Pure Rust LaTeX math layout engine emitting a flat display list for native, WASM, iOS, Android, Flutter, and React Native from one core.
Key Takeaways
Single Rust core targets C ABI (Swift, Kotlin, Dart FFI), WASM, and server-side PNG/CLI with identical display list output.
CI runs pixel-diff golden suites against KaTeX reference images; a public support table shows side-by-side coverage.
Zero JS bundle overhead vs KaTeX (~280 kB) or MathJax (~500 kB); no GC in the hot path means predictable timing on mobile.
Built-in mhchem-style \ce and \pu chemistry/units macros ship in the same pipeline, unlike swiftMath, flutter_math, or iosMath.
Packages distributed via npm (ratex-wasm, ratex-react-native), Maven, pub.dev, and Swift Package Manager.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters flagged that the landing page omits binary size for mobile bundles and performance numbers, both critical for evaluating the “no WebView” pitch.
The “0 kB JS bundle” claim drew skepticism: KaTeX and MathJax already support SVG output in Node without a browser, narrowing the stated advantage.
Accessibility is an open gap: the live demo ships no alt text or ARIA labels, a regression from MathML-tagged PDFs and KaTeX’s built-in MathML accessibility path.
Notable Comments
@azverev: praises pixel-diff CI as rare discipline, asks how font fallbacks are handled across platforms sharing the same Rust core.
@tabbott: notes LLM-assisted copy erodes trust and flags missing binary-size and maintenance-signal details before Zulip integration could be considered.
