plate_core 0.11.5

The backbone of license plate packages for countries that actually exist (we checked).

0.11.5

PlateRestriction: register values a spec refuses in every layer. The first thing core bars rather than judges, and only where a spec opts in with PlateSpec.restrictions:

• PlateController.setAt / setValues / setGroup refuse a write that would complete a restricted register value, and publish the broken restriction on the new rejection listenable. They now return bool (stored or not) — a source-compatible change for callers. fromValues, fromText and adoptSpec are handed whole values, so they empty the offending register instead.
• PlateController.validation reports a pending rejection first.
• restrictionVerdict(entry) — and with it every GatedPlateValidator and the canvas's own validation — reports the restriction before any gate or rule.
• PlateCanvas does not advance focus past a refused keystroke, puts the refused character back out of the field, and paints the reason over the plate in the theme's alertColor.
• PlateSpec.checkRestrictions throws PlateRestrictionException, for values that never pass through a controller; debugValidateSpec asserts every restriction names a real group.

Specs without restrictions behave exactly as before.

0.11.4

Maintenance release. No breaking changes.

0.11.3

PlateLabel.fontFamily. A label may name its own face, with fontPackage for a font bundled by the country package; null keeps the theme's, so every existing label is unchanged. The case is Tunisia's تونس, stamped in a Naskh hand the digits' sans-serif cannot imitate.

0.11.2

PlateFill.stripes. A background leaf can be parallel bands tilted by an angle, each band itself a fill — the flag Venezuela prints under its characters. Stops are where each boundary crosses the leaf's vertical centreline, so a band's thickness reads straight off a photograph. Purely additive: no existing fill or spec changes. debugValidateSpec checks there is one stop between each pair of stripes and that stops ascend. An optional PlateFog airbrushes the theme's field over the stripes — an ellipse held at an opacity to a plateau and fading to its edge — for a flag that is printed pale behind the characters and full colour only at the ends.

0.11.1

PlateSlot.color. A slot may name the ink its character is printed in; null keeps PlateTheme.ink, so every existing slot is unchanged. The case is PlateLabel.color's, for a character the user types: Abu Dhabi prints its emirate code white on a red column of the background, and the theme carries one ink. plateRegister and plateRegisterAcross take a color for all their cells.

0.11.0

Breaking: the plate background is sectioned. PlateSpec.background is a tree of PlateSections — columns and rows whose leaves are a PlateFill (the theme's field, the country's panel colour, the divider colour for a strip that runs to the edge, or a colour of the design's own) — with PlatePart.divider rules between regions. The frame paints the regions, then the dividers, then the border over all of it, in one painter.

A coloured strip used to be a box on the white face, inset to the border's inner edge. Two anti-aliased edges met there and the face showed through as a light seam; and because the box was positioned against the border, any theme with a different border width moved it. A region now runs out under the border, and its edges are plate coordinates that ignore the border entirely.

• PlateSpec.leftBand, rightBand and innerBand are removed. A strip that divides the plate is a section; a block floating on the face is an entry in the new PlateSpec.bands list.
• CountryPanel.paintBlock: when the background paints a PlateFill.panel region the panel lays out only its flag and wording.
• PlateRule is for marks that do not divide the plate; an edge-to-edge line is a divider.

0.9.1

PlateLabel.color. A label may now name the ink it is printed in; null keeps PlateTheme.ink, so every existing label is unchanged. A caption that sits on a coloured block rather than on the plate's field — reversed out white over a diplomatic plate's green band, say — is printed in an ink the field's ink cannot express, and that is data about the label. The alternative was a second theme per plate, which would have recoloured the digits too.

0.9.0

Breaking: removed deprecated symbols.

• PlateInputController (typedef) — use PlateController.
• PlateController.activeSlotIn(spec) — use PlateController.activeSlot, which resolves against the controller's own spec.

