liblouis-env

Cross-platform locator/installer for liblouis, for three access modes used across brailletools projects (braille2latex, brailleocr, webeditor):

• Python CLI/subprocess access — python (liblouis-env): locates/installs the native lou_translate binary.
• Node.js CLI/subprocess access — js/packages/node (@brailletools/liblouis-env): same resolution strategy, ported to JS.
• Browser/WASM access — js/packages/web (@brailletools/liblouis-env-web): fetches/vendors a liblouis browser build + tables.

liblouis is not published on conda-forge, PyPI, or (in a currently-maintained form) npm, so every project that needs it previously had to document a platform-specific manual install step, hand-vendor build artifacts, or hardcode a path to the resulting binary. This repo centralizes all of that in one place, including a working path on Windows (where liblouis has no package manager at all — the official GitHub release zip is the only source) and in the browser (where the official npm packages are abandoned — see js/packages/web/README.md for how that's handled).

The native/Python/Node side share one version pin (python/src/liblouis_env/version.py, kept in sync with js/packages/node/src/version.js by a test); the browser side tracks a separate upstream source and pin (see js/packages/web/README.md).

Python

See python/README.md.

cd python
pixi install
pixi run test

Node.js and browser

• Node CLI/subprocess — js/packages/node (@brailletools/liblouis-env). Install with:

  pnpm add "@brailletools/liblouis-env@github:brailletools/liblouis-env#path:/js/packages/node"
  

• Browser/WASM — js/packages/web (@brailletools/liblouis-env-web). Install with:

  pnpm add -D "@brailletools/liblouis-env-web@github:brailletools/liblouis-env#path:/js/packages/web"
  

Both live under js/ as a pnpm workspace, developed independently of the Python package:

cd js
pnpm install
pnpm test