HarfBuzz is an OpenType text shaping engine.
This package contains the GObject library.
Provides
Requires
License
MIT
Changelog
* Sun Jan 25 2026 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 12.3.2:
+ Fix padding gvar table during subsetting when the original font
uses long format and subset font using short format.
+ Various fuzzing fixes.
+ Fix NULL pointer deference when malloc fails.
* Wed Jan 21 2026 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 12.3.1:
+ Various speed optimizations.
+ Build fixes for GCC 4.9.
+ Fix NULL pointer deference when malloc fails.
- Drop harfbuzz-CVE-2026-22693.patch: Fixed upstream.
* Fri Jan 16 2026 Michael Gorse <mgorse@suse.com>
- Add harfbuzz-CVE-2026-22693.patch: fix a NULL pointer dereference
(bsc#1256459 CVE-2026-22693).
* Sun Dec 28 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 12.3.0:
+ Invalid font tables (eg. GSUB/GPOS) are outright rejected,
instead of partially validated and used. This behavior is
different from DirectWrite and HarfRust, and is in line with
CoreText.
+ Various speed optimizations:
- AAT shaping: speed up state machine on Apple silicon using a
fast-path.
- 12% faster in LucidaGrande benchmark.
- OpenType shaping: speed up (Chain)Context lookup shaping
using a fast-path and Coverage caching. 20% speedup in
NotoNastaliqUrdu benchmark.
- Drawing mega variable-fonts: 30% speedup on GoogleSansFlex
benchmark.
- Drawing VARC fonts: 5% speedup on varc-hanzi benchmark.
- Always apply synthetic slant around horizontal glyph origin
in hb-draw API.
- Fix undefined C++ behavior in some uses union.
- Remove the disabled by default uniscribe-bug-compatible mode
from Indic and Khmer shapers, that used to be used when
testing against Uniscribe shaping behaviour.
- Support full instancing fonts with v2 avar table.
- Various subsetting, build, fuzzing, and documentation fixes.
* Wed Nov 05 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 12.2.0:
+ While Windows platform contain the matching of the ChainContext
rules to within the syllable for those features that are
applied per syllable (in Indic-like and USE shapers), in 2015
we decided that in HarfBuzz we would allow the backtrack /
lookahead parts of the rule to match across syllables. However,
our implementation had a latent bug, causing the backtrack
sequences to be matched within syllable most of the time, and
inconsistently so. As such, and after empirical testing, we
have decided to match the Windows implementation for this, so
now both backtrack and lookahead sequences are contained to
within the syllable, just like DirectWrite does.
+ Disable legacy kern table for most shapers, enabling it only
for default, Arabic, Hangul, and Hebrew shapers.
+ When dropping STAT table during subsetting, drop also named IDs
that are referenced only by it.
+ Don’t apply synthetic slant to glyph origin, fixing horizontal
shift in slanted glyphs.
+ Various build and fuzzing fixes.
+ Documentation fixes.
* Wed Oct 01 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 12.1.0:
+ Build fixes with GCC 15 on some 32 bit platforms.
+ Fix misaligned pointer use.
+ New API, hb_ot_layout_lookup_collect_glyph_alternates(), to
collect glyph substitutions from single and alternate
substitution lookups in one call, instead of getting
substitutions one by one using
hb_ot_layout_lookup_get_glyph_alternates().
+ New API: +hb_ot_layout_lookup_collect_glyph_alternates()
* Sun Sep 28 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 12.0.0:
+ The major feature of this release is that the Variable
Composites / Components (VARC table) addition to the ISO
OpenFontFormat has graduated from experimental, and is now
enabled by default. It can be disabled at compile time by
defining the HB_NO_VAR_COMPOSITESz macro.
+ VARC table is a new way to store glyph outlines, that allows
for better shape reuse, and can reduce font file size for
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and some other scripts drastically.
Some font design tools provide a similar feature to designers,
known as "smart components". This technology brings the same
idea to the compiled font file.
+ The Fontra font editor already supports this technology. Note
that this new format involves just the HarfBuzz draw API and
does not affect shaping.
+ Correctly handle markFilteringSet lookup field during
subsetting.
+ Deduplicate features during subsetting.
+ Disable “more” buffer messages that give more verbose output
when using buffer messages callbacks, as it has a performance
overhead. Users/tools that need the more verbose messages
should define HB_BUFFER_MESSAGE_MORE to 1 when building
HarfBuzz.
