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> The font shaping engine Harfbuzz, used in applications such as Firefox and Chrome, comes with a Wasm shaper allowing arbitrary code to be used to "shape" text
by xg15 2y ago
> The font shaping engine Harfbuzz, used in applications such as Firefox and Chrome, comes with a Wasm shaper allowing arbitrary code to be used to "shape" text.
Has there already been a proposal to add scripting functionality to Unicode itself? Seems to me we're not very far from that anymore...
- reportgunner 2y agoThat sounds disgusting.
- magicalhippo 2y agoUnicode OS when?
- DemocracyFTW2 2y agoConsidering the actual complexity of rendering e.g. Urdu in decent, native-looking way you presumably do want some Turing-complete capabilities at least in some cases, cf "One handwritten Urdu newspaper, The Musalman, is still published daily in Chennai.[232] InPage, a widely used desktop publishing tool for Urdu, has over 20,000 ligatures in its Nastaʿliq computer fonts." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urdu#Writing_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urdu#Writing_system) Edit—the OP uses this exact use case, Urdu typesetting, to justify WASM in Harfbuzz (video around 6:00); seems like Urdu has really become the posterchild for typographic complexity these days
- crazygringo 2y agoTo Unicode? Good god please no. Unicode is just codepoints. I shudder to think what adding scripting support to that would even mean. Maybe you meant adding it to OpenType?
- xg15 2y agoI was being sarcastic, but yes, I meant unicode...
- crazygringo 2y agoSometimes you just can't tell, you know... OK, my sanity is restored, thanks. :)
- winternewt 2y agoYou mean encoding executable code in plain text files, that execute when you open them? No, that seems unnecessary and very insecure.
- oopsallmagic 2y agoNo, because Unicode doesn't concern itself with rendering, it's just for codepoints.