文枢 WENSHU · User Guide

Quick start (5 steps)

Download and install: when your OS shows a warning, follow the one-time allow steps in Chapter 1 — it only asks once.

Open Wenshu: from the home screen, enter any of the four tools, create something new, or open your first document (Chapter 2).

Open an existing Word / Excel file: change a little and save it back to check the round trip (Chapters 3 and 4).

Connect your own storage: a local folder or WebDAV, so files sync between two devices (Chapter 7).

One more step for important files: turn on client-side encryption against prying eyes, and use version history to recover anything you break (Chapters 8 and 9).

1. Installation

Installers live on the Releases page of the public download repository (https://github.com/kingaiwork/Wenshu-Releases/releases/tag/v0.1.0): Windows offers .exe and .msi — pick either; macOS is a .dmg. SHA-256 checksums are published on the same page; verify before installing.

How to verify:

Windows: open PowerShell and run Get-FileHash .\your-downloaded-file -Algorithm SHA256, then compare the output with the value on the release page.

macOS: open Terminal and run shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/your-downloaded-file.

This build has no code-signing certificate, so both systems will stop you once on first install. That is expected; here is how to get past it.

Windows

Double-click the .exe (or .msi) to start installation.

When the blue SmartScreen prompt “Windows protected your PC” appears, click “More info”.

A “Run anyway” button appears — click it and installation continues.

When done, open “文枢 Wenshu Office” from the Start menu.

macOS

Open the .dmg and drag Wenshu into the Applications folder.

The first launch is blocked with an “unidentified developer” message. Dismiss it.

Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to the blocked entry, and click “Open Anyway”.

Alternatively, right-click Wenshu in Applications, choose “Open”, and click “Open” once more in the dialog.

If the unsigned warning bothers you, waiting for a signed build is a perfectly reasonable choice.

2. First launch

The app opens on the home screen: four entry cards on top (Writer, Calc, Impress, PDF) and your recent documents below. With no files opened yet, the recents area is empty and shows a hint — that is normal.

A few things to know:

The theme button at the top right of the home screen switches between light and dark. The first launch follows your system setting; once you switch manually, your choice is remembered.

The document page itself always stays white — dark mode only changes the app shell, deliberately, so what you see matches print output.

No registration, no sign-in, and no step requires an internet connection. Everything except sync works fully offline.

3. Writer

Opening and saving DOCX

Click “Writer” on the home screen to enter.

Click “Open DOCX” and pick a file. Once opened, the file is registered in the home screen’s recent documents.

When you finish editing, click “Save as DOCX” to export. Save to a new file rather than straight over the original — the channel is round-trip tested and carries official-document section footers, footnotes and comments back, but keeping the original is a sound habit.

When an opened document looks wrong

Highly complex documents (many text boxes, floating images, columns) may look different in the editor than in Word. The file itself is not broken — the canvas rendering is simplified. In that case:

Go back to Writer and open the same file with “Compatibility mode”.

Compatibility mode uses the LibreOffice installed on your machine and converts the document to PDF for viewing; trust that layout.

Compatibility mode is view-only. To edit, go back to Word, or accept the editor rendering and edit there.

Requirement: compatibility mode needs LibreOffice installed (free, from its official site). If it is not found, the UI says so plainly instead of pretending to open the file.

Official documents: formatting and checking

For Chinese government documents (GB/T 9704-2012), use the “公文” (official document) entry in the Writer toolbar:

Open the DOCX first, then expand the official-document panel.

Click “公文体检” (document check): all 28 rules report individually — pass, hit, needs manual confirmation, not applicable — and hits point at the exact paragraph. The items marked “manual confirmation” (such as page-number distance from the text block edge) cannot be judged by software; check those yourself.

Hits that offer “one-click fix” can be repaired in place; a re-check runs automatically afterwards.

For a full reformat, click “一键套版” (apply format). The software first detects the elements — issuing-authority mark, document number, title, main recipients, body, sign-off — and lists any element it is unsure about for your confirmation before it changes anything.

Not happy with the result? Click “回滚” (roll back) to return to the pre-format state. The rollback file is byte-identical to your original, so format away without worry.

Finally, export as usual with “Save as DOCX”. The standard footer (—N— page numbers) rebuilt by formatting is carried into the export.