+ Shaping and instancing optimizations.
+ Fix subsetting issues when building with GCC 12.
* Mon Sep 22 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 11.5.1:
+ Optimized partial-instancing of fonts with a large number of
axes. Now over two times faster.
+ Fix C++ STL atomics implementation.
* Sat Sep 13 2025 Dominique Leuenberger <dimstar@opensuse.org>
- Update to version 11.5.0:
+ Update to Unicode 17.0.0.
+ Subsetter optimizations.
+ Bug fixes for “AAT” shaping, and other shaping micro
optimizations.
* Sat Aug 30 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 11.4.5:
+ Bug fixes for “AAT” shaping, and other shaping micro
optimizations.
* Mon Aug 25 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 11.4.4:
+ Fix a shaping regression affecting mark glyphs in certain
fonts.
+ Fix pruning of mark filtering sets when subsetting fonts, which
caused changes in shaping behaviour.
* Sat Aug 23 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 11.4.3:
+ Make shaping fail much faster for certain malformed fonts
(e.g., those that trigger infinite recursion).
+ Fix undefined behaviour introduced in 11.4.2.
+ Fix detection of the “Cambria Math” font when fonts are scaled,
so the workaround for the bad MATH table constant is applied.
* Thu Aug 21 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 11.4.2:
+ Various performance and memory usage improvements.
+ The hb-shape command line tool can now be built with the
amalgamated harfbuzz.cc source.
+ Fix regression in handling version 2 of avar table.
+ Increase various buffer length limits for better handling of
fonts that generate huge number of glyphs per codepoint (e.g.
Noto Sans Duployan).
+ Improvements to the harfrust shaper for more accurate testing.
* Thu Aug 14 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 11.4.1:
+ Fix clang compiler warnings.
- Changes from version 11.4.0:
+ General shaping and subsetting speedups.
+ Fix in Graphite shaping backend when glyph advances became
negative.
+ Subsetting improvements, pruning empty mark-attachment lookups.
+ Don't use the macro name _S, which is reserved by system
liberaries.
+ Build fixes and speedup.
+ Add a kbts shaping backend that calls into the kb_text_shape
single-header shaping library. This is purely for testing and
performance evaluation and we do NOT recommend using it for any
other purposes.
* Mon Jul 28 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 11.3.3:
+ Fix bug in vertical shaping of fonts without the vmtx table.
* Mon Jul 21 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 11.3.2:
+ Fix build with non-compliant C++11 compilers that don't
recognize the "and" keyword.
- Changes from version 11.3.1:
+ Fix crasher in the glyph_v_origin function introduced in
11.3.0.
- Changes from version 11.3.0:
+ Speed up handling fonts with very large number of variations.
+ Speed up getting horizontal and vertical glyph advances by up
to 24%.
+ Significantly speed up vertical text shaping.
+ Various documentation improvements.
+ Various build improvements.
+ Various subsetting improvements.
+ Various improvements to Rust font functions (fontations
integration) and shaper (HarfRust integration).
+ Rename harfruzz option and shaper to harfrust following
upstream rename.
+ Implement hb_face_reference_blob() for DirectWrite font
functions.
* Mon May 12 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 11.2.1:
+ Various build improvements.
+ Fix build with HB_NO_DRAW and HB_NO_PAINT.
+ Add an optional harfruzz shaper that uses HarfRuzz; an ongoing
Rust port of HarfBuzz shaping. This shaper is mainly used for
testing the output of the Rust implementation.
+ Fix regression that caused applying unsafe_to_break() to the
whole buffer to be ignored.
+ Update USE data files.
+ Fix getting advances of out-of-rage glyph indices in
DirectWrite font functions.
- Changes from version 11.2.0:
+ Painting of COLRv1 fonts without clip boxes is now about 10
times faster.
+ Synthetic bold/slant of a sub font is now respected, instead of
using the parent’s.
+ Glyph extents for fonts synthetic bold/slant are now accurately
calculated.
+ Various build fixes.
* Thu Apr 17 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 11.1.0:
+ Include bidi mirroring variants of the requested codepoints
when subsetting. The new HB_SUBSET_FLAGS_NO_BIDI_CLOSURE can be
used to disable this behaviour.
+ Various bug fixes.
+ Various build fixes and improvements.
+ Various test suite improvements.
