[Feature Request] A few ideas...

[curya]

Favorites Tab
I frequently find myself searching a few characters again and again in order to copy and paste. It would be nice if there was a Favorites Tab so I wouldn't have to constantly search every time.

Zoom
Maximizing the window does not increase the size of the glyphs. Being able to enlarge the glyphs would help to see them better.

Emoji Improvements
Noto has "Noto Emoji" and "Noto Color Emoji." We should be able to see both the color and mono versions as they are sometimes very different.

[Mercury13]

1. Accepted.
2. Please invent some interface, and I’ll try.
3. Interesting. I use SVGs rather than Noto Emoji, some redrawn or from other libraries.

[Mercury13]

As I create some funky SVGs ahead of time, there will be some troubles when I made that SVG, and Noto didn’t yet.

[curya]

1. 😎

2. It could be as simple as ctrl+mousewheel. If my mouse is on the left side (Blocks tab/Library tab/etc) then all the glyphs should scale. Likewise, if my mouse is on the right side, then everything on the right should scale as well. Currently, ctrl+mousewheel already works on the right side but only for the text underneath the glyphs.

3. All the SVGs are on the Github: https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-emoji
   Also, it would be nice to only use Noto to keep consistency.

[Mercury13]

I use that GitHub. I drew some emoji long before Noto came. Some have technical problems, and I fixed them.
Why not just Noto.

1. Technical problems, so-called “misrenders”

• Qt SVG engine does not support clip paths: dancer, ear, some images of superhero/villain
• SVG engines want some overlap: almost all bicolour and tricolour flags
• Just bugs: gorilla, star-eyed

2. Contrast: placard, dove, tornado, all body parts, some flags with white outline
3. Strange image: cart wheel → Twitter car wheel, families that aren’t marked as silhouettes → older Noto
4. Strange flag toolchain → historically use Twitter

New Noto hands are really nice, but so much work… IDK when I start.

[curya]

What about just rendering Noto Color Emoji with the font file?

[Mercury13]

I tested, does not work for me for some reason. And contrast, of course.

[Mercury13]

…And freedom, of course.

[curya]

Another suggestion:

The ability to turn off showing installed system fonts because sometimes it chooses a font that's just incorrect (even though I have all Noto fonts installed).

Example:

Also notice the spelling error at the bottom.

Should be "Used in." Not "Used un."

[Mercury13]

:) How to turn off those fonts?
MYuppy is not system either.

[curya]

I mean the option to not display fonts that I've installed myself (fonts outside the Unicodia font folder).

[Mercury13]

Those are exactly the fonts installed in the system. I thought about blacklisting some fonts.

[Mercury13]

Typo is fixed.

[curya]

I'm saying, why are we displaying two different fonts? One is enough.

[Mercury13]

One is the sample from Unicodia, controlled by ME (mostly). The other is the sample from your computer, and the font is chosen by some dumb algorithm. At least to ensure that the character is actually supported by computer.

[curya]

Right. For me, as someone who has all the Noto fonts installed, showing a font from my computer is useless. The "dumb algorithm" makes it worse.

So a feature to turn off the computer fonts in Unicodia would be nice.

[Mercury13]

I won’t turn off installed fonts, but I see two ways.

1. Font blacklist.
2. Bump Noto fonts — but they are actually worse than specialized fonts.

[Mercury13]

For example: SIL’s Lanna font is much better than Noto, but it needs a fixup font because of…

1. They chose some specific style, and that language (Khün?) does not have tone 5.
2. Virtual virama is dotted circle 25CC rather than cross.
   That’s why I preferred Noto.

Unicodia actually uses some SIL’s fonts: Arabic, Myanmar.

[Mercury13]

So, I’m constantly looking for specialized fonts. Right now Unicodia has…

• Arabic, Myanmar, Toto (SIL)
• Coptic (Society for Classical Studies)
• Glagolitic, Banner chant (Project Ponomar)
• Syriac (Beth Mardutho)
• Makasar, Tangsa (right from Unicode requests)
• Sutton (Noto’s glyphs, tables built by me from scratch)
• Brahmi (Segoe, uses Noto just as backup)
• Tibetan (Andrew West)
• Gothic (Junicode)

What I’d like to replace…

• Lanna, Javanese, Aghwank: there are more interesting styles
• Devanagari, Kannada: strange metrics

[Mercury13]

@curya
Working on Favourites.

[Mercury13]

@curya
Now favourites are getting sort of shape.

[Mercury13]

@curya New tasks (probably tonight): synchronize glyph shapes, add to favourites, remove, save to config

[Mercury13]

@curya Almost done.

1. I use Tahoma font, and I use a character from DejaVu. It moves layout a few pixels up-down depending on whether DejaVu is present. Does UnicodiaFunky has better dimensions?
2. Save to config.
3. Invent some stub text when the list is empty.

[Mercury13]

@curya

[Mercury13]

@curya Favourites done!

[Mercury13]

@curya
Zoom: need an interface justification.

B/w emoji: IDK, more work when preparing new Unicode, plus corner cases.

Enlarge sample and remove system font: maybe.

[Mercury13]

@curya
B/w emoji: sorry, in peacetime. Kyiv is the safest place in Ukraine, but nevertheless I feel unsafe.
I’ve got more business besides looking for b/w emoji and working with size, copyright etc.

[Mercury13]

@curya About mono emoji: as I said, I scrapped due to bad maintainability and special war release schedule.
But I made this thing, may part2 be done?

[curya]

@Mercury13 Sorry. I've been away for a while.

What's wrong with using mono Noto Emoji?

If it were up to me I would just put the mono and color emoji side by side on the right. And get rid of the system font section since as I said before it's pretty useless.

[Mercury13]

What's wrong with using mono Noto Emoji?

Poor maintainability: while the war is on, I hurry to pull the newest characters somehow. And I don’t ache to draw b/w emoji together with colour.
And because I can disappear anytime, I started to write how to update Unicodia, after all.

If it were up to me I would just put the mono and color emoji side by side on the right. And get rid of the system font section since as I said before it's pretty useless.

As for me, it’s useful, but I really need to rethink what to do with these not-really-standard fonts.
The main problem of Noto is poor functionality: recently I made Coptic whose functionality is Noto + NewAthena combined. Someone tested three Myanmar fonts for Mon language, and his one was the winner, but 2nd was SIL Padauk (<10 issues), and 3rd was Noto (dozens of issues).

[Mercury13]

My peacetime policy was: pull as soon as Unicode is released, and some big non-CJK set is implemented.
The trigger to U14 was Noto Vithkuqi, November 2021.

[curya]

I'm not sure I understand. Why is mono Noto Emoji so hard to maintain? All the glyphs are there and they update very rarely...

[Mercury13]

New glyphs appear very late.

[Mercury13]

About Noto OTF font…

Low contrast

Not-really-canonical image

Added very late due to doubts whether hands would be good and what to do, and Slack STILL uses old outlined

Strange toolchain until recently

[Mercury13]

I’m the first who updated THIS flag

[curya]

Mono Noto Emoji has no contrast issues and emojis like the wheel look fine to me:

And flags are simple too:

The issue of Noto being late to add new glyphs is not that big of a deal. It's okay to have tofu until new glyphs get added. We aren't in a hurry.

[Mercury13]

@curya
Concerning zoom… What would you like better: zoom table or zoom samples?