Stet
PostScript Level 3 interpreter and PDF toolkit in Rust
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Stet is a PostScript Level 3 interpreter, a PDF reader, and a print-quality PDF writer, all in pure Rust. All three converge on a single DisplayList type, so any output device (PNG, desktop viewer, PDF, WASM) works with any source — you can render a PS file to PDF or PNG, a PDF to PNG, or to a display list for a custom backend all through the same pipeline.The link above is the WASM build running entirely client-side — drop a PS, EPS, or PDF and it renders. It's a capability sampler, not a production viewer: no system fonts (browser sandbox), fixed zoom stops, single-threaded at ~2× native overhead.Why build it: GhostScript is AGPL, pdfium is enormous, and there wasn't a pure-Rust stack that covered PostScript and PDF end-to-end. Apache-2.0 OR MIT.Source: https://github.com/AndyCappDev/stet Install: cargo install stet-cli for the CLI, cargo add stet for the library (the stet facade crate re-exports the whole toolkit).
HN · launched Apr 21, 2026 · 5 upvotes (top 89%) · 0 views
Niche: document and file conversion tools · 216 launches, 24 in the last 7 days ▼ -4% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Dev tools
- Developer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 216 launches in document and file conversion tools →
Could you build this?
No Implementing a full PostScript Level 3 interpreter, font rasterizer, and print-ready PDF engine in pure Rust is an immense systems engineering task adhering to strict ISO specifications.
What it would actually take: The project requires building a complete PostScript stack machine, parser, graphics state model, and type 1/2/TrueType font renderer, alongside PDF parsing, font embedding, color space transforms (CMYK/RGB), and generating vector display lists for WASM/PNG targets. It demands extensive domain knowledge of the PostScript Language Reference, PDF ISO 32000 specifications, and low-level computational geometry and 2D graphics rasterization algorithms in Rust.
Discussion
No comments on this launch.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 325 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #315 of 326 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 169 days after the earliest competitor.
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