Note: the software writes font names only and bundles no font files. If fonts such as 仿宋 or 方正小标宋 are not installed on your machine, the screen will substitute another font — confirm on a machine that has the fonts before printing.

4. Calc

Opening and saving XLSX

Click “Calc” on the home screen, then “Open XLSX” and pick a file.

Large files automatically take the fast path: above 5 MB or with many rows, the status line reads “streaming parse + deferred calculation” — that is a normal notice, not an error.

In deferred mode, a badge above the sheet shows “Formulas pending (N)”. Browsing the data is fine — the numbers are the cached values stored in the file. To actually compute, click “Calculate now”; the badge switches to “Calculating” and disappears when done.

The first time you edit a cell in this state, a one-time reminder appears: your edit is based on cached values. Choose “Not now” to keep editing, or “Calculate now” to compute first.

Saving is via “Save XLSX”. Saving while formulas are still uncalculated is blocked on purpose — calculation is triggered first, then you may save. This exists specifically so formulas are never silently lost; it is not a malfunction.

The open mode can be chosen manually: Auto (default), Full (full styling channel even for small files), Fast (force streaming + deferred). Leave it on Auto for everyday use.

Three things to know first

If a workbook contains charts, do not save it in Wenshu yet. Charts cannot enter the editor at this stage; they are stripped on open and gone after saving. To view charts, open the file in compatibility mode (the Calc entry has one too — via LibreOffice to PDF).

Pivot tables are safe to open and save: the pivot is carried back intact and stays live in Excel. But if you edit source data in Wenshu, the pivot numbers do not follow — refresh the pivot cache once back in Excel.

Conditional formatting, dropdown validation, borders and row/column sizes are lost across an open–save round trip. Values, formulas, merges, frozen panes and named ranges all survive.

5. Impress

Click “Impress” on the home screen to enter.

Keep the two open entries apart: “Open PPTX (edit)” truly imports the deck into the editor; “Open PPTX (compatibility view)” renders layout via LibreOffice, view-only.

When done editing, click “Save as PPTX” to export.

Two things to know: placeholder positions in the editor are estimated boxes that differ from the original layout — for finely laid-out decks, trust compatibility view. Tables, charts, animations and transitions do not display in the editor, but they remain in the file, and the deck is still complete when opened in PowerPoint after saving.

6. PDF: reading and the toolbox

Reading a PDF

Click the PDF entry on the home screen (or “Open PDF file”) and pick a file to read. Files you process in the toolbox and documents you open are registered in the home screen’s recent documents.

General toolbox workflow

On the PDF page, switch to the “Toolbox” tab.

Add PDFs to the file list (click add, or drag them in). Files can be multi-selected, reordered and removed. Clicking a row selects it as the current single file to process.

Pick a tool, fill in the parameters, run it. Results appear in the results area; click to download and save.

The rule: every operation saves a new file with a suffix (such as -merged, -watermarked) and never overwrites the original. A corrupt file is flagged on its own row and does not affect the others.

How to fill in each tool

Merge: list order is merge order — arrange first, then merge. Bookmarks in the source files do not survive merging; the results area warns about this in yellow text.

Split: write page ranges by segment, e.g. 1-3,4-6; each segment exports as one file.

Extract pages: a spec like 1-3,5,8; the extracted pages combine into one new file.

Delete pages: enter the pages to delete, e.g. 2,5-7. Deleting every page is refused with an error.

Rotate pages: pick an angle (90/180/270), for specific pages or all pages.

Compress: just run it. The note tells you exactly what method was used and how much the size changed. Only structural compression is applied — image-heavy files will not shrink much, and that is the honest truth.

Text watermark: enter the text, adjust size (6–200), opacity and angle; choose tiled across the page or a single centered mark; enter a page spec for specific pages, leave empty for all pages.

Image watermark: pick a PNG (PNG only); the rest works like text watermarks.

Page numbers: pick a style (Page N / N / Page N of M / —N—), a position (left/center/right of header or footer), and a starting number if needed.

Headers & footers: header and footer each have left, center and right text slots; whatever you fill in appears, and leaving everything empty is an error.

Export to images: pick a scale (1x/2x/3x); every page renders to PNG and downloads as one zip containing name-page-N.png files.

