alt.hn

3/31/2026 at 11:58:51 PM

Pretext's most interesting use cases have no DOM at all

https://cyrusradfar.com/thoughts/pretext-beyond-the-browser

by cyrusradfar

4/1/2026 at 4:11:24 AM

This is not an accurate take. Especially the SSR one. Pretext doesn't liberate text layout from the browser entirely (at least not yet). It still uses canvas.measureText that does critical heavy lifting like font fallbacks, default styles, etc.

Once you take pretext out of browser environment, you'll have to worry about lot more things around fonts.

by lewisjoe

4/1/2026 at 4:55:59 AM

OP here, you're right. I discuss that as a next step at the end. The process to get to this point is the insight to how to accomplish this cross platforms.

by cyrusradfar

4/2/2026 at 7:06:36 AM

Got it! :)

by lewisjoe

4/1/2026 at 5:53:32 AM

Basically, yet another group of folks rediscovered native text layout engines.

Back and forth the pendulum goes.

by pjmlp