Displaying text is the most common interface to convey information from computer systems to humans. On a Linux system there is a variety of techniques for rendering text some of which are used more or less on modern systems. Many of those text rendering techniques originate from different time periods of computing history and rendering text in graphical environments is more complex than often thought off.

We find two approaches in Linux systems for displaying text: - using bitmap fonts designed for fixed resolution displays - rendering text based on scalable glyph shapes using a stack of software components for rasterisation, text shaping and text layout.

This talk will give an overview on the different techniques, software and standards for font rendering on Linux systems in the context of their historical origins.

Speaker: Max Harmathy
At: DebConf18