File info: select a file and view it — page count, dimensions, encryption status, title and author are shown in the panel; fields that cannot be read stay empty.

Encrypting a PDF (desktop build only)

In the toolbox’s “Encryption (desktop)” section, enter the input file path; the output path may stay empty and name-encrypted.pdf is generated automatically.

Enter the open password twice — the two entries must match, and an empty password is refused.

The permissions password may stay empty, in which case it equals the open password.

Permission checkboxes default to printing only. Tick copy or modify if the recipient needs them.

Click encrypt. On success, the password fields clear themselves. Passwords are stored nowhere; a forgotten one cannot be recovered for you.

Note: an already-encrypted file cannot be encrypted again (it errors out), and setting the output path to the same file as the input is also blocked — both protect the original.

The algorithm is AES-256; recipients can open the file with mainstream readers such as Acrobat, Edge or Foxit by entering the password.

7. Connect your own storage (sync)

To sync documents between two devices, or keep an off-device copy, follow these steps. First, the ground rule: local files are always the master copy; bound storage is only a mirror, and sync problems never harm local files.

What you need

The desktop app, installed on each device.

Storage of your own: a folder the other device can reach, a system cloud-drive sync folder, or a WebDAV service (Nutstore, Nextcloud and Synology NAS all offer WebDAV).

For WebDAV, prepare the service address, account and app password on the provider’s side first. For Nutstore, generate an app password under Account info → Security options on its website — do not use your login password.

Binding steps

Open Settings and go to the Storage section (the storage page within settings).

First set this device’s name — something recognizable, e.g. “Home desktop”. It appears in conflict-copy filenames and is how you tell versions apart later.

Choose a binding method: for a local folder (desktop build), enter the folder’s absolute path and click authorize & bind — the authorization persists across restarts, no re-picking each time; for WebDAV, enter the service address, account and app password, then save.

Click “Test connection” and only continue once it passes. An authentication failure (error 4101) usually means the app password is wrong — regenerate one.

Click “Sync now” for the first round. The full scan computes hashes, so the first round is slower with many files; afterwards only changes are transferred.

Repeat the same steps on the second device, bound to the same storage. Once both have synced, the files are aligned.

In daily use, sync runs automatically from a queue; offline failures wait with backoff and resume when the network returns. Settings shows the queue and each item’s status; click “Pause” to stop and “Resume” to continue.

Where version history lives

Before a new version uploads, the old one is archived under .wenshu/history/ in your bound storage, one folder per file with timestamped versions, keeping the latest 30 per file. Broke a file? Find the previous version there by time and download it back.

Unbinding

Click unbind in Settings and confirm: unbinding only clears this device’s binding configuration and stored credentials (including a remembered encryption passphrase). It never deletes any remote file. Confirm with confidence.

8. When a conflict happens

If two devices edit the same file before syncing, the next sync produces a conflict. The software’s handling: neither side is overwritten; the remote version lands as a conflict copy (named like “Report (conflict copy · Home desktop · 20261021-0930).docx”), the original file keeps your local state, and the ledger marks it awaiting your decision.

How to resolve it:

Open the Storage section in Settings; pending conflicts appear in a “Conflicts to resolve” area, listed one by one.

Each entry shows both versions side by side: yours (device name, size, modified time) and theirs (size, modified time). Decide which one should be the master version first.

Pick one of the three buttons; a confirmation dialog explains the consequences first:

Use my version: their version is archived into version history first, then your local version syncs as the master. For “what I edited on this machine is right”.

Use their version: your local version is archived into version history first, then their version overwrites the local master. For “the other device has the newer edit”.

Keep both: the conflict copy is renamed “name (their version · time)” and becomes an ordinary file that syncs independently from then on. Choose this when both versions’ content must be kept for a manual merge.

A resolved entry disappears automatically. A failed resolution shows the reason in red and keeps the entry — fix the cause (e.g. network back) and click again.

Picked wrong? No panic: the losing version is in .wenshu/history/ — go and fetch it back.

Tip: when in doubt, choose “Keep both”. Preserving both versions and merging by hand in the editor is less work than fetching history after picking the wrong master.

9. Encrypting synced content

For files that travel through a cloud drive whose operator you would rather not show the content to. Encryption is per binding; local files are always plaintext, and only the copy written to the remote side is encrypted.

