For the development of HarfBuzz, the Microsoft shaping technology, Uniscribe, as a widely used and tested shaper is used as more-or-less OpenType reference implementation and that specially is important where OpenType specification is or wasn't that clear. For having access to Uniscribe on Linux/macOS these steps are recommended: You want to follow the 32bit instructions. The 64bit equivalents are included for reference. 1. Install Wine. - Fedora: `dnf install wine`. 2. Install `mingw-w64` compiler. - Fedora, 32bit: `dnf install mingw32-gcc-c++` - Fedora, 64bit: `dnf install mingw64-gcc-c++` - Debian: `apt install g++-mingw-w64` - Mac: `brew install mingw-w64` 3. If you have drank the `meson` koolaid, look at `.ci/build-win32.sh` to see how to invoke `meson` now, or just run that script. Otherwise, here's how to use the old trusty autotools instead: a) Install dependencies. - Fedora, 32bit: `dnf install mingw32-glib2 mingw32-cairo mingw32-freetype` - Fedora, 64bit: `dnf install mingw64-glib2 mingw64-cairo mingw64-freetype` b) Configure: - `NOCONFIGURE=1 ./autogen.sh && mkdir winbuild && cd winbuild` - 32bit: `../mingw-configure.sh i686` - 64bit: `../mingw-configure.sh x86_64` Now you can use `hb-shape` by `(cd win32build/util && wine hb-shape.exe)` but if you like to shape with the Microsoft Uniscribe: 4. Bring a 32bit version of `usp10.dll` for yourself from `C:\Windows\SysWOW64\usp10.dll` of your Windows installation (assuming you have a 64-bit installation, otherwise `C:\Windows\System32\usp10.dll`) that it is not a DirectWrite proxy ([for more info](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniscribe)). Rule of thumb, your `usp10.dll` should have a size more than 500kb, otherwise it is designed to work with DirectWrite which Wine can't work with its original one. You want a Uniscribe from Windows 7 or older. Put the DLL in the folder you are going to run the next command, 5. `WINEDLLOVERRIDES="usp10=n" wine hb-shape.exe fontname.ttf -u 0061,0062,0063 --shaper=uniscribe` (`0061,0062,0063` means `abc`, use test/shaping/hb-unicode-decode to generate ones you need) When you have built that, you can test HarfBuzz's native shaper against Uniscribe following these instructions: https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/issues/3671