when i first heard about fonts now being able to embed wasm[1] code to control shaping[2] in harfbuzz[3] i thought it was insane to allow fonts to just execute code like that but turns out font hinting[4] has already been turing complete for over 30 years[5]
[1] binary executable format usable in places like websites
[2] the process of turning plain text into a sequence of glyphs (the actual designs) in a font, needed for ligatures and many languages
[3] the library everyone uses for shaping because it gets complicated fast
[4] the process of adjusting font shapes for different scales so that text doesn't look like shit on low resolution displays
[5] this refers to the truetype virtual machine. not the kind that runs an os, but like the java virtual machine
[1] binary executable format usable in places like websites
[2] the process of turning plain text into a sequence of glyphs (the actual designs) in a font, needed for ligatures and many languages
[3] the library everyone uses for shaping because it gets complicated fast
[4] the process of adjusting font shapes for different scales so that text doesn't look like shit on low resolution displays
[5] this refers to the truetype virtual machine. not the kind that runs an os, but like the java virtual machine
Comments
PUSHB[000] 3NEG[]JMPR[]but i don't know how thats actually handled in practice