harfbuzz VS c-ares

harfbuzz

• Rive Renderer – now open source and available on all platforms
  7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 20 Mar 2024
• Libsodium: A modern, portable, easy to use crypto library
  9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Sep 2023

  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.

• The Web Assembly Shaper
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 9 Jul 2023
• Text Rendering Hates You
  5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Jun 2023

  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.

• ImGui or text rendering libraries
  7 projects | /r/C_Programming | 6 Apr 2023

  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).

• QuestPDF: Modern .NET library for PDF document generation
  14 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Jan 2023

  Gold standard? Even though serious bugs are not fixed [1] because "the code is too fragile to touch at this point"? Looks like Android uses HarfBuzz, if so it can't be that bad.

  [1] https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/issues/2814

• A Programmable Markup Language for Typesetting [pdf]
  9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Jan 2023

  The linked libraries are not even close to solving limited subsets of problems solved by FreeType or HarfBuzz. No test is needed if they do not even have a working implementation of particular requisites: Do they work on heterogeneous layouts, directions, languages, locales, scripts, symbols and composites, extensions, variations, legacy, missing, partial or corrupted instructions, standards interpretations, platforms, output devices, nonstandard point structures and grids?

  They do not. What they solve is almost a toy problem compared to the size, scope and breadth of these libraries.

  Just because some project is implemented in Rust does not make it comparable never mind superior by default.

  There is a world out there and it is not homogeneous format and standards-compliant Latin fonts in English LTR text in linear disposition with some generic rectangular subpixel rendering on a regular rectangular grid.

  I warmly welcome you to browse closed issues of FreeType [1] and also the closed issues of HarfBuzz [2]. If you feel inspired please do also look into mailing lists and discussion pages related to the development, building, tracking and patching of packages of these projects in any of the numerous places it is used.

  The only argument Rust people have is in relation WASM but if you insist in targeting WASM why not fork FreeType, strip it to the strict subset of features your application needs and target it?

  Why do it in the first place? Why reinvent the wheel?

  As such I will restate my view: I see no gain in using any of these subpar libraries.

  [1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/freetype/freetype/-/issues/?s...

  [2] https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/issues?q=is%3Aclosed

• Ask HN: What are some excellent pieces of software written by a single person?
  9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 Nov 2022

  I'm not sure if it truly fits this category, but HarfBuzz[0], maintained primarily by Behdad Esfahbod, comes to mind.

  [0] https://harfbuzz.github.io/

• da zero a programmare un programma di scrittura e una tastiera?
  3 projects | /r/ItalyInformatica | 6 Oct 2022
• Is There An Algorithm To How Computer Cursors Highlight Text?
  2 projects | /r/computerscience | 12 Jun 2022

  harfbuzz is a popular library for text rendering. You may also want to check out rustybuzz, a small subset of harfbuzz ported to Rust with pretty great documentation.

c-ares

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Tracking mentions began in Dec 2020.