[webkit-dev] Port-specific OpenType support

[Dan Bernstein]

> On Sep 11, 2014, at 11:44 AM, Myles C. Maxfield <mmaxfield at apple.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello, Webkittens!
> 
> I have started work on an SVG font -> OpenType converter [1] with the intent of eventually getting rid of our code path which lays out and draws text using SVG fonts. The motivation is fourfold:
> 
> 1) Performance: on OS X the native text libraries are over 1000x faster than our SVG code path.
> 2) Security: There have been numerous security bugs in the SVG font code path.
> 3) Code clarity: This would greatly simplify the text rendering code.
> 4) The next version of SVG is removing SVG fonts completely [2]. Chrome has recently dropped support for SVG fonts [3] and Firefox/IE never had it [4] [5].

5) Correctness: using an SVG font will no longer mean you don’t get subpixel antialiasing (and perhaps other text effects?)