fontations

It's not "some obscure module" that is written in Rust. Just some examples I know of: - Chrome currently uses https://github.com/googlefonts/fontations to implement its font handling, and text is the main thing on most web pages. - Windows' DirectWriteCore for font handling is also now written in Rust. - Firefox's whole CSS engine and GPU 2D rendering engine are written in Rust.

Thanks. Skrifa - Skia in Rust. https://github.com/googlefonts/fontations/tree/main/skrifa , https://developer.chrome.com/blog/memory-safety-fonts Harfrust - HarfBuzz in Rust. https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfrust , https://github.com/googlefonts/oxidize Parley - text layout in Rust. https://github.com/linebender/parley DWriteCore - the Windows App SDK implementation of DirectWrite. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/directwrite/...

Note that Chrome is replacing[1] FreeType with Skrifa[2], which is a Rust-based library that can handle a lot of the things FreeType is being used for in Chrome. A lot of Chrome's dependencies are being rewritten in Rust. [1]: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/memory-safety-fonts [2]: https://github.com/googlefonts/fontations/tree/main/skrifa

> We believe that this is the largest rollout globally of any library written in Rust. I think that crown currently goes to https://github.com/googlefonts/fontations which is included in Chromium, not sure if it's on all platforms yet. Moreover, the translative dependencies of Fontations (click through https://crates.io/crates/fontations/0.3.0/dependencies) should have an even (slightly) larger install-base. EDIT: from the quote you can also gather that they don't use https://github.com/signalapp/libsignal

Yeah, there's also a freetype replacement https://github.com/googlefonts/fontations I think they're trying to avoid rewriting things for no reason though. The things being rewritten tend to have a history of security problems or other issues that would be cause for a rewrite even if it wasn't in Rust.

If you're not already using it, the read-fonts and skrifa crates from https://github.com/googlefonts/fontations can parse variable font data (as well as pretty much anything else you might want out of an opentype font).

Thanks for the reply. I was able to play around with the settings there, but even when enabling full hinting it's still only hinting vertically (I think this is what it was doing by default, as in my screenshot—this is similar to what the FreeType v40 hinter does, which is used by default from 2.7 as mentioned in my first post). EDIT: looking into the FreeType code, it looks like the v35 mode turns on the `NO_SUBPIXEL_HINTING` flag [0], which might have also been ported over to skrifa [1]? Though there are "(always enabled)" comments throughout the code suggesting that it can't be configured. Maybe later I'll try forcing the option and see what happens. [0] https://github.com/freetype/freetype/blob/5d4e649f740c675426... [1] https://github.com/googlefonts/fontations/blob/f808570ce1939...

I appreciate the pun in the repository name https://github.com/googlefonts/fontations/

Google is rewriting HarfBuzz and FreeType in Rust The author of HarfBuzz has published [State of Text Rendering 2024](https://behdad.org/text2024/), where he [describes](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UnR2zKf3Z_DDRS6vLgBkSHUe...) the ongoing rewrite of the entire open-source text rendering stack in Rust which is funded by Google Fonts. The motivations for it are laid out at https://github.com/googlefonts/oxidize, and the actual code is at https://github.com/googlefonts/fontations. The individual crates are already published to crates.io, too! The intent does seem to be to completely replace the C/C++ code in HarfBuzz and FreeType in Android and Chrome, which would be a massive win for security. Numerous other HarfBuzz/FreeType users such as Firefox and all the Linux desktop would also benefit. Curiously, Microsoft is rewriting their

Which largely explains the fontations project. This is new Rust implementation of the lower levels of the font stack, and also on track to shipping, it's now in Chrome Canary. https://github.com/googlefonts/fontations