PlateTextRow and noCharacterChooser. The plain-text rendering of a plate — each effective text group rendered through its slots' alphabets, laid out in the plate's reading direction — is now one exported widget instead of 30 identical lines in both PlateTextView and plate_core_bloc's PlateText. PlateTextView builds a PlateTextRow off its controller; the bloc package builds the same off its state. noCharacterChooser — the required-but-never- called chooser for PlateMode.display — is likewise promoted from a private copy in each file to one exported function.

0.8.0

PlateSpec.indicesOfGroup(key). The write-side counterpart to valueOfGroup: it returns the slot indices a named text group covers, or an empty list when no group carries that key (matching valueOfGroup's empty string). Walks effectiveTextGroups. Country packages that generate synthetic plate values were each doing this by hand — yemen_plate over the raw textGroups field, palestine_plate not at all — and now share this.

0.7.0

Validation primitives. plate_validator.dart gains three shared pieces the country packages were each re-deriving:

• isDigits(String) / isDigitsOfLength(String, int) — the ^[0-9]+$ test, allocation-free, replacing four RegExps across three packages. Eastern Arabic numerals are not ASCII digits and read as false, the case int.tryParse gets wrong.
• GatedPlateValidator — the "stay quiet until one named register fills" shape every validator in the workspace had. Subclasses name a gateGroup and implement judge; they never see the empty-plate case. PlateValidator is unchanged for hosts with an ungated rule.

No behaviour change: every reason string, validateFields signature and check order is untouched.

0.6.0

The country block is a render-time choice. PlateCanvas and PlateView take an optional country: that overrides PlateSpec.country for that render, exactly as theme: overrides the inherited PlateTheme.

• A design whose panel colours or caption vary along an axis the spec does not encode — a vehicle's usage class, say — now passes the block at render time instead of minting a second spec identical but for country:.
• PlateSpec is unchanged: country stays required and stays the default, and there is no copyWith. Spec identity is id alone, and PlateCanvas's machine rebuild, PlateController.adoptSpec migration and card comparison all key off it — so a swap of the panel's colours must not look like a spec swap. Passing country: disturbs neither focus, nor the input machine, nor values.
• Additive: every existing call site is unaffected.

A plate is registers, not rectangles. New plate_layout.dart exports four pure functions that build the existing geometry types, so a run of evenly pitched cells is written once rather than one cell at a time.

• plateRegister — count equal cells from left, stepping by pitch (default: flush, i.e. width).
• plateRegisterAcross — count cells filling [left, right) exactly, for a register defined by the span it must fill rather than by cell width. It cannot round wrong, which is the point.
• plateEcho — one PlateMirror per source, laid out as a register: the echo band a plate that prints its number twice needs.
• plateStipple — count identical PlateRules at a constant step.
• All four return unmodifiable, freshly built lists. Nothing is added to PlateSpec: these build PlateSlot, PlateMirror and PlateRule and the widget layer cannot tell the difference.

debugValidateSpec now rejects an unevenly pitched register. Every keyed PlateTextGroup whose slots share a top and height must be evenly spaced. A hand-written run of cells is a for-loop unrolled by hand, and one rounded coordinate is invisible until someone measures the plate — this assertion found three such drifts across the country packages, none of which any test could have caught. Groups spanning two rows are exempt; the check is assert-only and costs nothing in release.

Note for spec authors: a const constructor cannot run a loop, so a spec whose slot list is generated is static final rather than static const. That is not a downgrade — PlateSpec equality is over id alone and static final is initialised lazily once per isolate — but a const-context use of such a spec (const spec = …) must become final spec = ….

0.5.0

One controller, not two. Since 0.3.0 PlateController — the handle that owns a plate's characters — extended a focus-only PlateInputController, a compatibility shape that let every PlateCanvas(controller: …) call site keep compiling through the bloc migration. That migration is done and no consumer passes a bare focus-only controller any more, so the two are merged.

