0.18.4

Changes

• Reuse compatible HarfBuzz subfonts within each shaping call, reducing allocation and font-setup overhead.
• Avoid redundant image-pool locking when releasing images and renderer contexts.
• Batch threaded event-completion accounting to reduce synchronization overhead without changing worker wakeup policy or output ordering.
• Correct Microsoft symbol-font base offsets, including fonts mapped outside the 0xF000 range, following the upstream fix.
• Update FreeBSD CI to 14.4 and the compatible VM action release.

The three performance optimizations preserve rendered output. The symbol-font correction intentionally fixes previously incorrect rendering.

Downloads

• libass-android-0.18.4.zip: Android static libraries.
• libass-apple-xcframework-0.18.4.zip: Apple XCFramework package.

Validation

The pre-release source passed GitHub CI, Meson CI, emulated-architecture regression tests, and FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and OmniOS VM checks. The Haiku job remains blocked before compilation by a HaikuPorts package download failure (libunibreak_devel).

Full Changelog: 0.18.3...0.18.4

0.18.3

Full Changelog: 0.18.2...0.18.3

0.18.2

Full Changelog: 0.18.1...0.18.2

0.18.1

Full Changelog: 0.18.0...0.18.1

libass 0.18.0

Highlights:

• Add thread-safe cache and font access internals, plus support for per-event threaded rendering.
• Add parser, cache, rasterizer, and renderer performance improvements.
• Add ASS_FEATURE_FAST_BLUR for faster approximate blur rendering.
• Support legacy Arabic charmap handling.
• Improve Meson, CI, and cross-platform build coverage.
• Add release builds for Android static libraries and Apple XCFramework packages.