COSMIC Text is a Rust library offering multi-line text handling. It provides text shaping, layout, rendering, font discovery, font fallback, rasterization, and editing in a reusable abstraction.
The library supports advanced shaping, bidirectional text, ligatures, color emoji, wrapping, ellipsizing, text selection, and copy/paste. It is designed for projects that need robust text handling without pulling in a full graphical toolkit.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Pure Rust multi-line text handling.
- Advanced text shaping with HarfRust.
- Custom safe Rust layout engine.
- Bidirectional text support.
- Font discovery and font fallback.
- Optional rasterization using swash.
- Supports ligatures and color emoji.
- Text wrapping, ellipsizing, and editing support.
- Cross-platform support – runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Website: github.com/pop-os/cosmic-text
Support:
Developer: System76
License: Apache License 2.0 / MIT License
COSMIC Text is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Font Renderers | |
|---|---|
| HarfBuzz | OpenType text shaping engine |
| FreeType | Small and efficient software font engine |
| Pango | International text layout and rendering with rich script support |
| LibICU | Libraries for Unicode and internationalization |
| Fontconfig | Library for configuring and customizing font access |
| COSMIC Text | Rust library for rich multi-line text layout, shaping and editing |
| FriBidi | Implementation of the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm |
| Swash | Pure Rust toolkit for glyph shaping, scaling and rendering |
| SheenBidi | Compact Unicode bidirectional algorithm implementation for text engines |
| Raqm | Bidirectional layout and shaping for complex writing systems |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our carefully curated directory of recommended free and open source software, covering every major software category.The directory forms part of our extensive collection of articles for Linux enthusiasts. It includes hundreds of detailed reviews, together with free and open source alternatives to proprietary software from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. LinuxLinks also covers interesting projects worth exploring, Linux-compatible hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful free and open source Linux application that we haven’t covered? Tell us about it using our submission form. |
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.