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Creator of free Adobe clones unveils open-source Microsoft Office Excel, PowerPoint, and Word replications — Autodesk tools and other subscription-based services may come next (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/opensource@programming.dev
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Brandon Thomas, developer of ArtCraft, a suite of open-source creative tools meant to replicate Adobe applications for free, has now announced apps to replace Microsoft Office tools such as Excel, PowerPoint, and Word, respectively, named GridCraft, DeckCraft, and WordCraft, that are created with Claude. Thomas has shared his new clones to ArtCraft GitHub, making them free for all to download.

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[+] -6 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Clean room implementation would be taking the spec, API calls, etc. & writing the code that implements them from scratch.

Which they did.

This is not a decomp. They gave the tool all of the available specs, and the expected behavior, and let it run. They had a suite of test PSD files but no Adobe software.

Please explain to these other commenters how and why that counts.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (7 children)

    May I ask where this is documented? I tried searching, but there's just too many results to parse, and/or my Google-fu is failing me.

    I find it hard to believe near full feature parity could be achieved in under a month for multiple major apps even for an experienced dev using AI. It's a bit hard to buy.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 day ago (6 children)

    This project is weeks old. I dunno what detailed writeup you expect to exist. But the project's Github page says: "Implemented from public specs and observed behaviour only. No proprietary code, shaders or assets."

    There's no secret sauce in Photoshop. Image editors have been done. Every individual feature is a tractable problem. You can now buy your way out of those, in bulk.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

    Which brings us full circle to not original code, but I get that's par for the course with AI. However, I can't see completing all those apps - with full compatibility - in that time span with nothing but documented specs (especially nowadays when full documentation has long become an afterthought that never becomes reality far too often).

    Sorry, not buying that there wasn't decompiling involved. Dude needs to prove his "work" by releasing every detail of how he accomplished it so others can replicate it before I'll eat my words. And he needs to do so now - so current tools, hardware, etc can be validated by Joe Public.

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  • [–] -4 points 1 day ago (4 children)

    Argumentum ad nuh uh is somehow worse than all the sea lions saying your definition wouldn't count even if you believed it.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago* (3 children)

    I didn't say anything of the sort. We all know AI code isn't original, and for the purposes of this discussion, that's fine.

    My issue is the idea that he's replicated virtually every last detail of several major closed-source apps simultaneously in under a month using documented specs alone without "cheating" by using their code in some manner. Plain and simple. Prove me wrong, and I'll issue a mea culpa.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 day ago* (2 children)

    Yes you plainly did. "Sorry, not buying that" is just brushing aside that they say they did exactly what you asked for.

    What is so unthinkable about producing compatibility with a file format that has a test suite? Or cloning any particular feature from a high-level description and a screenshot of its dialog?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    "Sorry, not buying that" is just brushing aside that they say they did exactly what you asked for.

    They can say lots of things. I don't believe everything I'm told. Do you?

    What is so unthinkable about producing compatibility with a file format that has a test suite?

    Nothing - that's something I can believe.

    Or cloning any particular feature from a high-level description and a screenshot of its dialog?

    Any particular feature? No problem. The entire software suite function-for-function in just a few weeks? Without "cheating?" Yeah, that's a bit much.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 day ago

    Yeah, that’s a bit much.

    Why.

    We've mechanized this process. Doing it repeatedly, and quickly, is what that looks like.

    This isn't a decomp searching for exact compiler output. Function-for-function means, there is a Gaussian blur filter, and it responds to the same shortcut and settings. It's not bit-for-bit identical. Is that supposed to take a month, by itself? Why wouldn't this move very quickly, once the most important functions are good enough?

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