* Sat Apr 05 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 11.0.1:
+ The change in version 10.3.0 to apply “trak” table tracking
values to glyph advances directly has been reverted as it
required every font functions implementation to handle it,
which breaks existing custom font functions. Tracking is
instead back to being applied during shaping.
+ When directwrite integration is enabled, we now link to
dwrite.dll instead of dynamically loading it.
+ A new experimental APIs for getting raw “CFF” and “CFF2”
CharStrings.
+ We now provide manpages for the various command line utilities.
Building manpages requires “help2man” and will be skipped if it
is not present.
+ The command line utilities now set different return value for
different kinds of failures. Details are provided in the
manpages.
+ Various fixes and improvements to fontations font functions.
+ All shaping operations using the ot shaper have become memory
allocation-free.
+ Glyph extents returned by hb-ot and hb-ft font functions are
now rounded in stead of flooring/ceiling them, which also
matches what other font libraries do.
+ Fix “AAT” deleted glyph marks interfering with fallback mark
positioning.
+ Glyph outlines emboldening have been moved out of hb-ot and
hb-ft font functions to the HarfBuzz font layer, so that it
works with any font functions implementation.
+ Fix our fallback C++11 atomics integration, which seems to not
be widely used.
+ Various testing fixes and improvements.
+ Various subsetting fixes and improvements.
+ Various other fixes and improvements.
* Mon Mar 24 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 11.0.0:
+ There are three new font-functions implementations
(integrations) in this release:
- hb-coretext has gained one, calling into the CoreText
library.
- hb-directwrite has gained one, calling into the DirectWrite
library.
- hb-fontations has gained one, calling into the Skrifa Rust
library.
- All three are mostly useful for performance and correctness
testing, but some clients might find them useful.
+ An API is added to use them from a single API by providing a
backend name string: hb_font_set_funcs_using()
+ Several new APIs are added, to load a font-face using different
"face-loaders", and a single entry point to them all using a
loader name string:
- hb_ft_face_create_from_file_or_fail() and
hb_ft_face_create_from_blob_or_fail().
- hb_coretext_face_create_from_file_or_fail() and
hb_coretext_face_create_from_blob_or_fail().
- hb_directwrite_face_create_from_file_or_fail() and
hb_directwrite_face_create_from_blob_or_fail().
- hb_face_create_from_file_or_fail_using()
+ All drawing and painting operations using the default, hb-ot
functions have become memory allocation-free.
+ Several performance optimizations have been implemented.
+ Application of the trak table during shaping has been improved.
+ The directwrite shaper now supports font variations, and
correctly applies user features.
+ The hb-directwrite API and shaper has graduated from
experimental.
+ Various bug fixes and other improvements.
* Sat Mar 01 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 10.4.0:
+ Drawing glyphs using hb-draw API now avoids any “malloc” calls,
which improves drawing performance by 10+%.
+ Add support new “GVAR” table fonts with more than 65535 glyphs.
Support is currently behind a compilation flag and is disabled
by default.
+ Some hb-directwrite and hb-ft APIs got renamed with more clear
names and the old names are deprecated.
+ Various build and fuzzing fixes.
+ New API:
- +hb_directwrite_face_get_dw_font_face()
- +hb_ft_font_get_ft_face()
+ Deprecated API:
- +hb_directwrite_face_get_font_face()
- +hb_ft_font_get_face()
* Fri Feb 21 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 10.3.0:
+ Vastly improved “AAT” shaping performance. LucidaGrande
benchmark-shape before: 14.6ms after: 5.9ms.
+ Improved OpenType shaping performance (kerning / ligature), at
the expense of ~1kb per face allocated cache memory.
Roboto-Regular benchmark-shape before: 10.3ms after: 9.4ms.
+ Improved “COLRv1” benchmark-font paint performance. Before:
7.85ms after 4.85ms.
+ Don’t apply glyph substitutions in “morx” table of a font with
known broken “morx” table (AALMAGHRIBI.ttf font).
+ Update IANA and OT language registries.
+ Various documentation updates.
+ Various build improvements, and test speed-ups.
+ The “hb_face_reference_blob()” API now works for faces created
with “hb_face_create_for_tables()” if the face sets
“get_table_tags” callback. This constructs a new face blob from
individual table blobs.
