4 ms·
With a background in linguistics and a descent understanding of Unicode, I thought I had something of a grip on the complexities of text. But then I read Text r
by arnsholt 3y ago
With a background in linguistics and a descent understanding of Unicode, I thought I had something of a grip on the complexities of text. But then I read Text rendering hates you[0] and realized I had no idea how hard rendering text really is. The most striking example for me is the Arabic example where allh (Allah) is styled with different colours on each of the four characters, because this particular character sequence is a mandatory ligature if memory serves, and how do you figure out the colour changes when you're layout out a single glyph from the font?
0: https://faultlore.com/blah/text-hates-you/ https://faultlore.com/blah/text-hates-you/
- danielvaughn 3y agoHa, yep this article was actually one of the things I was thinking of when I made the comment. I remember reading it and thinking "...maybe I don't want to do this after all".
- taeric 3y agoLove the pun/typo of descent there. Trying to learn about Unicode does feel like you are descending into the trenches of meaning. In ways you probably don't want to.