What shipped
AISO SA released ScheduleJS, a commercial JavaScript Gantt library built on canvas rendering rather than HTML/DOM. The company claims smooth operation with 300,000+ resources and 3.5 million activities - numbers that break most DOM-based competitors.
The library evolved from 20 years of desktop scheduling tools (DJT → FlexGantt → FlexGanttFX), now ported to web. It competes against established players: DHTMLX Gantt (auto-scheduling, critical path), Bryntum Gantt (enterprise SLA support), and Syncfusion (dependency tracking).
Why canvas matters
HTML-based Gantt libraries hit a wall with large datasets. Each task becomes a DOM node. Render 10,000 tasks and browsers struggle. ScheduleJS bypasses this by drawing everything on canvas - binary tree lookups replace DOM queries.
The trade-off: canvas requires custom implementations for interactions browsers give you free with HTML. ScheduleJS provides drag-and-drop, tooltips, and context menus through its API, but developers sacrifice browser-native features like text selection and accessibility hooks.
Competitors chose different paths. Bryntum and DHTMLX optimize DOM rendering with virtualization - only visible tasks exist in the DOM. React-based libraries add virtual scrolling. These approaches scale to thousands of rows, not millions, but maintain HTML's flexibility.
The enterprise question
ScheduleJS targets ERP systems, manufacturing execution, and production planning where resource coordination scales beyond typical project management. Commercial licensing follows the category standard - DHTMLX starts at $599/developer, DevExtreme at $899.
Open-source alternatives exist for simpler needs. Frappe Gantt (42,000+ weekly npm downloads, 5.3K GitHub stars) handles lightweight implementations. SVAR offers MIT licensing. Neither approaches ScheduleJS's dataset scale, but most projects don't need that.
What to watch
Angular optimization ships first - framework-agnostic support follows. The real test: whether canvas performance justifies losing HTML's accessibility and developer familiarity. Enterprise buyers will compare against Bryntum's proven SLA support and DHTMLX's mature feature set.
History suggests technical superiority matters less than integration ease and support quality. We'll see how 20 years of desktop experience translates to web deployment reality.