• PlateInputController is now a deprecated typedef for PlateController. Existing type annotations still compile, with a deprecation warning. It will be removed in 0.6.0 — rename to PlateController.
• Everything the old class carried — attach/detach, installValidation, reportValidation, notifyActiveSlotChanged, and the host-facing focus API (activeIndex, isAttached, validation, submit, backspace, focusFirstEmpty, focusSlot) — is on PlateController unchanged.
• activeSlotIn(spec) is deprecated; use activeSlot. The controller knows its own spec, so passing one back was redundant. activeSlotIn will be removed in 0.6.0.
• PlateCanvas.controller is now PlateController? (was PlateInputController? — the same type after the typedef). A canvas either gets a controller or makes its own private one; the TextField/TextEditingController ownership is unchanged — owned when the canvas created it, never disposed when it is the host's.
• PlateInputTarget — the interface PlateInputMachine implements — is unchanged.

No behaviour change: this is a rename and a merge.

0.4.0

Breaking. The bloc has left this package, and a plate now owns its own characters. plate_core no longer depends on flutter_bloc or bloc — a grep for either in pubspec.yaml returns nothing — and no longer decides how you manage state.

The plate owns its value: PlateController

PlateCanvas holds the plate's characters in a PlateController — a ChangeNotifier, no dependency beyond Flutter — and needs nothing above it. PlateCanvas(spec: …, onChooseCharacter: …) on its own is a complete, working, editable plate. Pass controller: when you want to read or write the value:

final controller = PlateController(spec: spec);
// controller.values, .valueAt(i), .plateNumber, .isEmpty, .isCompleted
// controller.setAt(i, 'A'), .setValues([…]), .setGroup('serial', '1234'), .clear()
// controller.slot(i)  → ValueListenable<String?> for one position
// controller.completed → ValueListenable<bool>

PlateController extends PlateInputController, so a host that passed a focus-only controller keeps compiling unchanged. PlateSelector rebuilds on a derived piece of a controller only when that piece changes.

Under the hood a keystroke now rebuilds one slot instead of the whole plate: each slot, each PlateMirror and the frame subscribe to just the listenable they render.

The bloc moved to plate_core_bloc

Removed from this package — they are now in the new sibling package plate_core_bloc, unchanged in behaviour:

PlateCardBloc, PlateCardEvent, ValueIsChanged, RemovePlateCard, SpecIsChanged, PlateCardState, PlateCardBinding, ShowPlate, PlateText.

Migration for a bloc host, in one line: add plate_core_bloc to your pubspec, import package:plate_core_bloc/plate_core_bloc.dart alongside package:plate_core/plate_core.dart, and put a PlateCardBinding(controller: …) where your BlocProvider<PlateCardBloc> was:

final controller = PlateController(spec: spec);

PlateCardBinding(                       // was: BlocProvider(create: (_) => PlateCardBloc(spec))
  controller: controller,
  child: PlateCanvas(spec: spec, controller: controller, onChooseCharacter: …),
);

Everything below it — every BlocBuilder<PlateCardBloc, PlateCardState>, every context.read<PlateCardBloc>(), every hand-dispatched ValueIsChanged, every ShowPlate — is unchanged. The binding keeps the bloc and the controller holding the same characters in both directions, so a write on either side reaches the other. Pass bloc: to mirror onto a bloc you already hold.

Two differences inside the moved code: PlateCardBloc.spec (the field) is gone — it was dead after construction, only PlateCardState.spec was ever read, and PlateCardBloc(spec) still takes the same argument — and RemovePlateCard is deprecated, since nothing dispatched it and PlateController.clear() is the replacement.

A PlateCardBloc above the canvas is no longer adopted. In 0.2.0 the canvas required one and read its value straight off it; that lookup is gone. A canvas with a bloc above it and no PlateCardBinding simply ignores it, and the plate will appear not to update the bloc. Wrap it in a PlateCardBinding.

The read-only pair

Was (bloc-reading)	Now (controller-reading)
ShowPlate(emptyPlate: …)	PlateView(controller: …, theme: …, emptyPlate: …)
PlateText(emptyPlate: …, textStyle: …)	PlateTextView(controller: …, emptyPlate: …, textStyle: …)

Both are in plate_core and need no provider above them. PlateView also takes a PlateTheme, which ShowPlate never did — that is why hosts drawing plates in several liveries had their own reimplementations of it. One behaviour difference: PlateView's emptyPlate defaults to drawing the blank plate (a controller always knows its spec), where ShowPlate rendered nothing; pass emptyPlate: const SizedBox.shrink() for the old behaviour. ShowPlate and PlateText still exist, in plate_core_bloc, for hosts that keep a bloc.

