The free and open text shaping library / font platform
Joined October 2015
- Tweets 166
- Following 832
- Followers 1,169
- Likes 285
2 Photos and videos
Apr 20
HarfBuzz 14.2.0 is released with support for COLRv1 color-font rendering in hb-gpu, as well as streamlined API in hb-raster & hb-vector. See them all in action at our new website: harfbuzz-world.cc/
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HarfBuzz 14.0.0 is out with the new hb-gpu library for GPU text rasterization based on the Slug algorithm by @EricLengyel. Demo is up at harfbuzz.github.io/hb-gpu-de…
Also in the release is harfbuzz-world.cc, another single-file way to compile all of HB.
github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz…
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hb-gpu provides shaders for four shading languages: GLSL, WGSL, MSL, and HLSL.
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Mar 28
Check out the emscripten'ed web demo. Interact with it with the mouse. Or press space to animation rotation. behdad.org/hb-gpu-demo/
Mar 27
hb-gpu is a new HarfBuzz library under development, that uses the Slug algorithm for encoding glyph shapes for rasterization on the GPU. We are looking for early testers and adopters, probably from the #gamedev community. Hit us with a comment:
github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz…
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Mar 29
Now with Metal & WebGPU implementations in the library / demo as well. Both WebGL and WebGPU demos can be seen at behdad.org/hb-gpu-demo/
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Mar 30
Added stem-darkening at small font sizes to improve appearance. Without stem-darkening text at small size looked washed-out.
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HarfBuzz—حرفباز retweeted
Mar 29
Now with Metal & WebGPU implementations in the library / demo as well. Both WebGL and WebGPU demos can be seen at behdad.org/hb-gpu-demo/
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Mar 27
hb-gpu is a new HarfBuzz library under development, that uses the Slug algorithm for encoding glyph shapes for rasterization on the GPU. We are looking for early testers and adopters, probably from the #gamedev community. Hit us with a comment:
github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz…
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Mar 28
Mar 28
Check out the emscripten'ed web demo. Interact with it with the mouse. Or press space to animation rotation. behdad.org/hb-gpu-demo/
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HarfBuzz—حرفباز retweeted
I'm thinking about folding GLyphy into a new harfbuzz-gpu (hb-gpu.h) library. Thoughts? #gamedev
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HarfBuzz—حرفباز retweeted
Open Source GPU text rasterization update:
Recently, Eric Lengyel dedicated his patent on the Slug algorithm to the public domain and released Slug's shaders as Open Source software.
I am happy to announce that GLyphy now implements the Slug algorithm:
github.com/behdad/glyphy
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HarfBuzz 13 ships with the new `hb-raster` library among other features. 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: 🧵
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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.
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Since HarfBuzz is an essential component of proper Open Source (and other) text rendering, clients can benefit from the new `hb-raster` library to address both of these issues with little cost. End of 🧵.
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Calling on all downstream projects (browsers, Linux distros, etc) to share their thoughts on AI contribution policy for HarfBuzz:
github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz…
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HarfBuzz 13.0.0 released with new experimental features: `hb-vector` for vector output of glyph outlines to SVG and `hb-raster` for rasterizing glyphs to A8 / BGRA32 images, among other features:
github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz…
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HarfBuzz—حرفباز retweeted
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. 🙏
docs.google.com/presentation…
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HarfBuzz—حرفباز retweeted
I have an update about experimental HarfRust performance that I like to share:
"To beat @HarfBuzz with #HarfRust" docs.google.com/document/d/1…
TL;DR:
Previous performance comparisons of HarfRust to HarfBuzz were flawed in that the HarfBuzz code tested had assert statements enabled. This skewed the numbers in favor of HarfRust. Moreover, since the last measurements in September 2025, both HarfBuzz & HarfRust got faster, but at a rate that made HarfRust fall further behind HarfBuzz in comparison.
In this work, proof-of-concept unsafe patch to font-codegen & read-fonts as well as removing bounds-checking from HarfRust buffer type show massive speedup benchmarks: from being 20% to 80% slower, down to being less than 10% slower.
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