Behdad Esfahbod

My name is Behdad. It's roughly pronounced as [beh da:d] [es f@h bo:d] in IPA ASCII transcription. It is a Persian name, natively written as بهداد اسفهبد. I was born and grew up in Iran, but have been living in Canada since 2003. I live in Toronto. I am a Software Developer at Google in the Waterloo office. Previously I worked for Red Hat. I am a huge Free Software enthusiast, and in love with the GNOME Project. My long-term goal since late last century has been to make Persian work great in computer software, in particular, in Free Software, though these days my focus is not limited to Persian anymore. I am directly responsible for code that makes it possible to read every language of the world on software like Firefox, Google Chrome, Android, Linux desktop, and elsewhere. More about me:

• English weblog: McEs, A Hacker Life, where I write [not so] regularly about my day to day life and my work as a Free Software developer. Update Nov 2011: As of recently, best way to follow me would be through my Google+ profile.
• Résumé (shorter PDF version here).
• Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ohloh, del.icio.us, Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube, CouchSurfing, Orkut, identi.ca, FLOSS.pro, profiles in case you want to browse my friends, photos, projects, etc. Some may require login.
• Amazon.ca wish list, if you want to surprise me with a gift (maybe I fixed your bug or implemented your feature request, or you're just being nice!) list, ThinkGeek.com wish list, for the geekier gifts, though that's really from almost a decade ago, and my interests have changed...

I wonder if you find what you are looking for here, so feel free to contact me. Contact information is at the end of this page.

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
	— Harry S Truman

Some stuff:

• My lastest whitepaper on text rendering, called High-DPI, Subpixel Text Positioning, Hinting, What happens when an unstoppable bullet hits an impenetrable wall?.
• My work-in-progress whitepaper State of Text Rendering. Overdue for an update, still a good read to understand the pieces of the Free Software text rendering stack.
• Life Goes On In Tehran, nice photoblog with monthly issues of everyday life in Iran.
• The Lovely Mazandaran, set of photos from Mazandaran, the province in Iran that I am from. Thanks Mani.
• An stunning short animation on the art of Isfahan architecture is here.
• Gridlock is a nice mind game.
• Lots of useful stuff at Michal Zalewski's wonderful homepage.
• Help End Software Patents by supporting FSF.

Persian stuff:

• Google Persian Transliteration tool, converting Fargilisi to Persian.
• Join my Persian computing group.
• The web-famous Behdad's Editor, with Open and Save functionality now.
• Behdad's Calendar, supports multiple-system calendar as used in Iran, now available as a Google Gadget and Facebook App. Just click on the logos at the bottom. Also reachable at taghvim.info.
• Download the free Persian Nastaliq font IranNastaliq. It's simply gorgeous. Screenshot using Pango here.
• With my friend Pooya, we run the RiRa Persian Digital Library. The database as well as the source code are available at sf.net/projects/rira. Enjoy, and Happy Norouz!
• Nazem by Houshang Moradi-Kermani, an episode of the Majid stories ("ghessehaa-ye majid"), brought to you by Connie Bobroff, the heroine of Persian computing for language learners. Quite a joy to read and refresh your memories!
• I'm maintaining a mirror of the late Earthreport weblog by Franny Fallacy.
• Just for the record, my old Persian blog The Thin Ice, by Bertrand Elizabeth. And some stuff I worked for Ghasedak are still at Meltin' Ice, by Bertrand Elizabeth.
• Please consider linking to this important page about Farsi [sic].
• Ghasedak was an online magazine published by Iranian students in Toronto. I used to be in the editorial board. I'm maintaining the archive now.
• Khaateraat-e Yek Asb, by Yar-Ali PourMoghaddam. I did the online version (by permission). Strongly recommended.
• The Little Prince the masterpiece by Antoine Saint-Exupery, translated to Persian by Ahmad Shamlou (also vocal). I did the online version (by permission).
• Chris de Burgh's Spanish Train translated to Persian by me is here.

Projects I develop / maintain:

• HarfBuzz: the Free Unicode+OpenType text shaping library. This is what I spend most of my hacking time on these days. I take credit for naming this one.
• GLyphy: high-quality text rendering using OpenGL ES2 shaders.
• Fontconfig: library for font customization and configuration.
• Pango: the GNOME Unicode text rendering library.
• gucharmap: the GNOME Unicode character map.
• vte: the GNOME terminal emulation widget.
• GNU FriBidi: an implementation of the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (bidi).
• preload: an adaptive readahead daemon.

Projects I contribute to, in alphabetical order:

• The FarsiTeX Project
• The FarsiWeb Project
• The Fedora Project
• The Freedesktop.org Projects (Cairo graphics, Fontconfig, HarfBuzz)
• The GNOME Project. More about my GNOME involvement here.
• The GNU Project (GNU FriBidi)
• The Unicode Standard

Downloads:

• Download directory, contains presentations, publications, course projects, etc. (including my BSc FarsiTeX thesis and my MSc preload thesis)
• Nibbles, my favorite game, ever! (latest version by Mohammad Toossi, for Dos, 60KB)
• XKobo used to be my favorite single player game when I started using Linux.

Friends and Family on the Web:

• My friend Pouria started Café Pamenar in the heart of Toronto's hip Kensington Market. Drop by when you're around.
• For long I envied my friend's compact name: Leila Zia; her full name fits in a 8-char login id! Now I figured there is an Asian actor/writer/I-don't-know of her exact same name. Now that I don't envy.
• My brother Behnam finally put up a new homepage. He also maintains esfahbod.info as a portal to our homepage, blog, and photo pages.
• My friend Daver took his mobile veterinary practice online.

Contact:

Email me to behdad at behdad dot org.

I am typically online on IRC as behdad on irc.freenode.net, irc.gnome.org, and irc.mozilla.org.

Copyright 1999–2013, Behdad Esfahbod (b)