Talk:HarfBuzz

Wikiproject Computing
I have removed the WikiProject tag, as this article is either a redirect or deleted. If you oppose, please restore the tag. Thank you, fahadsadah (talk,contribs) 16:03, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I restored. Widefox ; talk 10:15, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Why Persian?
Why is the Persian name given and not other languages? 208.65.73.143 (talk) 18:50, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It's a good question. I don't see any Persian-centric focus for this topic, etc. I'm going to remove it. DMacks (talk) 05:12, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Late to the party. But the title (which is given on the site) is actually Persian. Name is (sort of) explained here along with some context for the Arabic language focus. Note also its relative Pango which is written "Παν語" for "All+Language".    --「ѕʀʟ·✎」 08:28, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Restored with explanation - David Gerard (talk) 11:55, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
 * If the name "is actually Persian" then the reference above to "the Arabic language focus" doesn't make sense. Persian (Farsi) is the language of Iran and, earlier, the Persian empire. It uses the Arabic alphabet but is not Arabic, the same way English, Dutch, Croatian, and Portuguese all use the same alphabet but are different languages. Persian, as I understand it, is at best distantly related to Arabic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:141:300:7C00:6DFC:73C4:D48F:B3A8 (talk) 00:39, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
 * This seems a weird question. The primary author is Persian, and he chose to name the library using Persian words.  As to an Arabic focus, he would naturally care most about rendering the Arabic script correctly. --RichardW57m (talk) 11:12, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Right. So what is harfbuzz?
I feel the opening sentences of this article fail (completely) to answer every single reader's question: "Just what is harfbuzz."

It is not enough to say that it provides "text shaping functionality". That has no real meaning without a definition of "text shaping".

I would answer this question myself if I had the foggiest idea what the answer was.

Etoombs (talk) 09:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)


 * HarfBuzz is a fairly low-level library that lays out individual lines of text given a text string, font, and localized script system. It computes the position of individual glyphs taking into account features like direction (left to right, right to left, top to bottom...), combining characters, language specific glyphs, kerning, etc. However, it cannot, by itself, render fonts; for that, a font rasterization library is needed, like FreeType. Pango and Qt then build atop HarfBuzz and provide more advanced typesetting features like laying out multiple lines, mixing different font styles, and font rendering. Most applications use these high-level toolkits instead of working with HarfBuzz directly, which is only needed for applications that require complete control over text layout, such as word processors and web browsers. - Sikon (talk) 06:26, 6 October 2014 (UTC)


 * It would be nice if some of that could be added to the article, with citations. The reader should not have to come to the talk page to answer the question that was asked more than six years ago. 87.75.117.183 (talk) 16:02, 28 June 2020 (UTC)


 * 100% agree. As it stands the article is next to useless unless you are already familiar with undefined concepts ('text shaping').  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.190.224.47 (talk) 14:57, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Jdk9 uses Harfbuzz
Jdk9 ported from ICU to Harfbuzz for its font rendering engine. So java is does use Harfbuzz too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.239.32.218 (talk) 19:40, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

LWN source
This is an excellent and comprehensive article on HarfBuzz that we should crib from heavily - David Gerard (talk) 12:33, 4 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Way ahead of you, already did a little. :) -- intgr [talk] 12:46, 4 January 2018 (UTC)