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McEs, A Hacker Life
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
 Pango vs HarfBuzz

Since the rewritten HarfBuzz is shaping up fast and getting lots of Buzz these days, I get asked the same question again and again: "Will HarfBuzz replace Pango?" This post tries to answer that.


Short answer: No, not at all! Pango is here to stay. It will change, but only get better.


Long answer:

Pango provides two levels of API: A low-level and a high-level.

Low level API: What I can the "three pillars of pango":

High-level API: Pango's high-level API consists of the PangoLayout object, aka "here's a piece of text render it in this box I don't care what you do."

Of these, HarfBuzz only does shaping. That is, hb_shape() is functionally equivalent to pango_shape().


API implications: Here is how moving to HarfBuzz affects the Pango API:

Pango Modules: pango_shape() calls into Pango shaper modules to get the actual shaping done. There are two kinds Pango shaper modules depending on what they do (the API is the same, so Pango doesn't differentiate between the two classes):
Now, as HarfBuzz becomes the shaping engine on Linux, all those script-specific modules will be removed and basic-fc will simply call into hb_shape(). That's indeed what the basic-fc.c in the harfbuzz-ng-external does.

Later on, when we add support for native win32, CoreText, Graphite, and m17n to HarfBuzz, all those other modules will also be replaced by HarfBuzz-calling equivalents.

Which one to use: Pango or HarfBuzz? Depends.

PangoLayout is designed to be the 'render this text in this box I don't care how' kind of API. That's a perfect fit for GUI toolkits like GTK+, but not suitable for lots of other uses, for example:
while in many of those cases PangoLayout can be made to work (with much pain, mind you), Pango still provides the lower level API and lots of other bits and pieces to get something going. What it doesn't give full control on however is font selection, which happens to be a deal-breaker for many of those usecases (browsers following CSS rules, etc).

So, each of those kinds of applications need to assess the pros and cons of using Pango vs using HarBuzz and providing all the other bits themselves. For example, HarfBuzz doesn't provide:
There's also a hybrid use possible: to borrow those pieces from Pango on platforms that it's feasable, but drive HarfBuzz directly. It all depends. When in doubt, ask! We have a mailing list.

That said, Firefox will use HarfBuzz as soon as it's ready (there are patches circulating around). Google is using old HarfBuzz for their Webkit and will port to the new one. I'm also attending the Webkit-GTK hackfest in December to port that to the new HarfBuzz. We'll work towards sharing the HarfBuzz-dealing code among Webkit backends.

This is already a long post. Let me finish now. Hope I made it a tiny bit more clear.

Labels: , , ,

Comments:
Should the second pango_itemize() have been a pango_shape()?
 
Thanks James. Indeed. Fixed.
 
After reading "It will change, but only get better." I stopped, went happily to sleep, dreamed of this arrsome hacker and did not feel any need to continue reading his blog post. ;-)
 
Any news about Qt? They're currently using the old HarfBuzz, do you know whether and when they plan to pick up HarfBuzz-ng?
 
Kevin: No concrete news, but I'm in close contact with them. I expect switching it over to the new code will be an afternoon worth of hacking for them.

Andre: I love you too! I'll be in Germany for holidays, lets hook up :D
 
What about Microsoft's MATH enabled opentype fonts? Can harfbuzz help with mathml implementation?
 
Regarding the MATH table, it's not in our immediate plan to implement that. And it's a totally separate feature. But we can expose the table using our infrastructure. It's up to applications to build a renderer on top of that though.
 
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