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17 07/08 2019
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19 <a href="https://github.com/nerdypepper/site/blob/master/posts/bye_bye_BDFs.md
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21 7f39c8d
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26 Bye Bye BDFs
27 </span>
28 <div class="post-text">
29 <p>Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format is no more, as the creators of
30<a href="https://pango.org">Pango</a>, one of the most widely used text rendering
31libraries,
32<a href="https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2019/05/25/pango-future-directions/">announced</a>
33their plans for Pango 1.44.</p>
34
35<p>Until recently, Pango used FreeType to draw fonts. They will be moving over
36to <a href="https://harfbuzz.org">Harfbuzz</a>, an evolution of FreeType.</p>
37
38<p><em>Why?</em></p>
39
40<p>In short, FreeType was hard to work with. It required complex logic, and
41provided no advantage over Harfbuzz (other than being able to fetch
42opentype metrics with ease).</p>
43
44<p>Upgrading to Pango v1.44 will break your GTK applications (if you use a
45<code>bdf</code>/<code>pcf</code> bitmap font). Harfbuzz <em>does</em> support bitmap-only OpenType fonts,
46<code>otb</code>s. Convert your existing fonts over to <code>otb</code>s using
47<a href="https://fontforge.github.io">FontForge</a>. It is to be noted that applications
48such as <code>xterm</code> and <code>rxvt</code> use <code>xft</code> (X FreeType) to render fonts, and will
49remain unaffected by the update.</p>
50
51<p>Both <a href="https://github.com/nerdypepper/scientifica">scientifica</a> and
52<a href="https://github.com/nerdypepper/curie">curie</a> will soon ship with bitmap-only
53OpenType font formats.</p>
54
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