OpenType features enable fonts to include smart behavior, implemented as "lookup" rules stored in the GSUB and GPOS tables. The OpenType specification defines a long list of standard features that fonts can use for these behaviors; each feature has a four-character reserved name and a well-defined semantic meaning.
Some OpenType features are defined for the purpose of supporting complex-script shaping, and are automatically activated, but only when a buffer's script property is set to a script that the feature supports.
Other features are more generic and can apply to several (or
any) script, and shaping engines are expected to implement
them. By default, HarfBuzz activates several of these features
on every text run. They include abvm
,
blwm
, ccmp
,
locl
, mark
,
mkmk
, and rlig
.
In addition, if the text direction is horizontal, HarfBuzz
also applies the calt
,
clig
, curs
,
dist
, kern
,
liga
and rclt
, features.
Additionally, when HarfBuzz encounters a fraction slash
(U+2044
), it looks backward and forward for decimal
digits (Unicode General Category = Nd), and enables features
numr
on the sequence before the fraction slash,
dnom
on the sequence after the fraction slash,
and frac
on the whole sequence including the fraction
slash.
Some script-specific shaping models (see the section called “OpenType shaping models”) disable some of the features listed above:
Hangul: calt
Indic: liga
Khmer: liga
If the text direction is vertical, HarfBuzz applies
the vert
feature by default.
Still other features are designed to be purely optional and left up to the application or the end user to enable or disable as desired.
You can adjust the set of features that HarfBuzz applies to a
buffer by supplying an array of hb_feature_t
features as the third argument to
hb_shape()
. For a simple case, let's just
enable the dlig
feature, which turns on any
"discretionary" ligatures in the font:
hb_feature_t userfeatures[1]; userfeatures[0].tag = HB_TAG('d','l','i','g'); userfeatures[0].value = 1; userfeatures[0].start = HB_FEATURE_GLOBAL_START; userfeatures[0].end = HB_FEATURE_GLOBAL_END;
HB_FEATURE_GLOBAL_END
and
HB_FEATURE_GLOBAL_END
are macros we can use
to indicate that the features will be applied to the entire
buffer. We could also have used a literal 0
for the start and a -1
to indicate the end of
the buffer (or have selected other start and end positions, if needed).
When we pass the userfeatures
array to
hb_shape()
, any discretionary ligature
substitutions from our font that match the text in our buffer
will get performed:
hb_shape(font, buf, userfeatures, num_features);
Just like we enabled the dlig
feature by
setting its value
to
1
, you would disable a feature by setting its
value
to 0
. Some
features can take other value
settings;
be sure you read the full specification of each feature tag to
understand what it does and how to control it.