Hi, I am glad to inform that I could use HarfBuzz-ng and FreeType to render Indic text on Android Canvas. Thank you for creating such an elegant lightweight library. I referred <a href="https://github.com/anoek/ex-sdl-cairo-freetype-harfbuzz">https://github.com/anoek/ex-sdl-cairo-freetype-harfbuzz</a> to come up with my sample program, the essence of which looks as below: ---- start of indic-text-rendering code snippet ----- #include <hb-ft.h> ... void drawIndicText(unsigned short* text, int textLength, int xStart, int yBaseLine, int charHeight) { FT_Library ft_library; FT_Init_FreeType(&ft_library); /* initialize library */ char* fontFilePath = "/sdcard/Android/data/org.iisc.mile.indictext.android/Lohit-Kannada.ttf"; FT_Face ft_face; FT_New_Face(ft_library, fontFilePath, 0, &ft_face); /* create face object */ hb_font_t *font = hb_ft_font_create(ft_face, NULL); FT_Set_Pixel_Sizes(ft_face, 0, charHeight); /* set character size */ /* Create a buffer for harfbuzz to use */ hb_buffer_t *buffer = hb_buffer_create(); //hb_buffer_set_direction(buffer, HB_DIRECTION_LTR); /* or LTR */ hb_buffer_set_script(buffer, HB_SCRIPT_KANNADA); /* see hb-unicode.h */ //hb_buffer_set_language(buffer, hb_language_from_string("ka")); /* Layout the text */ hb_buffer_add_utf16(buffer, text, textLength, 0, textLength); hb_ot_shape(font, buffer, NULL, 0, 0); int glyph_count = hb_buffer_get_length(buffer); hb_glyph_info_t *glyph_info = hb_buffer_get_glyph_infos(buffer, 0); hb_glyph_position_t *glyph_pos = hb_buffer_get_glyph_positions(buffer, 0); for (int i = 0; i < glyph_count; i++) { FT_UInt glyph_index = glyph_info[i].codepoint; FT_Error error = FT_Load_Glyph(ft_face, glyph_index, FT_LOAD_DEFAULT); if (error) { continue; /* ignore errors */ } /* convert to an anti-aliased bitmap */ error = FT_Render_Glyph(ft_face->glyph, FT_RENDER_MODE_NORMAL); if (error) { continue; } /* now, draw to our target surface (convert position) */ FT_GlyphSlot slot = ft_face->glyph; draw_bitmap(&slot->bitmap, xStart + slot->bitmap_left, yBaseLine - slot->bitmap_top); int glyphPosX = xStart + glyph_pos[i].x_offset; int glyphPosY = yBaseLine - glyph_pos[i].y_offset; //draw_bitmap(&slot->bitmap, glyphPosX, glyphPosY, env, thiz, lock); /* increment pen position */ xStart += slot->advance.x >> 6; //xStart += glyph_pos[i].x_advance / 64; } hb_buffer_destroy(buffer); hb_font_destroy(font); FT_Done_Face(ft_face); FT_Done_FreeType(ft_library); return; } ... ---- end of indic-text-rendering code snippet ----- Few things I noticed: 1) I had earlier used hb_shape() but that didn't work. It worked when I used hb_ot_shape(). Is this by design? 2) There are a few errors in the sequence of glyphs returned by HarfBuzz for certain Kannada language words. In the attached snapshot, words in second edit-box are not rendered properly. Where should I report these errors and in what format? I see a test case in <a href="http://cgit.freedesktop.org/harfbuzz/tree/test/test-shape-complex.c">http://cgit.freedesktop.org/harfbuzz/tree/test/test-shape-complex.c</a> . But I couldn't figure out how to run this. Simply running test-shape-complex.exe didn't help. Are there some instructions that I can look at? -- Thanks & Regards, Shiva Kumar H R <a href="http://people.apache.org/~shivahr/">http://people.apache.org/~shivahr/</a> <div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 5:05 PM, Shiva Kumar H R <<a href="mailto:shivahr@gmail.com">shivahr@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">I have used a simple Android.mk as below and got the HarfBuzz to build on Android NDK. I got below warnings though. harfbuzz-ng/src/hb-object-private.hh:74:2: warning: #warning "Could not find any system to define atomic_int macros, library will NOT be thread-safe" Android.mk: ------Begin of Android.mk------- BASE_PATH := $(call my-dir) LOCAL_PATH:= $(call my-dir) ############################################################# # build the harfbuzz library # include $(CLEAR_VARS) LOCAL_ARM_MODE := arm LOCAL_MODULE_TAGS := optional LOCAL_CPP_EXTENSION := .cc LOCAL_SRC_FILES:= \ src/hb-blob.cc \ src/hb-buffer.cc \ src/hb-common.cc \ src/hb-fallback-shape.cc \ src/hb-font.cc \ src/hb-ot-tag.cc \ src/hb-shape.cc \ src/hb-tt-font.cc \ src/hb-unicode.cc \ src/hb-ot-layout.cc \ src/hb-ot-map.cc \ src/hb-ot-shape.cc \ src/hb-ot-shape-complex-arabic.cc \ src/hb-ot-shape-complex-indic.cc \ src/hb-ot-shape-complex-misc.cc \ src/hb-ot-shape-normalize.cc \ src/hb-ft.cc \ LOCAL_C_INCLUDES += \ $(LOCAL_PATH)/src $(LOCAL_PATH)/../freetype/include LOCAL_MODULE:= libharfbuzz LOCAL_STATIC_LIBRARIES := ft2 include $(BUILD_SHARED_LIBRARY) ------End of Android.mk------- Yet to write a sample program and see if it is actually working.<div class="im"> -- Thanks & Regards, Shiva Kumar H R </div><div><div></div><div class="h5"><div class="gmail_quote"> On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 3:26 PM, Shiva Kumar H R <<a href="mailto:shivahr@gmail.com" target="_blank">shivahr@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">Hi, Is it possible to build harfbuzz-ng using Android-NDK. If yes, are there any instructions that I can look at? I came across Android.mk in <a href="http://tools.impjq.net/android/external/harfbuzz/" target="_blank">http://tools.impjq.net/android/external/harfbuzz/</a> , but this seems to be the old Harfbuzz tree and has a dependency on ICU4C. -- Thanks & Regards, Shiva Kumar H R <a href="http://people.apache.org/%7Eshivahr/" target="_blank">http://people.apache.org/~shivahr/</a> </blockquote></div> </div></div></blockquote></div>