+ Various fixes to how “trak” table is handled to bring it closer
to Core Text behaviour. Particularly, the tracking values for
sizes not explicitly set in the table are now properly
interpolated, and the tracking is applied to glyph advances
when they are returned by ot-font functions, instead of
applying them during shaping. The “trak” pseudo OpenType
feature that could be used to disable “trak” table application
have been dropped.
+ Core Text font functions now support non-BMP code points.
+ The drawing algorithm used by hb-draw for “glyf” table now
match the algorithm used by FreeType and Core Text.
+ The “hb_coretext_font_create()” API now copy font variations
from Core Text font to the created HarfBuzz font.
+ Add an API to get the feature tags enabled on a given
shape-plan after executing it, which can be used to
applications to show in the UI what features are applied by
default (which can vary based on the font, the script, the
language, and the direction set on the buffer).
+ Add APIs to created HarfBuzz font from DirectWrite font, and
copy the font variations.
+ New API:
hb_directwrite_font_create()
hb_directwrite_font_get_dw_font()
hb_ot_shape_plan_get_feature_tags()
* Sun Jan 12 2025 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 10.2.0:
+ Consider Unicode Variation Selectors when subsetting “cmap”
table.
+ Guard hb_cairo_glyphs_from_buffer() against malformed UTF-8
strings.
+ Fix incorrect “COLR” v1 glyph scaling in hb-cairo.
+ Use locale-independent parsing of double numbers is “hb-subset”
command line tool.
+ Fix incorrect zeroing of advance width of base glyphs in
various “Courier New” font versions due to incorrect “GDEF”
glyph classes.
+ Fix handling of long language codes with “HB_LEAN”
configuration.
+ Update OpenType language system registry.
+ Allow all Myanmar tone marks (including visarga) in any order.
+ Don’t insert U+25CC DOTTED CIRCLE before superscript/subscript
digits.
+ Handle Garay script as right to left script.
+ New API for serializing font tables and potentially repacking
them in optimal way.
+ New API for converting font variation setting from and to
strings.
+ Various build fixes.
+ Various subsetter and instancer fixes.
+ New API:
- +hb_subset_serialize_link_t
- +hb_subset_serialize_object_t
- +hb_subset_serialize_or_fail()
- +hb_subset_axis_range_from_string()
- +hb_subset_axis_range_to_string()
- Drop harfbuzz-CVE-2024-56732.patch: Fixed upstream.
* Tue Dec 31 2024 Michael Gorse <mgorse@suse.com>
- Add harfbuzz-CVE-2024-56732.patch: guard
hb_cairo_glyphs_from_buffer() against bad UTF-8 (CVE-2024-56732).
* Tue Nov 05 2024 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 10.1.0:
+ Fix the sign of fallback vertical glyph advance (used when font
has no vertical advance data).
+ Increase maximum “CFF” operands limit 20 times to support more
complex fonts.
+ Add “--face-loader” option to command line utilities.
+ Support “COLR” v0 table in hb_font_get_glyph_extents().
+ Add support for font functions that use Core Text APIs, similar
to FreeType font functions. This allows, for example, using
drawing fonts that use the new (and undocumented) “hvgl” table.
+ Update IANA and OT language registries, as well ase USE data
files.
+ Fix build with ICU 76.
+ Various compiler warnings and build fixes.
+ Various subsetter fixes.
* Wed Sep 25 2024 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 10.0.1:
+ Relax sanitization checks for “morx” subtables to fix broken
AAT shaping of macOS 15.0 version of GeezaPro.
- Switch to source service for tarball.
* Mon Sep 23 2024 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 10.0.0:
+ Unicode 16.0.0 support.
+ Various documentation fixes.
+ Various build fixes.
+ Add API to allow HarfBuzz client to set what glyph to use when
a Unicode Variation Selector is not supported by the font,
which would allow the client to customize what happens in this
case, by using a different font for example.
+ Add a callback to for “hb_face_t” for getting the list of table
tags. This is now used to make calling
“hb_face_get_table_tags()” work on a faces created by
“hb_face_create_for_tables()” (e.g. faces returned by
“hb_subset_or_fail()”).
+ CGJ and Mongolian Variation Selectors are now ignored during
glyph positioning, previously they would block both glyph
substitution and positioning across them.
+ Support cairo script as an output format for “hb-view” command
line tool.
+ Drop an optimization that would cause HarfBuzz not apply pair
positioning lookup subtables under certain circumstances, for
compatibility with other implementations that do apply these
subtables.
