HarfBuzz


HarfBuzz is a software development library for text shaping, which is the process of converting Unicode text to glyph indices and positions. The newer version, New HarfBuzz, targets various font technologies while the first version, Old HarfBuzz, targeted only OpenType fonts.

History

HarfBuzz evolved from code that was originally part of the FreeType project. It was then developed separately in Qt and Pango. Then it was merged back into a common repository with an MIT license. This was Old HarfBuzz, which is no longer being developed, as the path going forward is New HarfBuzz. In 2013, Behdad Esfahbod won the O’Reilly Open Source Award for his work on HarfBuzz.
Important milestones for new HarfBuzz include:
Most applications don't use HarfBuzz directly, but use a UI toolkit library that integrates with it. HarfBuzz is used by the UI libraries of GNOME, KDE, Chrome OS, PlayStation 4, Android, Java, and Flutter; and directly by applications Chromium, Firefox, LibreOffice, Scribus, and Inkscape.