Noto emoji should provide a fontconfig file to prioritize emoji fonts

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño)]

In order to get the emoji font to work in various apps (including chrome and electron based) the font should provide a fontconfig file to priotitize these fonts

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <alias>
    <family>serif</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Noto Color Emoji</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
  <alias>
    <family>sans-serif</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Noto Color Emoji</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
  <alias>
    <family>monospace</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Noto Color Emoji</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
</fontconfig>

Is what I've in ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/01-emoji.conf and that should instead be provided in /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/01-emoji-default.conf or similiar

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: fonts-noto-color-emoji 0~20180424-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-20.21-generic 4.15.17
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-20-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sat May 12 02:42:21 2018
Dependencies:

InstallationDate: Installed on 2010-07-10 (2862 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: fonts-noto-color-emoji
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2012-10-10 (2039 days ago)

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

The Noto Emoji font already works fine for me in Chromium.

Try https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html and look at the Browser column which should match the Google column. (There are a few exceptions: hamburger, beer mug, pistol, etc. where the website is slightly out of date for Google's emoji.)

Maybe Electron uses a too-old version of Chromium?
This commit might be important:
https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/706248

(I don't use any Electron apps now.)

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

By the way, are you aware that Noto Emoji is already listed in 45-generic.conf and 60-generic.conf ? On Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, those files are in /etc/fonts/conf.avail/

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Oh, I see. This bug was filed in response to https://askubuntu.com/questions/1029661/18-04-color-emoji-not-showing-up-at-all-in-chrome-only-partially-in-firefox/

If you look at the source code for the demo page, that page only uses the EmojiOne Color font which we don't provide by default in Ubuntu.

Therefore, I'm closing this bug since the test case is invalid.

[Pacho Ramos (pacho)]

I still see emojis being shown partially in some pages, for example in the same https://askubuntu.com/questions/1029661/18-04-color-emoji-not-showing-up-at-all-in-chrome-only-partially-in-firefox

the icon in this comment:
"I fixed it - I had to follow these instructions from 2016 😧 I had to create ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/01-emoji.conf with the following text:"

is not shown with color emoji

I am not sure if this is maybe caused by 60-generic.conf only setting noto color emoji for <family>emoji</family> and not other families

[Pacho Ramos (pacho)]

For information

This was fixed in webkitgtk:
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=191976

But still not solved in Chrom* and Firefox:
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=908541#makechanges
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1509988

Also, fontconfig upstream discourages to use play with conf file as suggested
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig/issues/136

[Andrew Thornton (art27)]

The problem is not Noto Color Emoji's fault - the problem lies in DejaVu Sans providing emoji glyphs. These need to be removed or at least separated out from the standard DejaVu Sans and DejaVu Monospace fonts.