Hello

pbocan

Hi, I am Peter based in London, UK. I am a software engineer by trade and I am interested in the basics of typesetting and font rendering. I have read that font rendering is actually pretty hard. 

I have never done anything with the fonts specifically. So I will be very thankful for any beginner-friendly resources you could point me to, whether they are courses, books, or articles. 

Igor Petrovic

Welcome Peter,

In case you haven't seen it yet, here is the well-known classic on font rendering, which is a good starting point:

http://rastertragedy.com/index.htm

Others may suggest more advanced material.

pbocan

Hi Igor, thank you for the resource, I will have a read  

Thomas Phinney

Note that rendering glyphs is just one small part of the pipeline of going from Unicode text to glyphs. Glyphs have to be positioned (involving kerning and perhaps justification). But the big thing is, there is “shaping,” which is a relatively simple thing for English, but can be mind-boggling for some languages.

See for example: https://fonts.google.com/knowledge/glossary/shaping for a super simple intro.

For a deeper level, try: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/develop/processing-part1
(both dated and Windows-centered, but still a fabulous intro in many ways)

pbocan

Thank you, Thomas! 

Are there any resources that are more up-to-date? 20 years is quite a long time ago. Although saying that TeX is even older than that.

Simon Cozens

You could try my book: https://simoncozens.github.io/fonts-and-layout/

pbocan

Hi Simon, will have a read, thank you!