+ Subsetting will now fail if source font has no glyphs, so
feeding the subsetter invalid data will not silently return an
empty face.
+ If after partially instancing a font no variation data is left
(the instance is fully static), don’t consider this a failure.
+ Workaround a Firefox bug in displaying SVGs generated be
“hb-view” command line tool under certain circumstances.
+ Fix bug in macroman mapping for “cmap” table.
+ Fix difference shaping output when HarfBuzz is built with with
“HB_NO_OT_RULESETS_FAST_PATH” enabled.
+ Various subsetting and instancing fixes.
+ Various fuzzing fixes.
+ Add “with_libstdcxx” meson build option.
* Sun Jul 07 2024 Andreas Stieger <andreas.stieger@gmx.de>
- update to version 9.0.0:
+ Speed up “AAT” shaping for short words by up to 4%
+ Ignore unknown “CFF” operators
+ “hb_subset_input_keep_everything()” now keeps also non-unicode
“name” table records.
+ Update the IANA and OpenType language tag registries
+ Support composite glyphs with very large number of points in
hb-draw API
+ Various build fixes
* Thu May 16 2024 Andreas Stieger <andreas.stieger@gmx.de>
- update to version 8.5.0:
+ API for partial instancing is now stable and have been promoted
out of experimental APIs.
+ Support instancing “BASE” table
+ Speedup AAT shaping by 13–30%
+ Various subsetter and instancer fixes
* Fri May 03 2024 Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@inai.de>
- Force higher C++ standard version for building with ICU 75.
* Fri Mar 29 2024 Andreas Stieger <andreas.stieger@gmx.de>
- update to version 8.4.0:
+ When subsetting, place variation store at the end of “GDEF”
table to fix shaping issues with some versions of Adobe InDesign.
+ Various build fixes
- update to version 8.3.1:
+ Fix hb_style_get_value() in fonts with “STAT” table
+ Properly handle negative offsets in CFF table
+ Update IANA Language Subtag Registry to 2024-03-07
+ Subsetter now supports subsetting “BASE” table
+ Subsetter will update “hhea” font metrics in sync with “OS/2”
ones.
+ “--variations” option of “hb-subset” now supports leaving out
values that should be unchanged, e.g. “wght=:500:” will change
the default and keep max and min unchanged. It also supports
“*=drop” to to pin all axes to default location.
+ Fix hb_ot_math_get_glyph_kerning() to match updated “MATH”
table spec.
+ Support legacy MacRoman encoding in “cmap” table.
+ Various build fixes.
+ Various subsetting and instancing fixes.
* Sat Nov 11 2023 Andreas Stieger <andreas.stieger@gmx.de>
- Update to version 8.3.0:
+ Improve memory barrier to fix potential segfaults
+ Various subsetting and instancing fixes.
+ Rename “hb-subset” option “--instance” to “--variations” to
match the other tools, old option kept as an alias
- -devel: fix no-library-dependency-on libharbuzz-cairo0
* Wed Oct 18 2023 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 8.2.2:
+ Fix regression from 8.1.0 in shaping fonts with duplicate
feature tags.
+ Fix regression from 8.2.0 in parsing CSS-style feature strings.
+ Variable fonts instanciation now handles more tables.
+ Various CMake build improvements.
+ Various fixes to build without errors with gcc 4.9.2.
* Mon Sep 18 2023 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 8.2.1:
+ Unicode 15.1 support.
* Fri Sep 08 2023 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 8.2.0:
+ Various build and fuzzing fixes
+ Improvements to COLRv1 painting.
+ New API:
- hb_paint_color_glyph_func_t
- hb_paint_funcs_set_color_glyph_func
- hb_paint_color_glyph
* Thu Aug 03 2023 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 8.1.1:
+ Fix shaping of contextual rules at the end of string,
introduced in 8.1.0.
+ Fix stack-overflow in repacker with malicious fonts.
+ 30% speed up loading Noto Duployan font.
* Tue Aug 01 2023 Bjørn Lie <bjorn.lie@gmail.com>
- Update to version 8.1.0:
+ Fix long-standing build issue with the AIX compiler and older
Apple clang.
+ Revert optimization that could cause timeout during subsetting
with malicious fonts.
+ More optimization work:
- 45% speed up in shaping Noto Duployan font.
- 10% speed up in subsetting Noto Duployan font.
- Another 8% speed up in shaping Gulzar