HarfBuzz Hackfests

Major HarfBuzz development, specially the South / South-East Asian shaper, has happened in HarfBuzz Hackfests, intense week-long pair-programming hackathons between ?BehdadEsfahbod and ?JonathanKew. We have found that these intense hacking events are a very productive way to develop HarfBuzz, and as such looking to continue them. Here's a timeline:

  • May 2016, Mozilla London. Updated to Unicode 9.0, update Universal Shaping Engine to latest draft spec from Microsoft, and fixed various bugs,
  • December 2015, Mozilla London. Updated Indic shaper to Unicode 8.0 and fixed various bugs,
  • July 2015, Mozilla London. Implemented Win10-style Universal Shaping Engine and various fixes and improvements,
  • Udupi HarfBuzz Hackfest October 2013, Mozilla Paris / Google Paris. Implemented Win8.1-style Javanese / Buginese shaping, and fixed various bugs,
  • Ngapi HarfBuzz Hackfest February 2013, Google London / Mozilla London. Implemented Win8-style Myanmar shaping, and Tai Tham, Cham, and New Tai Lue shaping, and fixed various bugs. Read full report,
  • HarfBuzz "All-You-Can-Eat-Sushi" Hackfest November 2012, Mozilla Vancouver. Mostly fixed shaping with tricky / old / broken fonts for Sinhala, Khmer, and Thai, and started introspection APIs,
  • Lemongrass HarfBuzz Hackfest July 2012, Mozilla Toronto. Further streamlines support for main Indic scripts and moved east-ward, adding support for Khmer. Read full report,
  • HarfBuzz Massala Hackfest May 2012, Google Zurich. Serious work on the Indic shaper was started and a major milestone reached by the end of the week. Read full report,
  • May 2010, Reading, UK,
  • October 2009, Mozilla Toronto. Read full report, Before these hackfests, there were other gatherings under the umbrella of TextLayout summits.