Tectonic

A standalone TeX typesetting engine, powered by TeXLive and XeTeX.

• User website.
• API docs.

Tectonic is a TeX processor provided as a reusable library. The goal of Tectonic is to provide a standalone TeX/LaTeX engine that can be embedded anywhere, bringing the power of TeX typesetting to any application that needs it. It is forked from the XeTeX extension of the classic “Web2C” TeX implementation.

For more information, see the Tectonic website.

Building the Program

To build Tectonic requires:

• C and C++ compilers
• The Rust compiler and its Cargo package manager. These are easily installed through rustup.rs.
• pkg-config
• For the time being, the following system libraries. On Macs these can all be installed with Homebrew, but harfbuzz needs to have the --with-graphite2 option enabled.
  • freetype2
  • graphite2
  • harfbuzz
  • ICU
  • libpng
  • poppler
  • zlib
• On Linux only:
  • fontconfig

Once you have these, you should be able to build the executable just by running cargo build.

Testing Your Build

The cargo test command will run a small test suite, including the classic TeX “TRIP” test.

About the Name

The name of the project is “Tectonic,” spelled and pronounced like a regular word because it is one. Enough with the cutesy obscurantism.

In cases where the name might lead to ambiguities, it should be expanded to “Tectonic typesetting.”

If you’re feeling expansive, you can interpret the name as suggesting a large change in the TeX world. Or you can think of it as suggesting a salubrious offering for weary TeX users. Either way, the root of the word does go back to the ancient Greek τέκτων, ”carpenter,” which Donald Knuth — a devout Christian — might appreciate.

Copyright and Licensing

Tectonic is licensed under the MIT License. This is the license under which the codebase from which it is primarily derived, XeTeX, is distributed. Various other elements of the TeX system on which Tectonic is based are licensed under other open-source licenses.