Open the Storage section in Settings, find the target binding’s card, and enter its encryption area.

Read the explanation first — two sentences matter: content only is encrypted, filenames stay plaintext; a lost passphrase is unrecoverable, there is no backdoor.

Set a passphrase and click enable. The software verifies the passphrase by test-decrypting one remote file.

Decide whether to tick “Remember on this device”: ticked, the passphrase is stored in the OS keychain and unlocks automatically next time; unticked, you enter the passphrase once in Settings after each app start, before the first sync. While locked, sync reports a guiding error (4504) — just enter the passphrase as prompted.

Then sync as usual. In the provider’s backend, file contents are ciphertext (WSE1 format) while filenames remain recognizable.

On a new device, bind the same storage, enable encryption and enter the same passphrase to read everything back. A different passphrase fails decryption outright (4502) and never corrupts the remote files.

Limit: a single file may be at most 64 MB; larger files are refused with an error and no partial file is left on the remote side. Do not enable encryption on a binding that carries very large files.

10. Common questions

Installation was blocked as “unverified” — is that normal?

Yes. v0.1.0 has no code-signing certificate, so Windows SmartScreen and macOS Gatekeeper both intervene. Chapter 1 shows how to get past it. If you prefer, verify the SHA-256 first, or wait for a signed build.

My DOCX looks different from Word — is the file broken?

Most likely not. Complex layout (text boxes, floating images, columns) is simplified in the editor. Open it in compatibility mode to see the PDF layout and trust that. Round-trip fidelity is backed by measured tests, and content loss is rare; the two known hard cases are text boxes becoming plain paragraphs and formulas becoming plain text.

I saved my spreadsheet back and the charts are gone — why?

A known current limitation: XLSX charts cannot enter the editor yet; they are stripped on open and do not come back after saving. Do not press save in Wenshu on chart-bearing workbooks; use Calc’s compatibility mode to view them as PDF.

Does my pivot table still work after saving back?

Yes. The pivot parts are carried back untouched and it stays a live pivot in Excel. But after editing source data in Wenshu, refresh the pivot cache once back in Excel for the numbers to update.

Sync keeps failing — can I still edit files on this machine?

Yes. Local editing and local files always take priority; failed items queue and retry. Settings shows the failure reason: authentication failures usually mean an expired app password — regenerate and re-enter it; persistent connection failures mean checking the service address and network first.

Nutstore has not been field-tested yet — can I still use it?

Honestly: the WebDAV protocol itself works and the full chain was verified against a local test server during development, but Nutstore, Nextcloud and Synology have not yet been tested one by one as real services, and each has its quirks (ETag conventions, for instance). Before binding real documents, run one sync round with a few unimportant files and confirm open, edit and conflict behavior, then move your real documents in.

I forgot my encryption passphrase — what now?

Nothing can be done. There is no backdoor and no recovery channel; the remote ciphertext cannot be opened. If the local plaintext still exists, bind a fresh unencrypted binding and sync again. Keep the passphrase in your own password manager.

Can someone without Wenshu open my encrypted files?

Two different things: PDF Toolbox encryption is standard AES-256 PDF — any mainstream reader opens it with the password. The storage-sync client encryption is Wenshu’s own WSE1 format (public format, with a spec) — count on Wenshu to open it, not other software.

Can sync overwrite and lose my files?

No — this is hard-wired into the design: simultaneous edits only ever produce a conflict copy; a decision archives the losing version into history first; uploads archive the old version before writing the new one. Three layers guard the paths where data could be lost; the remaining risk is mostly you deleting files by hand.

I turned on dark mode — why is the editor still bright?

By design. Dark applies to the app shell only; the document page stays white and the editor canvas uses the engine’s own theme, so what you see stays close to print.

There is a sample.pdf in my recent documents that I never opened?

That is the PDF entry’s built-in sample, and it is never registered into recents; everything in your recents is a file you opened or produced yourself. Recents live only in this browser’s local storage, never go online, and are capped at 20 entries.

Is this going to cost money someday — will a subscription popup appear?

No. Apache-2.0 open source, no membership, no feature locks, no trial period. There are also no accounts and no default telemetry; whether a crash report is sent is entirely your manual decision.

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