Is it possible just to treat Emojis just like we treat regular typeface fonts? Is there something preventing me from downloading Apple's Emoji "font" and setting it as the default on my Android device?
This would allow developers to specify their own preferred sets (and allow users to override).
AndroidEmoji.ttf is Apache 2 just like the rest of the Android source. Here's fedora's page[1] that links straight to the Android JB source folder of fonts.
Symbola font distribution terms: "In lieu of a licence - Fonts in this site are offered free for any use; they may be installed, embedded, opened, edited, modified, regenerated, posted, packaged and redistributed."
I just wrote my own... Seems like adding an entire library for this is definitely overkill.
var emojify = function(message) {
var codes = [
'\ud83c[\udf00-\udfff]',
'\ud83d[\udc00-\ude4f]',
'\ud83d[\ude80-\udeff]'
];
return message.replace(new RegExp(codes.join('|'), 'g'), '<span class="emoji">$&</span>');
}
Edit: If this isn't clear, you'd then define an emoji based font family for the `emoji` CSS class. This means no image based emoji and therefore no colour, but IMO it's much simpler and actually more visually pleasing (black and white forces smarter emoji designs).
The library is simple and works well for us and Tweetdeck. Everyone is welcome to tweak it.
The value like stated in the blog is that the permissive licensing of this project/graphics will enable more spread of emoji across platforms. (see something like this blog for why licensing has been a PITA: http://words.steveklabnik.com/emoji-licensing)
Interesting. These seem to strike a balance between Apple's decidedly glosss-but-normal-shaped emoji and Google's flat-but-ghost-shaped emoji. I'd say that we really need an open emoji standard, but we all know how that goes.
There is room for interpretation to what each drawing will look like in each implementations. The standard simply says something like: "Cloud With Lightning"
Note that graphics are licensed under CC-BY-4.0, which means if you're using this on your blog you have give attribution to Twitter Inc (most likely in your footer).
Attribution in the source would suffice if it really bothers you. Almost all open source software has attribution as a requirement (ever look at your iPhone Settings->About->Legal->Legal Notices)
That being said, we could potentially CC0 the graphics in the future but attribution isn't much to ask.
Attribution requirement is enough to break the FSF guidelines, and not compatible with free licenses. What means that this font can not be used in BSD or GPL software.
No open source software has attribution as a requirement by definition.
Anyway, there's nothing wrong with any of that if it's really what you want. What's wrong is thinking that the requirement is banal, and thus harmless.
True but I didn't say all, I said most. I do think the requirement is banal because almost every piece of open source software you use requires some level of attribution.
This would allow developers to specify their own preferred sets (and allow users to override).