HarfBuzz
Sign in to saveHarfBuzz (loose transliteration of Persian calque harf-bāz, literally "open type") is an open-source text shaping engine written in C++. Text shaping is the process of converting a sequence of Unicode code points into the correct glyph identifiers and precise positions needed to render text on screen or in print. For scripts where characters change shape depending on their neighbours (such as Arabic, Devanagari, or Tamil), text shaping ensures that the right glyph forms are selected and joined correctly. Without it, text renderers would display raw disconnected code points rather than readable
Key facts
- Software.name
- HarfBuzz
- Software.logo
- HarfBuzz.svg
- Software.logo_size
- x64px
- Software.author
- The FreeType Project
- Software.developer
- Behdad Esfahbod, Khaled Hosny
- Software.programming language
- C++
- Software.operating system
- Unix-like, Windows, OpenHarmony
- Software.genre
- Software development library
- Software.license
- MIT
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Named after
- OpenType Font
- Official website
- harfbuzz.org
Show 8 more facts
- software quality assurance
- continuous integration
- user manual URL
- harfbuzz.github.io
- operating system
- Unix-like operating system
- issue tracker URL
- github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/issues
- programmed in
- C
- software version identifier
- 14.2.0
- source code repository URL
- github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz
- copyright license
- MIT License
via Wikidata · CC0
~6 min read
Encyclopedic overview
6 sectionsContents
- History
- Architecture
- Users
- See also
- References
- External links
HarfBuzz (loose transliteration of Persian calque harf-bāz, literally "open type") is an open-source text shaping engine written in C++. Text shaping is the process of converting a sequence of Unicode code points into the correct glyph identifiers and precise positions needed to render text on screen or in print. For scripts where characters change shape depending on their neighbours (such as Arabic, Devanagari, or Tamil), text shaping ensures that the right glyph forms are selected and joined correctly. Without it, text renderers would display raw disconnected code points rather than readable words.
HarfBuzz takes a string of Unicode text, a font file, and information about the writing script and language as input. It returns a list of glyph IDs and their x/y positions, which a rendering engine such as Cairo or Skia then uses to draw the text. The library supports multiple font technologies, including OpenType, Apple Advanced Typography (AAT), and SIL Graphite.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “HarfBuzz” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.