Could UBports adopt Google's blob emoji from Android 4.4?
-
I was just reading this article about the discontinuation of Google's blob emoji for Android O and it seems to be generating some backlash, since a lot of people do like them (me included), particularly the version that came with Android 4.4.
The article makes a great case of why Android 4.4's emoji are iconic and look great. If Google seems determined to discontinue them, I think it would greatly benefit UBports to adopt them.
I know that my proposal sounds naive, but still this could be a point of differentiation for the project.
After a quick look at the Noto Emoji project , this set of emoji was gradually replaced, culminating on this commit.
The black and while font NotoEmoji-Regular.ttf is from Dec 15, 2015 and still in this style.
It is perfectly possible, for example, to fork EmojiOne Color SVG-in-OpenType font project and substitute the SVGs appropriately with the Noto Emoji Blobs.
-
I'd love that too.
The blob emoji are the best. -
We plan on sticking with Emojione for the time being.
EmojiOne's emojis are well loved much like Googles Blob emoji's.
EmojiOne's licensing has allowed us to use there emojis until the latest licence, if we wish to keep up with emoji's then we may have to switch to something else which has a less restrictive licence such as EmojiTwo, but that will only be after we've solved a lot of other problems, we need to make the emoji keyboard more responsive and user friendly as well as keep them updated, and this isn't on our priority list right now.
Googles Blob emojis may be an option if the license is at least more free then the current EmojiOne licensing and as long as it keeps up to date.
-
@ChloeWolfieGirl @mariogrip
How does Ubuntu Touch render emoji? Does it use the CBDT/CBLC color font format (like NotoColorEmoji.ttf from Android) or SVG in Open Type font format (like the EmojiOne Color SVGinOT Font)?
EDIT: it looks like it uses the CBDT/CBLC color font format like Android. This poses an aditional challenge, license wise when the world moves on to Unicode 10, since EmojiOne is no longer free. Hopefully by then there are libre alternatives (that aren't the horrible Android O emoji). I also hope to have the time to contribute to this, but CBDT/CBLC fonts are harder to compile than SVGinOT fonts, for what I've seen.
The Noto Emoji project is Apache 2.0 for the color emoji. If Ubuntu Touch uses SVGinOT Fonts, it's perfectly possible to fork Noto Emoji and convert it to SVGinOT and still retain the license (the B&W emoji are rendered on the fly from the color ones while compiling the font file). If the Apache 2.0 license is suitable for you guys, I don't mind setting up a repo to provide the SVGinOT font with Google's blob emoji from Android 4.4 while being Unicode 9 compilant (for the most part, because country flags and the rainbow flag (at least) are currently missing from the Noto project: I hope google updates it in the short term though, hopefully before updating to the horrible Android O design).
Another thing to take into account for Emojitwo is the transition to Unicode 10 and beyond. In the case of the Noto project, Google provides the updates under the Apache 2.0 License (which can be adapted afterwards), while in the case of Emojitwo those updates will have to be designed from the ground up, since they can't be forked from future updates of EmojiOne anymore).