Breaking: swapping spec: now keeps the value

PlateCanvas.onSpecChange is new in this release and defaults to PlateValuePreservation.byGroupKey. Swapping spec: on a live canvas carries the characters across to the new spec, matching registers by PlateTextGroup.key and truncating only what no longer fits, instead of emptying the plate, which is what 0.2.0 did (it dispatched SpecIsChanged). byIndex copies position by position; PlateValuePreservation.none restores the old wipe:

PlateCanvas(spec: spec, onSpecChange: PlateValuePreservation.none, …)

This is also the fix for a spec swap landing on a canvas that Flutter kept in place: the canvas rebuilds its input machine for the new spec rather than holding the previous plate's focus nodes.

0.2.0

• PlateMirror — a read-only echo of a slot's value, painted elsewhere on the plate. A plate that prints its number twice (national numerals big, Latin digits small beneath) is one value with two presentations, not two slots; a mirror carries no focus node, no controller and no position in slots, so it never reaches textGroups, isCompleted, focus traversal or validation. Its optional alphabet is the whole transform, since PlateAlphabet.glyphs already maps storage form to display form.
• debugValidateSpec now bounds-checks mirror boxes and their source indices, and keys its alphabet-consistency check on characters and glyphs. Keying on characters alone rejected an alphabet that accepts ASCII digits and renders national numerals, which shares latin.digits' character list and genuinely differs in meaning.

Purely additive: every existing spec compiles unchanged.

0.1.0

First pub.dev release. The four packages (plate_core, iran_plate, germany_plate, plate_keypad) are now published with versioned dependencies — the country and keypad packages depend on plate_core: ^0.1.0 rather than a sibling path:.

• PlateCanvas now wraps its face in a Material, so it renders outside a Scaffold without throwing.
• PlateCanvas dispatches SpecIsChanged to the PlateCardBloc when its spec changes, keeping the bloc's value list the right length for the new spec.

P9 — the rename, and the split settles

The package is now plate_core (was plate_number); its directory is plate-core/ (was plate-core/); its barrel is package:plate_core/plate_core.dart (was package:plate_number/plate_number.dart). The lib/src/model/plate_number.dart file — the PlateNumber entered-value type — keeps its name; it is a domain type, not the package.

Upgrading from plate_number 0.1.0 — every breaking change across P1–P9, in one place:

• The import. package:plate_number/plate_number.dart → package:plate_core/plate_core.dart. Path dependency plate_number: {path: ../plate-core} → plate_core: {path: ../plate-core}. These packages are path-only; they are not published to pub.dev (docs/split/PLAN.md §6.6).
• The plate_number facade is retired, not replaced. There is no meta-package that re-exports the four. A consumer imports exactly what it uses. The four imports that replace the old single import:

  import 'package:plate_core/plate_core.dart';     // always
  import 'package:iran_plate/iran_plate.dart';      // if you draw Iranian plates
  import 'package:germany_plate/germany_plate.dart';// if you draw German plates
  import 'package:plate_keypad/plate_keypad.dart';  // if you want the on-screen keypad
  

