Behdad Esfahbod Papers & Talks
Papers, technical notes, studies, and talks on font technology, text rendering, and open-source software. This archive spans 2001 to the present, from early Persian computing projects to HarfBuzz, FontTools, and HarfRust.
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2026
- HarfBuzz: The quest for universal text shaping · TUGboat 47:1 · Paper The intersection of TeX and HarfBuzz.
- HarfBuzz at 20! looking back with 20/20 vision · Web Engines Hackfest · Slides · Video
- Fonts Quarterly — Q1: Embracing agentic coding · Paper How I work with AI coding agents, including on problems I had given up on.
- HarfBuzz at 20! all you ever wanted to know about HarfBuzz and then some · Slides
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2025
- Fonts Quarterly — Q4: HarfBust solution, HarfBuzz changes, etc. · Paper
- Fonts Quarterly — Q3: HarfRust and others · Paper
- HarfBust: a font software puzzle for the curious · Puzzle A font that can tell which text shaping engine is rendering it.
- HarfBuzz Study: AAT layout caches · Paper
- HarfBuzz Study: OpenType Layout lookup caches · Paper
- Fonts Quarterly — Q2: Optimizing mega variable-fonts and introducing HarfRust · Paper
- HarfBuzz Study: Introducing HarfRust · Paper The path to an official Rust port of HarfBuzz, and the alternatives we considered.
- HarfBuzz Study: Subsetter (with Garret Rieger) · Paper How HarfBuzz shrinks fonts for web delivery, applications, and PDF printing.
- HarfBuzz Study: Caching · Paper Trading a little memory for much faster text shaping.
- Fonts Quarterly — Q1: Optimize all the things / Everybody gets font-funcs · Paper
- Memory usage of loading glyph outlines · Paper
- Fontations benchmark on different font technology · Paper
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HarfBuzz Study:
hb-decycler· Paper Detecting cycles during graph traversal without heap allocations.
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2024
- Fonts Hangout — Q4: Or How I spent my time so far this quarter… · Paper
- Better-Engineered Font Formats: yet another update · GUADEC Denver · Slides · Video · LWN
- State of Text Rendering 2024 · Paper Extensive survey of the Open Source fonts & text rendering landscape.
- Some Font Tools (with Marianna Paszkowska) · TypeLab at Typographics · Slides
- Updates on Font Format Standardization Efforts · TypeLab at Typographics · Slides
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2023
- Boring Expansion extensions to OpenType · TypeLab at Typographics · Slides Subset of Better-Engineered Font Formats as standardized by ISO Open Font Format in 2026.
- Better-Engineered Font Formats: an update (with Dave Crossland) · ATypI Paris · Slides · Video
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2022
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HarfBuzz Study:
hb-iter· Paper Bringing composable iterator pipelines to HarfBuzz’s C++11 codebase. - HarfBuzz Study: A C library written in C++ · Paper
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HarfBuzz Study: The case of the slow
hb-fth_advancefunction · Paper - HarfBuzz Study: PackTab: A static integer table packer · Paper
- Better-Engineered Font Formats · Slides · Video Set of proposals and ideas about extending the font format forward.
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2020
- HarfBuzz OT+AAT "Unishaper" · Slides
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2019
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2018
- Digital Typography (with Nicolas Rougier) · SIGGRAPH · Slides Mini-course.
- Faster Horse. C++ Font Subsetter: Fast, Flexible, and Secure · TYPO Labs · Paper · Slides · Video
- FontTools update · TYPO Labs · Slides · Video
- 99 Proof Small Batch Distillery · RoboThon · Slides · Video Rewriting FontTools’ GSUB/GPOS table packing.
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2017
- Variations on Variations · TYPO Labs · Slides · Video · TypoTalks Using symbolic algebra to solve font engineering problems at scale.
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2016
- The Open Source Python Font Production Pipeline (with Marek Jeziorek) · ATypI Warsaw · Slides · Video
- Special OpenType Session · ATypI Warsaw · Video Introduction of OpenType variable fonts with industry partners.
- Ten Years of HarfBuzz · Web Engines Hackfest · Slides · Video
- OpenType GX, an exploratory proposal · TYPO Labs · Paper · Slides · Video A precursor to the OpenType variable fonts technology.
- FontTools/TTX: The Power of Open Source for OpenType (with Just van Rossum) · TYPO Labs · Slides · Video
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2015
- Universal Shaping · International Unicode Conference 39 · Slides · Video Where I show that OpenType layout tables are Turing-complete.
- Fonts without Borders · GUADEC Gothenburg · Slides · Video HarfBuzz, Noto, and the work of supporting the world’s writing systems.
- OpenType BE: Behdad's "OpenType 2.0" wishlist/agenda! · ATypI São Paulo · Paper · Slides · LWN
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2014
- HarfBuzz Study: Building the Indic Shaper · Paper
- Unicode, OpenType, and Fonts: Closing the Circle (with Roozbeh Pournader) · International Unicode Conference 38 · Slides · Video Lessons from HarfBuzz and Noto on the gaps between Unicode, OpenType, and real-world fonts.
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FontTools: reviving an Open Source project,
rebuilding a thriving community · ATypI Barcelona · Slides · LWN - GLyphy: high-quality glyph rendering using OpenGL ES2 shaders · linux.conf.au · Slides · Video
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2012
- HarfBuzz Study: Memory Consumption · Paper
- High-DPI, Subpixel Text Positioning, Hinting, What happens when an unstoppable bullet hits an impenetrable wall? · Paper
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2009
- State of Text Rendering · Gran Canaria Desktop Summit · Paper · Slides · LWN Superseded by the 2024 update.
- HarfBuzz: the Free and Open Shaping Engine · Internationalization & Unicode Conference 33 · Slides
- Free Software stack for Unicode Text Rendering · Internationalization & Unicode Conference 33 · Slides
- GNOME and Living a Happy Life · Slides My path into free software, and an invitation to join the GNOME community.
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2008
- GNOME: ten years of freedom · Slides
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2007
- Co-maintaining Cairo: cool community, cool code (with Carl Worth) · GUADEC Birmingham · Slides · Video
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2006
- Preload—An Adaptive Prefetching Daemon · M.Sc. thesis Predicting which applications you’ll use next to make them start faster.
- Vertical Pango · Slides
- All Your Fonts Are... · GUADEC Vilanova · Slides How Pango lays out text and finds the right fonts with Fontconfig.
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2005
- Bloat of Data in the Unicode Era · Desktop Developers’ Conference · Slides
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2004
- Revisiting the FarsiTeX Typesetting System (in Persian) · B.Sc. thesis
- Bidirectional Layouts in GTK+ · Desktop Developers’ Conference · Slides
- Persian Computing with Unicode · Internationalization & Unicode Conference 25 · Paper · Slides
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2003
- TeX, LaTeX, and FarsiTeX (with Hamed Hatami) · Slides
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2002
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2001
- What is Unicode · Slides
