WebKit VS harfbuzz

>They do have "Developers in Residence" now

Yes - three of them, out of dozens of core developers, selected by a process I can't discern. Of course, right now the money simply isn't there to compensate everyone appropriately. (But one wonders why the Steering Council apparently suddenly requires a "Communications Liaison".)

>The sooner we end this era of "the entire world runs on the good will of bored nerds volunteering their time", the better.

Python is nowhere near the only project with this problem. If you appreciate the fact that your computer can properly display text in non-European languages, consider offering some support to Behdad Esfahbod, main developer of Harfbuzz (https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz).

As far as I can tell, Linux and Mozilla are the only two open-source organizations that have any significant revenue behind them. Most are probably even worse off than Python.

Font includes WASM code that harfbuzz executes for shaping: https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/blob/main/docs/wasm-sha...

It's an experimental feature, so it's not available unless explicitly enabled during compilation.

You can also build harfbuzz as described here [2] and load it into some program. I used to just install it globally on arch and then use Gimp for the Bad apple example.

And lastly the same person who made the maze also made a way to use LD_PRELOAD to load a custom harfbuzz into arbitary software so you can follow that guide as well: [3]

[0]: https://github.com/hsfzxjy/Harfbuzz-WASM-Fantasy

[1]: https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz-wasm-examples

[2]: https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/blob/main/docs/wasm-sha...

[3]: https://github.com/hsfzxjy/Bad-Apple-Font

For C/C++ projects that use meson as the build system, there is an excellent way to manage dependencies:

https://mesonbuild.com/Wrapdb-projects.html

https://mesonbuild.com/Wrap-dependency-system-manual.html

meson will download and build the libraries automatically and give you a variable which you pass as a regular dependency into the built target:

https://github.com/qemu/qemu/tree/005ad32358f12fe9313a4a0191...

https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/tree/main/subprojects

https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/blob/37457412b3212463c5...

Or, if you're using proper operating systems, they're managed by the usual package manager, just like everything else.

If you sympathize with the travails of people working on text rendering in applications, please consider supporting (among other projects):

1. The LibreOffice project (libreoffice.org), the free office application suite. This is where the rubber hits the road and developers deal with the extreme complexities of everything regarding text - shaping, styling, multi-object interaction, multi-language, you name it. And - they/we absolutely need donations to manage a project with > 200 million users: https://www.libreoffice.org/donate

2. harfbuzz (https://harfbuzz.github.io), and specifically Behdad Esfahood the main contributor. Although, TBH, I've not quite figured out whether you can donate to that or to him. At least star the project on GitHub I guess.

As for text, it depends very heavily on what exactly you need. Simple ASCII text and bitmap fonts? Just do it yourself or get a .bdf parser. Simple Latin/Cyrillic-like writing with ok-looking vector fonts (ttfs)? stb_truetype has all you need. Font hinting, subpixel rendering? You use freetype. More complex writing like Arabic? You will have to do shaping as well, say with HarfBuzz. Need right-to-left or unidirectional text? Hypenation? Go for platform APIs if you can (DirectWrite om Windows, CoreText on Mac).