• Validation no longer blocks input (P2). PlateKeypad.unavailableKeys, GermanPlateValidator.barredNextDigits / barredNextLetters, the ForbiddenByGroup mixin and docs/forbidden.json are removed. A plate may now hold an invalid value. What survives: PlateValidator / PlateValidation / PlateEntry, a verdict and nothing more. PlateCanvas gains validator and autoValidate (default false); with autoValidate: true the frame paints red in PlateTheme.alertColor and the keystroke still lands. PlateInputController.validation exposes the verdict on demand.
• The core names no country (P3). PlateCountry.iran / .germany and PlateSpecs (irCar, irBicycle, deCar) are removed. See the country packages below.
• PlateFlag takes required PlateCountry country (P3), not String countryCode, and renders country.flag (a PlateAsset?). The country_flags dependency and the _resolveSize aspect-ratio guess are gone. New PlateAsset / SvgPlateAsset / RasterPlateAsset; PlateCountry gains PlateAsset? flag.
• CountryPanel.country and PlateKeypad.digitAlphabet / letterAlphabet are required (P3) — they used to default to Iran / Persian.
• PlateAlphabet gains TextDirection direction and String placeholder (P3). RTL and the empty-slot glyph are read off the alphabet, not sniffed against persianPlateLetters or hard-coded '؟'.
• PlateAlphabet.persianDigits / persianPlateLetters moved (P3) to PersianAlphabets in iran_plate.
• Grouping moved into the model (P1). PlateSpec gains effectiveTextGroups / groupAt / renderGroup; ShowPlate no longer computes its own grouping.
• Keypad grids collapsed (P4). One _KeyGrid for both pads; _buildDigitKey / _buildLettersLayer gone. Internal, but it is why the keypad shrank ~90 lines.
• Public surface is now a decision (P5). lib/src/ holds the implementation; plate_core.dart exports a chosen list, not every file. Anything under src/ the barrel does not name is not API.
• Dead weight removed (P6). PlateKeypadTheme.copyWith (unused), the args dependency, and doc comments that described "a real Iranian licence plate" for country-neutral code.
• The on-screen keypad left core (P7). PlateKeypad, PlateKeypadTheme, kPlateBackspaceKey, kPlateKeypadSlide and PlateCharacterPicker are in plate_keypad. PlateCanvas.onChooseCharacter is now required — core ships no fallback picker. Core no longer imports package:flutter/cupertino.dart.
• The countries left core (P8). IranCountry / PersianAlphabets / IranPlates are in iran_plate; GermanyCountry / GermanPlates / GermanPlateValidator are in germany_plate. Core ships no assets — no flutter.assets: block. flutter_svg stays: PlateFlag renders whatever SvgPlateAsset a country hands it. docs/districts.json was deleted (§6.8); the German district check stays shape-only (^[A-ZÄÖÜ]{1,3}$).

P8 — countries extracted to their own packages

• Breaking: the countries have left core. IranCountry, PersianAlphabets and IranPlates are removed from plate_number and now live in the sibling package iran_plate (path: ../iran-plate); GermanyCountry, GermanPlates and GermanPlateValidator live in germany_plate (path: ../germany-plate). Switch import 'package:plate_number/plate_number.dart'; to import 'package:iran_plate/iran_plate.dart'; or import 'package:germany_plate/germany_plate.dart'; for those names; both packages depend on plate_number, so the imports coexist. Depend only on the countries you actually draw.
• Breaking: core ships no assets. The flutter.assets: block is gone. The two flag SVGs and the two German stickers moved into the packages that name them, and the package: argument of every SvgPlateAsset / AssetImage literal moved with them in the same commit — an asset reference resolves against the bundle of the package that declares the file, so a literal and its declaration can never be in different packages, even briefly.
• flutter_svg remains a dependency: PlateFlag renders whatever SvgPlateAsset a country hands it.
• docs/districts.json deleted — see docs/split/PLAN.md §6.8. It was read by no code and declared in no pubspec, and germany_plate chose not to take on keeping a district list current.
• This is the claim the whole split was built to make: grep -rniE "iran|german|persian" plate-core/lib/ returns nothing.

P7 — keypad extracted to its own package

• Breaking: the on-screen keypad has left core. PlateKeypad, PlateKeypadTheme, kPlateBackspaceKey, kPlateKeypadSlide and PlateCharacterPicker are removed from plate_number and now live in the sibling package plate_keypad (path: ../plate-keypad). Switch import 'package:plate_number/plate_number.dart'; to import 'package:plate_keypad/plate_keypad.dart'; for those names; the keypad package depends on plate_number for PlateAlphabet, so both imports coexist.
• Breaking: PlateCanvas.onChooseCharacter is now required. It used to default to an internal PlateCharacterPicker; that picker moved out with the keypad, so core no longer has a fallback. Pass PlateCharacterPicker.show from plate_keypad, or any Future<String?> Function(PlateAlphabet) of your own.
• Core no longer imports package:flutter/cupertino.dart anywhere.

