behdad

Great news today for GPU-accelerated text rendering:

"""
I was granted a patent for the Slug algorithm in 2019, and I legally have exclusive rights to it until the year 2038. But I think that’s too long. The patent has already served its purpose well, and I believe that holding on to it any longer benefits nobody. Therefore, effective today, I am permanently and irrevocably dedicating the Slug patent to the public domain. ...

To aid in implementations of the Slug algorithm, reference vertex and pixel shaders based on the actual code used in the Slug Library have been posted in a new GitHub repository and made available under the MIT license. ...
"""

Thank you, @EricLengyel@mastodon.gamedev.place!

https://terathon.com/blog/decade-slug.html

HarfBuzz 13 ships with the new `hb-raster` library. You might ask why yet another Open Source rasterizer when there are many high-quality ones available.

`hb-raster` fills two gaps in the Open Source font rasterization scene:

1. Many graphics-oriented frameworks & mobile apps don't want to include the entirety of FreeType to get gain text rendering. Many resort to `stb_truetype`, which doesn't support variable fonts, and crashes on bad font data. `hb-raster` addresses both of these issues.

2. Before `hb-raster`, rendering COLRv1 fonts was not possible without whipping up your own renderer, or pull in Cairo or Skia, both of which are otherwise unnecessary for many clients. `hb-raster` renders COLRv1 and SVG color fonts natively, & soon bitmap-based color-fonts too.

A wave of manic energy in December had me put together a long deck called "HarfBuzz at 20! " , celebrating 20 years of HarfBuzz. 🎂

I designed the deck to be presented at the #WebEnginesHackfest later this year. Then reality hit that I cannot present this deck in any sane amount of time.

Inspired by all the great presentations coming out of #FOSDEM today, I decided that instead of tossing the deck out, I just put it out here to be read by the curious. I will present a highly condensed version at the hackfest in June.

Let me know what you think. 🙏

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1o9Exz1c-Lr-dJjA8dcBn_Vl_Y37cupmFzmclMjBE_Bc/view

OpenType Variable Fonts tech was released on September 14, 2016. Many downplayed its adoption in the following years, or even called it a failure. Early on, I shared my vision that in ten years time we will see variable-fonts just be the standard font format in use, the same way that scalable fonts replaced bitmap fonts.

Ten years have passed, and at least to me, when I look around, it seems like most new font families are designed variable-first. Is that accurate to say? That sounds like widespread adoption to me.

This year we should see the complete standardization of two new variable-font technology additions: avar2 and variable-composites (VARC table). I am very excited about both technologies and seeing how they roll out and affect how var fonts are designed.

RE: @behdad@typo.social

I'll spare you my rambling thoughts. If someone wants to fork HarfBuzz 12.3.2, go ahead, that's before AI "slop". I let @khaled@typo.social, the HarfBuzz maintainer, decide whether AI-assisted code is allowed in the upstream HarfBuzz or not.

As for code quality, I'm ultimately the only one responsible for code that I push out.

Finally, if this technology is good for Linus, Guido, and Knuth, among others, I'm not gonna ignore it and let my projects and skills become irrelevant and obsolete.

I respectfully ask that you refrain from your urge to leave a 🤮 or equivalent in the comments. Thanks.

Update on the Slug algorithm Open Source implementation: I absorbed GLyphy into a new HarfBuzz module called hb-gpu.

Check out the web demo. Interact with it with the mouse. Or press space to animation rotation:

https://behdad.org/hb-gpu-demo

Discuss hb-gpu at:

https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/pull/5878

Calling on all downstream projects (browsers, Linux distros, etc) to share their thoughts on AI contribution policy for HarfBuzz:

https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/issues/5790

#HarfBuzz 12.0.0 is released with Variable Composites / Components (`VARC` table) technology enabled by default. Read more:

https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/releases/tag/12.0.0

RE: @fontra@typo.social

This is quite an interesting and clever way to use #HarfBuzz to do shaping on the fly.

@pixelambacht @typearture Try hb-info --list-palettes on your test fonts!

Do you build avar2 variable fonts? I would appreciate your help testing the fonttools partial-instancing (aka designspace-limiting) PR at https://github.com/fonttools/fonttools/pull/4045

@onpaperwings @tphinney Right. So I think how you count you'd get very different numbers:

• Most new font families released.
• Where most graphics designers get their type.
• Where most end users see type (hint hint Google Fonts etc on the web).

@dysfun@social.treehouse.systems I was busy with other projects:

https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/blob/3db272507d23e2335bdd2c30903f466452edd344/NEWS#L155-L173