Hi Rustaceans,

I am creating a drawing library for data visualization. wangjiawen2013/charton: A high-level, layered charting system for Rust, designed for Polars-first data workflows and multi-backend rendering..

I’ve been working in the Rust data ecosystem for a while, and like many of you, I’ve often felt the "visualization gap." Here’s why I decided to build another plotting library:

Plotters is too low-level: While plotters is incredibly powerful, it often feels like drawing on a canvas rather than analyzing data. I wanted something where I could describe what to plot, not how to draw every line and pixel.

The "Native" Problem: Many existing solutions like plotly.rs or charming are essentially wrappers around JavaScript libraries. They are great for the web, but they don't feel "Rust-native." I wanted a library that talks directly to Polars and leverages Rust’s type system without being a black box for JS.

API Complexity: Many Vega-lite implementations in Rust are either too verbose or strictly follow a JSON-like structure that feels clunky in IDEs. Charton aims for an Altair-inspired API—concise, chainable, and intuitive.

Maintenance Concerns: Let’s be honest—several promising Rust plotting crates haven't seen an update in years. I built Charton to be a modern, actively maintained alternative specifically optimized for the current Polars (0.49+) ecosystem and Wasm requirements.

Current Status & Goals: Charton is currently in its early stages. It has a pure-Rust SVG renderer, but also allows you to "drop down" to Altair/Matplotlib if you need a feature that isn't native yet.

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