I'm also implementing a GUI system for text-dense applications. After researching different options, I currently use GPU to render Quadratic curves.
I subdivide cubical curves into quadratic curves with CPU and cache the resulting geometry.
Also, I hope to learn more about the font fallback implementation in a future post. i.e. what platform native libraries to use on each platform to find available fonts? And what's the logic behind finding a close font fallback?