The Universal Shaping Engine (USE) is a new model for OpenType complex script handling. This presentation explains what USE is, and the reasons for its existence. Although representing the latest advance in OpenType for complex writing systems, USE is also a return to the initial concept of OpenType Layout, in which the font developer is given significant freedom and responsibility for how to implement a script. Using examples from recent projects for Microsoft, John Hudson illustrates the kinds of things that are possible with the USE model.
Paper: Universal_Shaping_Engine_TYPOLabs
John Hudson
Type Designer & Co-founder of Tiro Typeworks Ltd. (Gabriola BC)
John Hudson designs typefaces and makes fonts. As co-founder of Tiro Typeworks Ltd., a digital foundry specialising in custom font solutions for multilingual publishing and computing, he has been responsible for or has collaborated on type designs for Arabic, Bengali, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Ethiopic, Greek, Gurmukhi, Hebrew, Latin, Odia, Sinhala, Telugu,…
