iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 28/08/2026

I'm working on vector editing in @papaya.io, and it's not as snappy as I'd like to be. So optimization time! I built a profile capture mechanism: An in-browser shortcut toggles profiling, then pings the local server which converts it into the Tracy format, writes to disk, which I view in the GUI.

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 27/06/2026

Added rich text editing to papaya.io, powered by the excellent Skribidi library. :) This was a joy and a challenge to implement, and I'm sure there are still rough edges.

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 09/05/2026

Still having fun building papaya.io. Just implemented a pretty nifty compressed export feature, with swipe to compare. Supports JPEG, WebP and PNG compression for now.

Image export interface, image of two boats with a swipeable UI in the middle. The left half of the image is original, the right half is garbly and JPEG compressed.

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 08/04/2026

Implemented some fun stroke dynamics based on mouse speed in papaya.io in an evening.

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 30/03/2026

I had an index variable that kept track of the latest processed element in a list. gpt-5.3-codex today named it `watermark`, and I cannot get over the beauty of it.

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 21/08/2025

Holy crap, #ziglang 0.14 -> 0.15.1 is quite the breaking change. This is literally 5% of @papaya.io's Zig codebase.

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 20/06/2025

*Tin foil hat* Has Google added a special case for Google Docs in Chrome to show the MacOS accent menu in the right spot? It renders out of the window in Firefox, which is what you'd expect to happen when using a hidden textbox to get input. I cannot find a web API do this. Looks like an inside job.

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 15/06/2025

Still long way to go, but got the beginnings of IME text composition working in papaya.io. I'm super impressed that @mikkomononen.bsky.social's Skribidi library even has this feature. Here's a video of me typing in '⌥-u' and then 'o' on Mac, which results in 'ö'.

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 12/06/2025

If you've ever worked with font rendering, then you'll know that it's the most impressive to get the fonts looking good at low sizes, because then hinting comes into play, which is where FreeType shines over other simpler libraries.

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 12/06/2025

Got simplified Chinese and FreeType variable font rendering to work in papaya.io.

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 11/06/2025

Multi-script rendering in papaya.io is starting to come together. Here's glyph caching and retrieval across several fonts (including an emoji font)!

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 09/06/2025

Added intermingled rendering of Latin and emoji (from different font files) to papaya.io. (Also look at that automatic word-wrapping and left-alignment, courtesy of Skribidi!)

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 08/06/2025

Emoji font rendering in papaya.io with @mikkomononen.bsky.social's github.com/memononen/Sk... library. Next up: intermingling font and emoji rendering.

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 04/06/2025

(cc @omershapira.com) Fun fact, this is also useful in computer graphics. The complex IOR can be converted into an F0 (Fresnel reflectance value of a ray aligned with the normal). This can be used in Schlick's approximation. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlick...

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 03/06/2025

Started implementing text rendering for papaya.io. Got FreeType and HarfBuzz compiling to WebAssembly. Here's a demo of kerning working with Roboto.

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 22/05/2025

Just relaunched papaya.io — a web-based image editor I've been building on nights and weekends. What's new: - .ppy file format for local saves - Automatic browser persistence - WebP import/export support Building fast and shipping features regularly. Try it out — feedback very welcome.

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 15/01/2025

Spotted some DirectX code in the movie Mars Express. www.imdb.com/title/tt2691...

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 07/12/2024

✅ Toy 2, differentiable rendering ( #PBR + #ML ): Learning the diffuse and roughness map. This was way harder than learning just the diffuse map given a fixed roughness, and I learnt a LOT along the way.

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 14/11/2024

✅ Toy 1, PBR + ML: Learning the diffuse map Ground truth: 128x128 diffuse map fed into disney diffuse + ggx lambert Inference: 128x128 weights map fed into same model. L2 loss, learnt on a laptop GPU in 13 seconds. Visually identical results.

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 11/11/2024

Git Fork always freezes for several minutes when I revert or stage a few thousand files. Took a leaf out of @sschoener.bsky.social 's book and Superluminaled it. Turns out almost all of that time is taken on a UI update, 70% of which is an Array.ContainsItem check. Smells like an easy fix!

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 10/11/2024

Training my first ever original ML model, and finally got a dropping loss function. It was quite hard to get to this point, figuring out a workable learning rate, input data, and batch size. I still can't run on the GPU for some reason, and my final output is still garbage, so lots to do.

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Apoorva Joshi @apoorvaj.io · 02/11/2024

Did some physically based rendering in numpy. GGX specular + Disney diffuse. Textures from matlib.gpuopen.com/main/materia...

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