1# RustType 2[](https://crates.io/crates/rusttype) 3[](https://docs.rs/rusttype) 4 5RustType is a pure Rust alternative to libraries like FreeType. 6 7The current capabilities of RustType: 8 9* Reading TrueType formatted fonts and font collections. This includes `*.ttf` 10 as well as a subset of `*.otf` font files. 11* Retrieving glyph shapes and commonly used properties for a font and its glyphs. 12* Laying out glyphs horizontally using horizontal and vertical metrics, and 13 glyph-pair-specific kerning. 14* Rasterising glyphs with sub-pixel positioning using an accurate analytical 15 algorithm (not based on sampling). 16* Managing a font cache on the GPU with the `gpu_cache` module. This keeps 17 recently used glyph renderings 18 in a dynamic cache in GPU memory to minimise texture uploads per-frame. It 19 also allows you keep the draw call count for text very low, as all glyphs are 20 kept in one GPU texture. 21 22Notable things that RustType does not support *yet*: 23 24* OpenType formatted fonts that are not just TrueType fonts (OpenType is a 25 superset of TrueType). Notably there is no support yet for cubic Bezier curves 26 used in glyphs. 27* Font hinting. 28* Ligatures of any kind 29* Some less common TrueType sub-formats. 30* Right-to-left and vertical text layout. 31 32## Getting Started 33 34To hit the ground running with RustType, look at the `simple.rs` example 35supplied with the crate. It demonstrates loading a font file, rasterising an 36arbitrary string, and displaying the result as ASCII art. If you prefer to just 37look at the documentation, the entry point for loading fonts is 38`FontCollection`, from which you can access individual fonts, then their glyphs. 39 40## Future Plans 41 42The initial motivation for the project was to provide easy-to-use font rendering for games. 43There are numerous avenues for improving RustType. Ideas: 44 45* Some form of hinting for improved legibility at small font sizes. 46* Replacing the dependency on 47 [stb_truetype-rs](https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/stb_truetype-rs) 48 (a translation of [stb_truetype.h](https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_truetype.h)), 49 with OpenType font loading written in idiomatic Rust. 50* Add support for cubic curves in OpenType fonts. 51* Extract the rasterisation code into a separate vector graphics rendering crate. 52* Support for some common forms of ligatures. 53* And, eventually, support for embedded right-to-left Unicode text. 54 55If you think you could help with achieving any of these goals, feel free to open 56a tracking issue for discussing them. 57 58## License 59 60Licensed under either of 61 62 * Apache License, Version 2.0, ([LICENSE-APACHE](LICENSE-APACHE) or 63 http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0) 64 * MIT license ([LICENSE-MIT](LICENSE-MIT) or 65 http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT) 66 67at your option. 68 69### Contribution 70 71Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted 72for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be 73dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions. 74 75### See Also 76 77- [glyph_brush](https://github.com/alexheretic/glyph-brush) - can cache vertex generation & provides more complex layouts. 78
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