> Moreover, the fontations platform, which is the Rust framework Oxidize is producing, will unify font compilation and consumption, reducing the number of places new font-format features need to be implemented from three (FontTools, FreeType, and HarfBuzz) to one (Fontations), which would reduce development cost and overhead.
Will FreeType and HarfBuzz remain supported as C/C++ projects long-term, I wonder? Asking as someone who depends on these and doesn't want to introduce a dependency on a Rust compiler :)
Anecdotally, I notice a lot of game developers avoid FreeType and Harfbuzz entirely, instead opting for much worse text rendering in the form of stb_truetype.h only (Dear Imgui uses this, for example) - which 'is nice because it is a single header C file' but sucks with international languages; many people use SDFs for similar reasons.
I think the proposed move to WASM fonts, if done right, could make it easier to reduce the amount of code people need to render fonts (if the WASM font does the heavy lifting, and a small C program could render it) and alleviate this trend of people not using a good text rendering stack
I wouldn't worry about it. I don't see evidence that these Rust libraries have the kind of uptake that is alleged in the article. I think we'll be stuck with Freetype and HarfBuzz for a long time.
I have been hacking on a Rust program recently and I am using Freetype and Harfbuzz via FFI because the Rust packages he names don't appear to be mature yet.
That only helps you if all your targets are also actively supported by upstream. It also limits optimization opportunities, mainly removing parts of the library your code doesn't need.
Will FreeType and HarfBuzz remain supported as C/C++ projects long-term, I wonder? Asking as someone who depends on these and doesn't want to introduce a dependency on a Rust compiler :)
Anecdotally, I notice a lot of game developers avoid FreeType and Harfbuzz entirely, instead opting for much worse text rendering in the form of stb_truetype.h only (Dear Imgui uses this, for example) - which 'is nice because it is a single header C file' but sucks with international languages; many people use SDFs for similar reasons.
I think the proposed move to WASM fonts, if done right, could make it easier to reduce the amount of code people need to render fonts (if the WASM font does the heavy lifting, and a small C program could render it) and alleviate this trend of people not using a good text rendering stack