[Pkg-javascript-devel] twemoji packaging: Fonts question

[Paul Wise]

On Sun, Aug 9, 2020 at 2:34 PM Felix Natter wrote:

> 2. quoting Jonas:
> "Speaking of SVGs, are you sure this is the real source of those SVG
> files? It seems amchine-generated to me, and I suspect there is real
> concern as to freedom aspects of distributing only as provided here.
> Even if you choose to use the JavaScript team as platform for your
> package maintenance, I recommend that you discuss the issue of source of
> fonts with the font team, as there is collected quite some knowledge and
> experience in that team."

While the SVG files are clearly not hand-written with a text editor,
that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't source, they could be
edited using a GUI editor, and SVG files often are edited with GUI
editors like Inkscape. Unfortunately they don't have any metadata to
indicate how they were created, so only upstream is able to answer
whether or not they are source files or not. OTOH....

Looking at the git repository, there is some indication that they are
using Adobe Illustrator to edit the files; there is a commit message
"Remove the AI assets, as this is a proprietary format and the SVGs
should suffice for editing". It isn't clear to me if this means they
no longer use the AI files and use Adobe Illustrator to edit the SVG
files or if they still use the AI files but keep them secret for
internal use but expect downstream folks to be fine just editing the
SVG files. The way that the commits that update the SVG/PNG files
(just dumping a whole bunch of changes into one commit, instead of
logical commits) and the fact that the PNG files have no automatic
build system makes me think that the AI files are still the source and
they are in an internal-to-Twitter project that just sends a pre-built
SVG/PNG dump to the GitHub project every once in a while.

https://github.com/twitter/twemoji/commit/d008619cc043b65bc6283f2b0d882b8d088811c2

So I suggest contacting the project to discuss how they develop the
SVGs. Also, sending them a patch for one of the SVGs would be an
interesting way to test where their actual source is. Probably asking
them to autobuild the PNG files would be a good idea too.

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise