OpenMoji: Open-source emojis | Hacker News Reader

OpenMoji: Open-source emojis

openmoji.org

356 pointsnameequalsmain67 comments

FYI: google's are Apache licensed here: https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-emoji

Twitter emoji (discord uses these also) are open source: https://twemoji.twitter.com/

Both of these are very consistent and good open source emoji. I think in the past a lot of these projects that were not backed by companies eventually devolved into a paid product that was no longer open source, but I'm hopeful that openmoji continues down the FOSS path.

Twemoji is amazing. I rooted my Android phone just so I could replace stock emoji with Twemoji.

I'm really glad Discord used them. They're becoming more mainstream and easier to use in projects without people asking about the emoji

Looks like Google’s aren’t super easy to use outside of Chrome and Android:

> NotoColorEmoji uses the CBDT/CBLC color font format, which is supported by Android and Chrome/Chromium OS. Windows supports it starting with Windows 10 Anniversary Update in Chrome and Edge. On macOS, only Chrome supports it, while on Linux it will support it with some fontconfig tweaking, see issue #36. Currently we do not build other color font formats.

JFTR, "Symbola" font[0] actually is not an opensource and just freeware for personal use, but it was "fully free for any use"[1] till February/March 2018[2]. BTW, Even in actual state "Symbola" is my fav font for emoji input on desktop (via Gucharmap[2]) and mobile (via UnicodePad[3]).

[0] https://dn-works.com/ufas/

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20180129230141/http://users.teil...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20180302032711/http://users.teil...

[3] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gucharmap

[4] https://github.com/Ryosuke839/UnicodePad

We removed Symbola from the official Arch repositories because of these license changes.

Namely these (paraphrased) snippets:

1) The developer retains all rights to previous, current and future versions of UFAS.

2) Users are prohibited from network installation.

3) Users are prohibited from redistributing UFAS.

> The developer retains all rights to previous,...

Developer can't retains rights granted with previous versions of "Symbola".

But does Twemoji or Noto have a sea level rise emoji?[0]

[0]: https://openmoji.org/library/#group=extras-openmoji%2Fclimat...

Emerji certainly does! https://www.emerji.org/

Emojis are normally used inlined in text. So, I think, they should demo theirs the same size as they would be when inlined in text. Otherwise hard to tell tell the emoji quality. I'm also a bit concerned with the thick black outlines, they may look not as good at the small scale (may look too noisy or may overpower small color details).

Yes, it doesn’t look like they would be suitable for low-DPI screens at regular text size.

At least the lines aren't as horribly thick as Microsoft's current emoji set. Though I think they're gonna be redoing all their emojis with a 3D art style soon

The last time I evaluated these for use in my app, I found that the "consistent" and "minimalist" visual style makes it really difficult to recognise object/plant/food emoji from one another by shape or at a distance. Other emoji have clear shapes, but not enough internal detail to understand what they mean. this is especially problematic with a set of non-Android, non-Twitter, non-Apple emoji, where users haven't learned the shapes yet, but have to go by looks. It looks like the creators of this project wanted "function over form", or at least "form follows function", but in their pursuit of Bauhaus they accidentally ended up with Droodles.

Even the person ones aren't great. I actually thought that the baby was a hunchbacked old man. And the facepalm looks like someone covering up one eye to read an eye chart. I seriously wouldn't have gotten either of those without the caption telling me.

Which was obviously preposterous. And then I actually looked at the baby…

https://openmoji.org/library/#search=Baby&emoji=1F476

I stand humbly corrected

Huh, what is up with those facepalms? It’s like they wanted to show the person still has their eyes?

From the site: "All emojis are free to use under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license"

I'd like CC0 better for this case. If anyone is looking for a repository with many CC0 icons (among other licenses), I recommend SvgRepo: https://www.svgrepo.com/

The creator of the project suggests that the license is for edits of the emojis, rather than the projects which use the emoji. [1] As someone involved with the project, I'm not sure how this should be communicated so that this is clear

[1] https://github.com/hfg-gmuend/openmoji/issues/155

The license states that you have to give attribution according to CC4 and that any edits will carry the same license, the comment in your issue page suggests open sourcing the files you use to make the edits so others can easily edit your changes as well.

Personally I like the license you're using.

Yeah but the creator of the project can suggest whatever they want if they don't understand the license they use.

Going over CC-BY-SA for those used to software licenses only: If I make a work which uses CC-BY-SA material I have to provide attribution. If I modify the emoji to suit my own purposes, I need to release these new emoji under CC-BY-SA, and attribution to the originals must be provided, they may not be kept proprietary.

Using it in a project is redistribution, modifying it is adaption.

Hey, thanks for the SVGRepo link!

There's a number of these types of sites, and I like to keep links to them all, for when I'm looking for inspiration or graphics.

These are great. Certain interactions are really tough to represent pictographically but they did pretty well from what I saw.

They've even had a go at the black and white versions of some flags! (but naturally they have a few they need to work on still). Flip the color switch on the link below to see it:

https://openmoji.org/library/#group=extras-unicode%2Fsubdivi...

In case someone doesn't know emojipedia, here is the link: https://emojipedia.org/

It covers all existing more or less complete emoji sets,, with licensing information (except for Apple Emojis. Nobody knows what is the license for Apple Emojis and how summer developers get away with using them).

What's a summer developer?

I'm a fan of the artwork in some of the older versions of Noto Color Emoji, which is also open source and freely-licensed.

But, it's good to have more options in the open emoji field -- if only Apple would freely license their emoji artwork.

you can see them all a little easier at https://hfg-gmuend.github.io/openmoji/

Thanks, the other link got hugged to death, or whatever we call the HN equivalent.

the hacker news effect!

Hackattack!

Sweet!

I'm making an android game and UTF8 emojis are great for UI icons. I'm currently using the Google Noto one but it's certainly not usable in games.

I'm waiting for Godot 4 to allow me to display android native emojis from the system font, but I'm not sure yet it will really work.

I now want to try if I can use this font for my icons, as long as godot allows me to load a font and pick UTF8 character by their codepoint.

Why is noto a no-go for games? License?

Noto uses Apache-2.0 [1] which should be fine for most stuff.

[1]: https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-emoji/blob/main/LICENSE

So does that mean I can publish a game using those icons, and earn money with micro transactions?

Yes, under certain conditions. In particular pay attention to the requirements for redistribution under clause 4 and the lack of trademark license specified in clause 6.

> OpenMoji is an open-source project of 50+ students and 2 professors of the HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd (Design University) and external contributers.

Congrats to everybody for taking time and giving us those emojis.

for a while I've been thinking that it would be cool if emojis were directly in the font, so that they changed style to match the font being used.

No pregnant man emoji, 0/10 literally unusable

On a more serious note, what are the author's plans to extend it? I saw that it's a project, so will it keep growing or is it pretty much done?

I see the sports icons but where are all the sex position ones?

Let’s contribute some!

The plan is to stay up to date with Unicode emoji releases, and add extra ones (unicode [1] and original [2]) as they are designed

[1] https://openmoji.org/library/#group=extras-unicode [2] https://openmoji.org/library/#group=extras-openmoji

Could these be turned into an @font-face for use on websites?

Take a look at https://github.com/SebastianAigner/twemoji-amazing

They don't particularly suit my tastes. Perhaps amateurish compared to other notable open source emojis.

The font files are very big (~10MB). They need some trimming before they are viable to use on websites.

Unicode has emojis[0] which are freely usable for nearly every device as far as I understand.

What is the purpose here? How much overlap?

[0] https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html

Aren't those all copyrighted? E.g. for the column "Appl" (sic) they're all copyrighted by Apple. You don't have rights to use them on your website or your Android app, for example.

Just because they're on the Unicode website doesn't mean Unicode owns them. It's just a resource to be aware of how emoji can appear differently in different sets.

Unless you can point out a column that is specifically open source.

> Unless you can point out a column that is specifically open source.

The "Twtr" (Twitter) column, I believe, is Twitter's "twemoji"[1], which is CC-BY.

But your general point about the link being for comparison purposes and not implying any particular license is also correct, too.

