Need help understanding how things fit together

[Anthony Kraft <anthony allen kraft gmail com>]

I have been researching text rendering and have read what I can find about Pango, HarfBuzz, and FreeType. However, I cannot seem to put together exactly how these pieces fit together since all explanations are quite high level. I think what would help me the most is to understand what the inputs/outputs are of each layer and how they feed into one another (or possibly where you can skip a layer).