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A comment on Show HN: Handwriter.ttf – Handwriting Synthesis with Harfbuzz WASM. Parent comment

Re:Show HN: Handwriter.ttf – Handwriting Synthesis with Harf... by hsfzxjy on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @10:34AM (#41310712)
You can't test it in a browser, since no browser at present is linked against libharfbuzz with WASM shaper. Instead, one can test it with a modified local program such as gedit in the demo.

As convenience, I built a Docker image that packs both the ttf file and the modified gedit together. You can try it out via `make run` as stated in the instructions.

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Re:Show HN: Handwriter.ttf – Handwriting Synthesis with Harf... by okcdz on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @11:22AM (#41311186)
If you just want to run locally. Why not using the native libharfbuzz directly? What's the purpose of WASM here?
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Re:Show HN: Handwriter.ttf – Handwriting Synthesis with Harf... by bawolff on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @11:36AM (#41311310)
WASM is to libharfbuzz (when experimental compile time option is enabled) what javascript is to HTML.

So this is essentially native (albeit experimental) libharfbuzz. WASM is used because its how font files are scripted (when using this experimental version of lubharfbuzz)

Its important to keep in mind that wasm is a general technology and is not just used by web browsers.

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Re:Show HN: Handwriter.ttf – Handwriting Synthesis with Harf... by 0x457 on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @01:42PM (#41312465)
Font includes WASM code that harfbuzz executes for shaping: https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/blob/main/docs/wasm-sha...

It's an experimental feature, so it's not available unless explicitly enabled during compilation.

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Re:Show HN: Handwriter.ttf – Handwriting Synthesis with Harf... by a1o on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @12:07PM (#41311574)
Harfbuzz can be built easily to Wasm using Emscripten.
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Re:Show HN: Handwriter.ttf – Handwriting Synthesis with Harf... by Lockal on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @10:21PM (#41316170)
Interesting artifact of time it would be. Harfbuzz uses https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasm-micro-runtime to execute wasm, so when compiled it would be wasm runtime running under another wasm runtime.
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