harfbuzz.library is HarfBuzz 15.1.0 (2026), the OpenType text shaping
engine used by Firefox, Chrome, LibreOffice and Android, as a shared
library for AmigaOS 3. It comes from AAText (util/wb/AAText) but is a
library for any program.
A program gives it a font and a line of Unicode text; HarfBuzz answers
which glyphs to draw and where:
- kerning from the GPOS table (most fonts made since about 2010 have
no other kerning),
- ligatures (fi, ffl) and other OpenType features (small caps, old
style figures, ...), switched on and off per call,
- accents placed on their letters,
- Arabic and Hebrew (right to left), the scripts of India and South-East
Asia, Hangul, and every other script HarfBuzz knows.
Drawing the glyphs is up to the program (FreeType, freetype2.library or
anything else); harfbuzz.library does not need FreeType.
Built with HB_MINI: OpenType shaping only (no 'kern' table, no Apple
AAT, no Graphite, no subsetting or glyph drawing). TrueType, OpenType/
CFF, collections and variable fonts. 126 functions of the HarfBuzz API,
called exactly like HarfBuzz on any other system: the headers in
Developer/include make each call a jump through the library vector.
- All calls are serialised by one semaphore, so any number of tasks may
use the library.
- Memory from an exec pool; a call runs on a 32 KB stack of its own when
the caller has less than 12 KB left.
- Output is the same as HarfBuzz 15.1.0 on a PC (tested); 532 malformed
fonts of HarfBuzz's fuzzing set: no crash, no leak.
- Speed (WinUAE, 68060 JIT, 16 px): about 2400 lines of 78 characters
per second with Source Sans 3, 7500 with DejaVu Sans.
Installation
Copy Libs/harfbuzz.library LIBS:
(Libs/harfbuzz.library.060 is the 68060 build, copy it as
LIBS:harfbuzz.library; the .debug build prints to the serial port.)
For programmers
Developer/ has the headers (proto, inline, fd and the HarfBuzz headers),
harfbuzz_SDK.txt (calling convention, Unicode text, memory, stack,
tasks) and Examples/ with the source of the tools. Examples/hbshape.c
is a complete program:
m68k-amigaos-gcc -m68020 -O2 -noixemul -Iinclude \
-o hbshape Examples/hbshape.c
Tools
hbshape glyphs and positions of a line of text
hbinfo shapes test strings, prints the result in font units
hbbench lines and characters shaped per second
hbfuzz feeds malformed fonts to the library
Details in harfbuzz.txt.
License: HarfBuzz "Old MIT" (LICENSE.harfbuzz.txt), its Universal
Shaping Engine data MIT, Microsoft (LICENSE.ms-use.txt); the library
around it MIT (LICENSE.txt). Source: https://github.com/Sdursun/AAText
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