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Architecture

MergDown2TeX technical architecture and design.

System overview

graph TD
    A[Obsidian] --> B[Plugin Layer]
    B --> C[WASM Engine]
    B --> D[Compilation Layer]
    C --> E[Markdown Parser]
    C --> F[LaTeX Generator]
    D --> G[Podman/Docker]
    D --> H[Pandoc]
    G --> I[TeX Live]
    I --> J[PDF]
    H --> K[DOCX]

Components

Plugin Layer

main.js (56 KB)
├── Obsidian Plugin API
├── Settings Management
├── Command Registration
├── UI Integration
└── WASM Loading

WASM Engine

vlatex_bg.wasm (2.1 MB)
├── Markdown Parser
├── LaTeX Generator
├── Embed Expansion
├── Citation Extraction
└── Mermaid Rendering

Compilation Layer

Podman/Docker
├── TeX Live
│   ├── pdflatex
│   ├── bibtex
│   └── LaTeX packages
└── Pandoc
    └── DOCX conversion

Data flow

sequenceDiagram
    participant U as User
    participant O as Obsidian
    participant W as WASM Engine
    participant P as Podman
    participant T as TeX Live

    U->>O: Click "Compile to PDF"
    O->>W: Send markdown content
    W->>W: Expand embeds
    W->>W: Resolve wikilinks
    W->>W: Extract citations
    W->>W: Convert to LaTeX
    W->>O: Return .tex file
    O->>P: Launch container
    P->>T: Run pdflatex (3x)
    T->>P: Generate PDF
    P->>O: Return PDF
    O->>U: Open PDF

File structure

Plugin files

mergdown2tex/
├── main.js          56 KB   ← Plugin + WASM bindings
├── manifest.json   351 B   ← Obsidian metadata
├── vlatex_bg.wasm  2.1 MB  ← Rust converter engine
└── Dockerfile        1 KB  ← LaTeX environment

Generated files

vault/
├── note.md                ← Source note
├── note.tex               ← Generated LaTeX
├── note.pdf               ← Compiled PDF
├── note.docx              ← Compiled DOCX
└── figures/
    ├── diagram_1.png      ← Rendered Mermaid
    └── image.png          ← Copied images

WASM engine

Rust source

// src/lib.rs
#[wasm_bindgen]
pub fn markdown_to_latex(input: &str) -> String {
    // Convert markdown to LaTeX
}

#[wasm_bindgen]
pub fn expand_embeds(input: &str) -> String {
    // Expand ![[Note]] recursively
}

#[wasm_bindgen]
pub fn extract_citations(input: &str) -> String {
    // Extract @citation references
}

Build process

# Build WASM
wasm-pack build --target web --out-dir pkg

# Output
pkg/
├── vlatex_bg.wasm
├── vlatex.js
└── vlatex.d.ts

Compilation process

PDF compilation

graph TD
    A[document.tex] --> B[pdflatex #1]
    B --> C[.aux + .log]
    C --> D[bibtex]
    D --> E[.bbl]
    E --> F[pdflatex #2]
    F --> G[pdflatex #3]
    G --> H[document.pdf]

DOCX compilation

graph TD
    A[document.tex] --> B[Pandoc]
    B --> C[document.docx]

Performance

Conversion speed

Operation Time
Markdown → LaTeX 0.24s
GUI launch 1s
PDF compilation 30-60s

Memory usage

Component Memory
WASM engine ~50 MB
Podman container ~500 MB
TeX Live ~2 GB

Security

Sandboxing

  • WASM runs in browser sandbox
  • Podman runs in container sandbox
  • No direct filesystem access

Permissions

  • Read: Vault folder
  • Write: Output folder
  • Execute: Podman/Docker

Next steps