[ComputerGuru]

Your statement is only not incorrect because you couched it with "if you want text rendering to be consistent across platforms" but that really has nothing to do with anything. Every major desktop OS has native text rendering APIs that you can link against without shipping any additional dependencies, and they all work great if you're on the latest OS. Just use the native APIs and you don't need to reinvent the wheel.

[jcelerier]

> Just use the native APIs and you

cry because now your text is 2px longer on Mac than on Windows causing your paragraph to fold and breaking your layout and get user complaints that things aren't pixel-perfect between OSes. (if you never had that, well, you're a lucky person what else can I say ? for some it's a deal breaker.)

> and they all work great if you're on the latest OS

yes, I also have a few other kinks and fantasies. but for now, back to my macOS 10.9 and Ubuntu 14.04 users.

[ComputerGuru]

I can't tell if you're sarcastically agreeing with me or not, so in case you're actually serious:

> cry because now your text is 2px longer on Mac than on Windows causing your paragraph to fold and breaking your layout

Hopefully you don't expect everyone viewing this text file to only ever open it with the specific text editor make/model/version that you used to write it?

> back to my macOS 10.9 and Ubuntu 14.04 users.

Those operating system versions also provide more than acceptable text rendering that the users are already using for everything else on their system. Yes, the latest emoji won't render. But if that really bothered your users, they'd have upgraded.