Cask font-noto-color-emoji incompatible with MacOS

[magneticnorth]

Output of brew config

HOMEBREW_VERSION: 4.6.17
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: aa278895809b4c079e560fb4fb9bf17e48cf65f1
Last commit: 4 hours ago
Branch: main
Core tap JSON: 13 Oct 16:32 UTC
Core cask tap JSON: 13 Oct 16:32 UTC
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /opt/homebrew
HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS: []
HOMEBREW_DISPLAY: /private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.fF1QA6fE3x/org.xquartz:0
HOMEBREW_FORBID_PACKAGES_FROM_PATHS: set
HOMEBREW_MAKE_JOBS: 10
HOMEBREW_SORBET_RUNTIME: set
Homebrew Ruby: 3.4.5 => /opt/homebrew/Library/Homebrew/vendor/portable-ruby/3.4.5/bin/ruby
CPU: deca-core 64-bit arm_firestorm_icestorm
Clang: 17.0.0 build 1700
Git: 2.50.1 => /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/git
Curl: 8.7.1 => /usr/bin/curl
macOS: 15.6.1-arm64
CLT: 16.4.0.0.1.1747106510
Xcode: 26.0.1
Rosetta 2: false

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Description of issue

Not sure if this is a valid complaint, but it appears font-noto-color-emoji isn't compatible with MacOS. FontBook > Validate File reports 'sfnt required tables' and 'System Validation' errors, so, won't install. From what I can glean, Apple fonts have some other color table format, and third parties have converted this font accordingly, though I haven't tried it. Any advice here?

The problem I was trying to solve is rendering ⚠️ in graphviz as reported in graphviz issue 2741. pango can't find a font to render this emoji. It's not a graphviz-specific problem - it turns out using this emoji crashes gedit and pango-view when a font lookup assert fails. Interesting. The emoji is still available in MacOS core graphics programs like email, Safari, iterm2, etc. I do see /Users/north/Library/Fonts/NotoColorEmoji.ttf which is linked from /opt/homebrew/Caskroom/font-noto-color-emoji/latest, but its existence doesn't seem to help.

FYI/FYA a workaround for the original issue is export PANGOCAIRO_BACKEND=fc.

Relevant casks

font-noto-color-emoji

[magneticnorth]

To cut through the above verbiage, my suggestion is

1. open Homebrew gedit
2. paste ⚠️
3. observe crash due to missing color emoji in gtk pango
4. brew install --cask font-noto-color-emoji
5. repeat 1-3 above, observe gedit still crashing
6. open Fontbook application, run File -> Validate File and point at /opt/homebrew/Caskroom/font-noto-color-emoji/latest/NotoColorEmoji.ttf, observe reported errors.

[SMillerDev]

Have you reported this to the developers? https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Color+Emoji is the place that Homebrew downloads this from.

[magneticnorth]

I'm sorry that I'm a little slow to comprehend the situation.

Over in https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/pango/-/issues/871#note_2575590, Pierre Souchay proposed a one-line fix to pango so it can load the Apple color emoji font again and the bug reported in graphviz (and similar bugs in other Gnome apps) will be fixed. So, original problem solved.

For this discussion, I learned the incompatibility between MacOS and Google Noto Color Emoji (i.e. Open Type for Android) is well known. Also, the point of distributing Noto Color Emoji through Homebrew is for the benefit of apps like Chrome or Edge that are coded to find and load Open Type color fonts, even though not directly supported through MacOS. Conversely, a straightforward port of this font to a MacOS compatible color table format still does not make the font trivially usable, see https://github.com/DeeDeeG/noto-color-emoji-font

Sympathy for open source developers that have to keep up with this as a volunteer effort.