pop-os/cosmic-text

Pure Rust multi-line text handling

Rust

2,171

829 commits

updated Sep 30, 2026

See the code

README

COSMIC Text

crates.io docs.rs license Rust workflow

Pure Rust multi-line text handling.

COSMIC Text provides advanced text shaping, layout, and rendering wrapped up into a simple abstraction. Shaping is provided by HarfRust, and supports a wide variety of advanced shaping operations. Rendering is provided by swash, which supports ligatures and color emoji. Layout is implemented custom, in safe Rust, and supports bidirectional text. Font fallback is also a custom implementation, reusing some of the static fallback lists in browsers such as Chromium and Firefox. Linux, macOS, and Windows are supported with the full feature set. Other platforms may need to implement font fallback capabilities.

Screenshots

Arabic translation of Universal Declaration of Human Rights Arabic screenshot

Hindi translation of Universal Declaration of Human Rights Hindi screenshot

Simplified Chinese translation of Universal Declaration of Human Rights Simplified Chinses screenshot

View Universal Declaration of Human Rights on OHCHR

Roadmap

The following features must be supported before this is "ready":

  • Font loading (using fontdb)
    • Preset fonts
    • System fonts
  • Text styles (bold, italic, etc.)
    • Per-buffer
    • Per-span
  • Font shaping (using HarfRust)
    • Cache results
    • RTL
    • Bidirectional rendering
  • Font fallback
    • Choose font based on locale to work around "unification"
    • Per-line granularity
    • Per-character granularity
  • Font layout
    • Click detection
    • Simple wrapping
    • Wrapping with indentation
    • No wrapping
    • Ellipsize
  • Font rendering (using swash)
    • Cache results
    • Font hinting
    • Ligatures
    • Color emoji
  • Text editing
    • Performance improvements
    • Text selection
    • Can automatically recreate https://unicode.org/udhr/ without errors (see below)
    • Bidirectional selection
    • Copy/paste
  • no_std support (with default-features = false)
    • no_std font loading
    • no_std shaping
    • no_std layout
    • no_std rendering

The UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) test involves taking the entire set of UDHR translations (almost 500 languages), concatenating them as one file (which ends up being 8 megabytes!), then via the editor-test example, automatically simulating the entry of that file into cosmic-text per-character, with the use of backspace and delete tested per character and per line. Then, the final contents of the buffer is compared to the original file. All of the 106746 lines are correct.

License

Licensed under either of

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.

Project health

crates.io

Latest release

0.19.0 · Apr 22, 2026

Releases this year

9

Significant stargazers

(top 24 of 113)

Linda_pp

1,943 followers · starred Jan 2023

Matt Brubeck

659 followers · starred Dec 2023

Neko

1,697 followers · starred Sep 2025

Ofek Lev

932 followers · starred Sep 2026

pop-os/cosmic-text

Pure Rust multi-line text handling

Rust

2,171

829 commits

updated Sep 30, 2026

See the code

README

COSMIC Text

crates.io docs.rs license Rust workflow

Pure Rust multi-line text handling.

COSMIC Text provides advanced text shaping, layout, and rendering wrapped up into a simple abstraction. Shaping is provided by HarfRust, and supports a wide variety of advanced shaping operations. Rendering is provided by swash, which supports ligatures and color emoji. Layout is implemented custom, in safe Rust, and supports bidirectional text. Font fallback is also a custom implementation, reusing some of the static fallback lists in browsers such as Chromium and Firefox. Linux, macOS, and Windows are supported with the full feature set. Other platforms may need to implement font fallback capabilities.

Screenshots

Arabic translation of Universal Declaration of Human Rights Arabic screenshot

Hindi translation of Universal Declaration of Human Rights Hindi screenshot

Simplified Chinese translation of Universal Declaration of Human Rights Simplified Chinses screenshot

View Universal Declaration of Human Rights on OHCHR

Roadmap

The following features must be supported before this is "ready":

  • Font loading (using fontdb)
    • Preset fonts
    • System fonts
  • Text styles (bold, italic, etc.)
    • Per-buffer
    • Per-span
  • Font shaping (using HarfRust)
    • Cache results
    • RTL
    • Bidirectional rendering
  • Font fallback
    • Choose font based on locale to work around "unification"
    • Per-line granularity
    • Per-character granularity
  • Font layout
    • Click detection
    • Simple wrapping
    • Wrapping with indentation
    • No wrapping
    • Ellipsize
  • Font rendering (using swash)
    • Cache results
    • Font hinting
    • Ligatures
    • Color emoji
  • Text editing
    • Performance improvements
    • Text selection
    • Can automatically recreate https://unicode.org/udhr/ without errors (see below)
    • Bidirectional selection
    • Copy/paste
  • no_std support (with default-features = false)
    • no_std font loading
    • no_std shaping
    • no_std layout
    • no_std rendering

The UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) test involves taking the entire set of UDHR translations (almost 500 languages), concatenating them as one file (which ends up being 8 megabytes!), then via the editor-test example, automatically simulating the entry of that file into cosmic-text per-character, with the use of backspace and delete tested per character and per line. Then, the final contents of the buffer is compared to the original file. All of the 106746 lines are correct.

License

Licensed under either of

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.

Project health

crates.io

Latest release

0.19.0 · Apr 22, 2026

Releases this year

9

Significant stargazers

(top 24 of 113)

Linda_pp

1,943 followers · starred Jan 2023

Matt Brubeck

659 followers · starred Dec 2023

Neko

1,697 followers · starred Sep 2025

Ofek Lev

932 followers · starred Sep 2026