0.3.2 was cancelled
I did mention on social platforms but not this blog (I make weird assumptions sometimes of when I should and shouldn’t make a blog post about something :S). There was too much R+D required for 0.4.0 so I cancelled 0.3.2 and am instead just moving all of those planned improvements (such as text descriptions) and new emoji stored up for 0.4.0.
Fonts are going well!
Hey, just giving you all an update on how the font compiler (currently named forc) is going.
These are the things that it can now do right now:
- It can now generate font files that are considered valid in macOS, iOS and Windows 10.
- sbix glyph formats are now fully working in macOS, iOS and Windows 10.
- Multiple ‘strikes’ of PNG images can now be compiled into an sbix font.
- OpenType formats are almost 100% valid according to Microsoft’s validator.
- Exports of various formats are almost 100% valid according to Google’s validator.
- It can compile valid, tested iOS Configuration Profiles (so fonts can be installed on iOS).
- Some effort has been made to be able to work out how to replace the default emoji set in macOS with Mutant Standard’s font.
- forc is starting to enforce good fontmaking standards, throwing errors and refusing to work when the input data is not proper.
- Ligatures (combinations of emoji characters) are now working in many respects!
The things that need working on:
- Working CBDT/CBLC (Android/Google) format
- Fix metric inaccuracies and inconsistencies
- Finish all of the input data validation
- orxporter integration
- Basic emoji picker web page
- Accompanying web content and guides
Things I’m thinking about potentially adding to forc at a later point in time:
- Custom binary compiler to improve reliability and accuracy
- COLR/CPAL (Windows 8/Microsoft Emoji) format
As far as I know, by the time it will be done, forc will be the most comprehensive open source emoji font creation tool that exists. It will also make orxporter an even more powerful emoji creation tool, becoming a one-click solution to generating custom emoji sets that can work in a really wide variety of places.
You can see the overview of progress for this project on Trello – https://trello.com/c/y6CliBKR/35-mutant-standard-040-fonts-forc
And you can check out the current source code and track it’s progress here – https://github.com/mutantstandard/forc