with action log

Performance

Handles large datasets. Viewport culling means only visible stuff gets rendered. Tested with 1M elements.

Building

Linux (Ubuntu/Debian):

sudo apt install libgtk-4-dev libsqlite3-dev libjson-glib-dev \
    libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev \
    gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-libav

macOS (Homebrew):

brew install gtk4 gstreamer gstreamer-development pkgconf sqlite json-glib font-ubuntu-mono

Build:

make -j$(nproc) && ./revel

Note: Primary development is on Linux. macOS build uses Command (⌘) key for shortcuts.

Try the demo:

rm -f demo.db && ./revel --dsl examples/showcase.dsl demo.db

AI Integration

Toolbar has AI button. Calls external CLI tools (config in config/ai_providers.json) and sends current canvas as DSL context. Binaries need to be in $PATH. Settings in gear menu. History saved to database.

Layout

src/        C code
tests/      Tests
examples/   DSL examples
build/      Build output

Full DSL docs: DSL.md

Desktop launcher

cp revel.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/
# Edit Exec and Icon paths in the file
update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/