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07/08 — 2019
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9.99
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<h1>
Bye Bye BDFs
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<p>Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format is no more, as the creators of <a href="https://pango.org">Pango</a>, one of the most widely used text rendering libraries, <a href="https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2019/05/25/pango-future-directions/">announced</a> their plans for Pango 1.44.</p>
<p>Until recently, Pango used FreeType to draw fonts. They will be moving over to <a href="https://harfbuzz.org">Harfbuzz</a>, an evolution of FreeType.</p>
<p><em>Why?</em></p>
<p>In short, FreeType was hard to work with. It required complex logic, and provided no advantage over Harfbuzz (other than being able to fetch opentype metrics with ease).</p>
<p>Upgrading to Pango v1.44 will break your GTK applications (if you use a <code>bdf</code>/<code>pcf</code> bitmap font). Harfbuzz <em>does</em> support bitmap-only OpenType fonts, <code>otb</code>s. Convert your existing fonts over to <code>otb</code>s using <a href="https://fontforge.github.io">FontForge</a>. It is to be noted that applications such as <code>xterm</code> and <code>rxvt</code> use <code>xft</code> (X FreeType) to render fonts, and will remain unaffected by the update.</p>
<p>Both <a href="https://github.com/nerdypepper/scientifica">scientifica</a> and <a href="https://github.com/nerdypepper/curie">curie</a> will soon ship with bitmap-only OpenType font formats.</p>
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<p>I'm Akshay, I go by nerd or nerdypepper on the internet.</p>
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