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LaTeX.wasm: LaTeX Engines in Browsers

SwiftLaTeX's LaTeX.wasm project compiles full LaTeX engines (pdfTeX, XeTeX, LuaTeX) into WebAssembly, enabling them to run directly in web browsers without a server. It provides a complete TeX Live distribution in the browser, with near-native compilation speeds and full document processing capabilities locally.

Background

LaTeX is a document preparation system widely used in academia for writing papers, theses, and books with complex mathematical notation. Normally, compiling LaTeX into a PDF requires installing a full TeX distribution (often several gigabytes) on your computer. This project compiles the actual TeX engine (the program that processes LaTeX code) into WebAssembly, a binary format that modern browsers can run at near-native speed. The result is a fully offline, browser-based LaTeX compiler that never sends your documents to a server. It matters for both privacy (sensitive manuscripts stay on your machine) and accessibility (students or collaborators can edit and compile LaTeX without installing anything). The lead developer, Dongxiang Chen, has also worked on related web-based TeX tools and blogged about the technical challenges of porting legacy C/C++ code to the browser.

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