[1]: https://github.com/twitter/twemoji

Emojis are part of unicode but the actual image representations of the unicode characters are created and owned by platforms like microsoft or apple.

You can use the platform emojies on platforms that have and support them but you can't freely use them as in you can't redistribute them so you can't host or use them on your website without licensing issues.

Its like a font like Akurrat you can use it if the platform provides it but if you are providing it you need a licence.

Aren’t emojis part of the fonts? I don’t know, I’d just assumed that. So they’d be owned by the font designer?

No fonts actually include emoji to any significant extent, and definitely not in colour.

Instead, OSes use a font fallback list where other fonts are substituted in for characters that are missing, and each OS provides one font that includes all the emoji as colour bitmaps.

There's various ways how to do those in fonts. I think Apple uses bitmaps. Microsoft uses several overlaid glyphs in different colors. And there's also a way of embedding SVG as glyphs in fonts.

> No fonts actually include emoji to any significant extent, and definitely not in colour.

You're mistaken, that does not reflect reality.

https://www.google.com/get/noto/help/emoji/

https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-emoji

I have specifically installed this font in my X/Linux system to get colourful emoji.

Implementation might be a bit different because they are coloured but essentially yea. Whoever designed the icons or paid them too would own the licensing on them. I think most people think of fonts as free because they are soo ubiquitous but I have been caught out using licensed fonts on a site without the license.

Does Unicode provide an implementation/image of the spec?

I think each vendor has to make the design on their own.

Apple provides a copyrighted image for U+1F600 GRINNING FACE. Google also provides a copyrighted image for U+1F600 GRINNING FACE. And so on.

If you want to use Apple's image for U+1F600, your use either has to be “fair use” or Apple has to grant you a license. For example, Apple's app store guidelines explicitly grant you the following license:

> 4.5.6 Apps may use Unicode characters that render as Apple emoji in their app and app metadata. Apple emoji may not be used on other platforms or embedded directly in your app binary.

And of course because it's Apple, enforcement is capricious: https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/8/16992830/apple-emoji-crack...

So you might want an image for U+1F600 which you are clearly licensed to use. OpenMoji is one source for such an image.

They even include a number of that aren't in Unicode (yet?), like this Trump emoji [1]. They are allocated in the Private Use Zone of Unicode, so there shouldn't be any collisions with future unicode additions.

1: https://openmoji.org/library/#emoji=E183

This hasn't caught up to the change in presentation of the pistol emoji: the version presented clearly depicts a revolver:

https://openmoji.org/library/#emoji=1F52B

Good. I don't need my pistol emoji replaced with a squirt gun any more than I need the word pistol in this sentence replaced by my keyboard, my browser, my OS, my font, or anyone else who isn't me who wants to dictate how I think and how I express my thoughts.

Unfortunately, it's not "your" pistol emoji; it's someone else's, that you're reading on your device. And likewise, the expression of your thoughts is already controlled by the emoji font installed by the other person.

I also think it's a silly change that software vendors had absolutely no business making, but I am afraid that the battle is largely lost. All popular platforms now render the pistol as a squirt gun. Rendering it differently on your own computer achieves little.

Very strange that OpenMoji seemingly calls it a "water pistol" while continuing to render a revolver, however. That's surely going to annoy everyone...

There's also a rifle codepoint that is apparently abandoned

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/thanks-to...

Right. Everyone would complain if the message "squirt gun fight" where rendered "pistols at dawn" or vice versa. There's going to be ambiguity in any language, and to make it worse, most adults are not native speakers of emoji.

The fact that everyone's head is cut off is kind of creepy.

Links plz?

Generally, I really very much like the style. I wonder about the skin tones and inclusion. I only see yellow supported.

There's an argument to be made that just having 1 unrealistic color could be more inclusive than many skin tones, but the characteristics of the people look white in general. Like, even the curly haired person. They just look like white people. I'm white, but this doesn't seem very inclusive.

Is there a skin tone variant I'm missing?

if you click on individual emoji's you can see the skin tone variants for it. You can filter for only emojis with skin tone variants using the "All Emoji <Filter Icon>" button :)

I see it now. Thank you!

What is a non skin tone related "white characteristic" exactly?

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