P3 — country decoupling

• Breaking: the core no longer names a country. PlateCountry.iran / PlateCountry.germany and the PlateSpecs catalogue (irCar, irBicycle, deCar) are removed, not deprecated — a shim would have re-introduced the country names the phase exists to remove. The constants moved to countries/iran.dart (IranCountry.iran, PersianAlphabets.digits / .plateLetters, IranPlates.car / .bicycle) and countries/germany.dart (GermanyCountry.germany, GermanPlates.car), both re-exported from plate_number.dart. PlateAlphabet.persianDigits / persianPlateLetters likewise moved to PersianAlphabets.

• GermanPlateValidator moved to countries/german_plate_validator.dart (still exported from the barrel) — it is a country artifact, and the phase's acceptance is that no file outside countries/ names a country.

• New PlateAsset (SvgPlateAsset / RasterPlateAsset): a country ships its own flag asset, named with the package that owns it. PlateCountry gains PlateAsset? flag.

• Breaking: PlateFlag takes required PlateCountry country instead of String countryCode, and renders country.flag (nothing when null). Its _resolveSize aspect-ratio guess is gone.

• Dropped the country_flags dependency and its fallback rendering path; Germany now ships assets/flags/Flag_of_Germany.svg. Every country renders from a vector.

• Breaking: CountryPanel.country and PlateKeypad.digitAlphabet / letterAlphabet are now required — they defaulted to Iran / Persian.

• plate_number.dart now also exports model/plate_box.dart (PlateBox is part of the PlateSpec surface and consumers need it to build a PlatePanel).

• PlateAlphabet gains TextDirection direction (default ltr) and String placeholder (default '?'). PlateKeypad reads direction off the alphabet instead of comparing against a constant; PlateSlotItem reads the empty-slot placeholder off the alphabet instead of hard-coding '؟'.

• Breaking: validation no longer prevents input. PlateKeypad.unavailableKeys and GermanPlateValidator.barredNextDigits / barredNextLetters are removed, not deprecated. They existed to grey out and swallow the keys that would complete a forbidden value; a plate library has no business refusing a keystroke, and a plate may now hold an invalid value. _keyEnabled still disables a key outside the active alphabet — that is a fact about the alphabet, not a validation rule.

• New PlateValidator / PlateValidation / PlateEntry in validators/plate_validator.dart: a validator answers one question — is this plate valid? — and returns a verdict. There is deliberately no "which keys are barred" method.

• PlateCanvas gains validator and autoValidate (default false). With autoValidate: true the canvas paints the invalid state itself, in the new PlateTheme.alertColor. With it false the validator is never called by the canvas; read PlateInputController.validation and pick your own timing.

• PlateInputController.validation exposes the verdict on demand and notifies listeners when the verdict changes, not on every keystroke.

• GermanPlateValidator is now const-constructible and implements PlateValidator. GermanPlateValidationResult is a typedef for PlateValidation, kept for one release. validateValues(spec, values) is replaced by the validate(PlateEntry) override; the spec-free static is renamed validateFields.

• Removed docs/forbidden.json. It duplicated _forbiddenLetterPairs / _forbiddenNumbers by hand and nothing read it; the Dart consts always were the source of truth.

• Rewrote README.md against the current PlateSpec/PlateCanvas API.

0.0.1 — history as plate_number

• Breaking: Removed CarPlateNumber and BicyclePlateNumber. Use PlateCanvas(spec: PlateSpecs.irCar) and PlateCanvas(spec: PlateSpecs.irBicycle) instead.
• PlateCanvas is now exported from the package root (plate_number.dart) instead of requiring a deep import.
• Breaking: Removed PlateCanvas.showRemoveButton and onRemove. Hosts should render their own remove control alongside PlateCanvas.