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Show HN: I built a zero-browser, pure-JS typesetting engine for bit-perfect PDFs

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Re: Show HN: I built a zero-browser, pure-JS typesetting engine for bit-perfect PDFs

#31

Post by irrationalfab »

cosmiciron wrote: post #29
TimTheTinker wrote: post #16

> If you generate PDFs with headless browsers or HTML-to-PDF tools, you've accepted a compromise: heavy dependencies, memory leaks, and "approximate" layout that shifts across environments Absolutely not true with Prince[0]. It's an HTML/CSS-based typesetter built by the creator of CSS (Håkon Wium Lie [1]) that is lightweight, cross-platform, requires no dependencies, has no memory leaks, is 100% consistent in its ou…

Thanks for the correction. I'm actually not familiar with Prince, so I really can't tell. To be clear, VMPrint isn't meant to compete with established engines like that. It’s just a genuinely helpful tool I built from scratch for the specific tasks I needed to accomplish because I couldn't find an alternative. Prince looks powerful, but I have a feeling it probably wouldn't have been the right fit for my use case any…

Prince starts at 2k. This is OSS

Re: Show HN: I built a zero-browser, pure-JS typesetting engine for bit-perfect PDFs

#33

Post by cosmiciron »

irrationalfab wrote: post #32

Interesting! Generating PDFs with properly paginated content is still a pain point in 2026. Do you have a comprehensive integration test suite that can validate the robustness of your implementation?

Exactly! That's someone speaking from experience, I can tell! :p And yes the tests are in there. And interestingly enough, because the engine emits its IR (in compressed JSON), I can use those as snapshots for the tests. They work better than relying on PDF or SVG outputs.

Re: Show HN: I built a zero-browser, pure-JS typesetting engine for bit-perfect PDFs

#34

Post by 0815beck »

wmf wrote: post #27
LastTrain wrote: post #19

So this is what it has come to? AI bots writing code and fake origin stories of said code and AI bots commenting on it any other bots responding? This is front page content now? HN: please require all AI generated content to be flagged as such. Ban offenders. This just blows.

I think I'm more tired of AInvestigations than of AI now.

so why does every reply start with "good eye, you are right"

Re: Show HN: I built a zero-browser, pure-JS typesetting engine for bit-perfect PDFs

#35

Post by magackame »

cosmiciron wrote: post #15
luaybs wrote: post #6

Every single screenshot of Arabic in the README is malformed, the letters are squished together and not connected.

Good eye, you are right. A few others noticed this as well. It is a known trade off given the engine being pure JS and only 80K. The project is still at very early stage, and I'm definitely keeping my eyes open for solutions.

If it's known why show it off as if it works?

Re: Show HN: I built a zero-browser, pure-JS typesetting engine for bit-perfect PDFs

#36

Post by colbyn »

samlinnfer wrote: post #22

>ai description >ai code >ai comments

Why should we presume it’s an AI description? The writing seems reasonable enough. Some people are more naturally inclined towards articulate writing than others (seems like projection) and furthermore the OP claims to be a screenwriter.

Re: Show HN: I built a zero-browser, pure-JS typesetting engine for bit-perfect PDFs

#37

Post by orthoxerox »

samlinnfer wrote: post #22

>ai description >ai code >ai comments

You are absolutely right about the AI content! This is not just a vibe-coded utility — this is a completely AI-driven conversation. /s

I wonder what makes AI write its descriptions as puff pieces by default.

Re: Show HN: I built a zero-browser, pure-JS typesetting engine for bit-perfect PDFs

#39

Post by raphman »

Hi cosmiciron, wow, few humans find time to be a film director and a chief scientist and work on open-source projects.

What about these strangely written strange sentences in the README? What does that mean?

> In the 1980s and 90s, serious software thought seriously about pages.

Or this?:

> Desktop publishing software understood widows, orphans, and the subtle difference between a line break and a paragraph break.

As the difference between a line break and a paragraph break is really subtle -could you elaborate a little bit?

Re: Show HN: I built a zero-browser, pure-JS typesetting engine for bit-perfect PDFs

#40

Post by samlinnfer »

colbyn wrote: post #36
samlinnfer wrote: post #22

>ai description >ai code >ai comments

Why should we presume it’s an AI description? The writing seems reasonable enough. Some people are more naturally inclined towards articulate writing than others (seems like projection) and furthermore the OP claims to be a screenwriter.

There is at least 1 em-dash per paragraph. /s

I've read a lot of AI generated text and this is definitely one.

However, I also believe in having an objective metric: https://files.catbox.moe/napzf6.png

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