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@danielroe.dev, it was great to meet you and climb together! – So about the font subsetting situation: - The current best practice is likely HarfBuzz (HB)’s subsetting API (harfbuzz.github.io/harfbuzz-hb-...), which is written in C++ and has a CLI, hb-subset (harfbuzz.github.io/utilities.ht...).

13/10/25, 9:02 pm0 reposts1 like

梁海 Liang Hai

@lianghai.dev

13 Oct 2025

- Fonts are complicated. Don’t trust naive solutions that are not backed by HB developers. - HB has a WASM-based JS lib, harfbuzzjs (github.com/harfbuzz/har...), which is currently maintained in a quite confusing way and can use some help from professional TS developers (github.com/harfbuzz/har...).

梁海 Liang Hai

@lianghai.dev

13 Oct 2025

- Likely irrelevant to you, but fyi, the corresponding solution in Python (the font industry’s common language) is maintained by pretty much the same group of developers in fontTools: glyph set subsetting (github.com/fonttools/fo...) + design space subsetting (github.com/fonttools/fo...).

梁海 Liang Hai

@lianghai.dev

13 Oct 2025

- On the other hand, Google Fonts has been porting tools to Rust. You can read about their roadmap here: github.com/googlefonts/..., where klippa is mentioned as a replacement of hb-subset. - You should also keep an eye on the progress of the Incremental Font Transfer effort: www.w3.org/TR/IFT/.