# RustType
[](https://travis-ci.org/dylanede/rusttype)
RustType is a pure Rust alternative to libraries like FreeType.
The current capabilities of RustType:
* Reading TrueType formatted fonts and font collections. This includes `*.ttf`
as well as a subset of `*.otf` font files.
* Retrieving glyph shapes and commonly used properties for a font and its glyphs.
* Laying out glyphs horizontally using horizontal and vertical metrics, and
glyph-pair-specific kerning.
* Rasterising glyphs with sub-pixel positioning using an accurate analytical
algorithm (not based on sampling).
Notable things that RustType does not support *yet*:
* OpenType formatted fonts that are not just TrueType fonts (OpenType is a
superset of TrueType). Notably there is no support yet for cubic Bezier curves
used in glyphs.
* Ligatures of any kind
* Some less common TrueType sub-formats.
* Right-to-left and vertical text layout.
## Getting Started
Add the following to your Cargo.toml:
```toml
[dependencies]
rusttype = "0.1.2"
```
To hit the ground running with RustType, look at the `simple.rs` example
supplied with the crate. It demonstrates loading a font file, rasterising an
arbitrary string, and displaying the result as ASCII art. If you prefer to just
look at the documentation, the entry point for loading fonts is
`FontCollection`, from which you can access individual fonts, then their glyphs.
## [Documentation](https://dylanede.github.io/rusttype)
## Future Plans
The current state of RustType is only the beginning. There are numerous avenues
for improving it. My main motivation for this project is to provide easy-to-use
font rendering for games. Thus I will be constructing a GPU font caching library
based on RustType. Once I get the time to go back and improve RustType itself,
the main improvements I am most interested in are:
* Replacing the dependency on my other library,
[stb_truetype-rs](https://github.com/dylanede/stb_truetype-rs)
(a direct translation of [stb_truetype.h](https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_truetype.h)),
with OpenType font loading written in idiomatic Rust.
* Add support for cubic curves in OpenType fonts.
* Extract the rasterisation code into a separate vector graphics rendering crate.
* Support for some common forms of ligatures.
* And, eventually, support for embedded right-to-left Unicode text.
If you think you could help with achieving any of these goals, feel free to open
a tracking issue for discussing them.
## License
Licensed under either of
* Apache License, Version 2.0, ([LICENSE-APACHE](LICENSE-APACHE) or
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
* MIT license ([LICENSE-MIT](LICENSE-MIT) or
http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)
at your option.
### Contribution
Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted
for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be
dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.