niksavchenk0 / rbxcustom-fontemojis Goto Github PK

I'm the creator of UnifontEX (http://stgiga.github.io/UnifontEX), whose TrueType version (UnifontExMono.ttf) is in your mod. I'm glad you find it worthy of inclusion, and I couldn't be happier, but I should clarify a few things:
The font supports WAY more than just emoji, and the filename + internal font name of UnifontExMono is there in order to make picky code editors and terminals treat the font as monospaced if stuff like the OS/2 table and the Panose section of it (as well as some other sections of TrueType) don't produce that outcome. The X is lowercase in UnifontExMono so that Mono is clearly distinct from the rest of the font name to maximize success.

In terms of creator credit: Unifont IS by Unifoundry, but all my changes were ones never pursued by the original developers, and it's a distinct fork. Firstly, regular Unifont never merged Plane 0 and Plane 1 into a single font, but I decided to take that step anyways.
Regular Unifont does not come in several of the formats that UnifontEX comes in, such as OTB (somewhat-old Linux), DFONT (ancient Macs), webfonts such as WOFF, WOFF2, iOS Safari SVG, and EOT, TTF2PNG font sheets for game usage (also, I've made mine able to be read by circuitry), NEC PC-98 emulator font sheets, and "custom" formats (a SVGZ/Gzipped SVG version of the iOS Safari SVG webfont version, as well as a fictional WOFF3, made from running the TrueType version through my strong in-browser compression program BWTC32Key, available at http://b3k.sourceforge.io or http://stgiga.github.io/bwtc32key which obtains better size reduction than WOFF or WOFF2.) The BDF version of UnifontEX supports characters that regular Unifont's BDF version does not.

In addition to exotic formats, I've also made use of various special features of the various formats involved, features not used by regular Unifont in the formats they support that UnifontEX is ALSO offered in. Stuff like quite a few special TrueType/OpenType tables in font formats derived from them (WOFF, WOFF2, OTB, DFONT, EOT, and the WOFF3 proof-of-concept, and of course the TrueType itself), as well as some other special stuff, including an Easter egg.

Also, the fonts are designed to be as cross-platform (and compatible in general) as possible, by virtue of generating them with special settings and fields set. I also researched quite a lot on font renderer glitches and corner cases so I could find solutions to them.

This project took 9 years, which I found out quite recently upon looking through one of my old hard drives and finding source files for an ancient build of UnifontEX, as well as the program I used to make it, known as FontForge. I wager that once FontForge adds in support for HarfBuzz's beyond-64k (in actuality, the goal of it is to allow more than 65536 maximum glyphs, because 65536 is 64 times 1024) mode when it is fully defined, UnifontEX will be self-forked into a version that goes well beyond the 65417 glyphs currently in it, to cover stuff like the upcoming Unicode 16 in all its full glory.

Basically, for 9 years, I set out to do things to Unifont that I felt the original developers should have done that they didn't do, so UnifontEX is a fork of Unifont. It's like how there are Firefox forks that support older platforms and/or do things that regular Firefox cannot do, and aren't canonical versions of Firefox.

I'm glad you starred UnifontEX, and in fact, I'm glad you used my apparently-longest project. Just know that Unifoundry is not the only author of it. I personally hope that more people start using the project.

Oh also, I recently found out that the Japanese and Chinese font used in the new indie browser game "Gem Frenzy" is UnifontEX. Funnily enough, they used the Fontspace version, and I can't argue with that, though they did capitalize the title wrong, but hey, it got used in a game. I know they used the Fontspace version because they were nice enough to provide the link. Oh, and that version is identical to the TrueType version (the one you used). Oh and the funny thing about the Fontspace link is that the page dates back to 2017, during a rather early stage of development, on which I posted the prototype. It had a different title and URL, but it DID find quite a lot of favor, so, rather than make a new page, I updated everything (including the title and even the page link) and since I had uploaded the TrueType on that old page to Github in 2017, I put that Github link in the description telling people looking for the old version to go there, but the modern UnifontEX Github link was given the spotlight. Happily, my changes to the Fontspace page got reflected by the places that scrape Fontspace after some time. Given the Gem Frenzy usage, I'm SO glad I updated the page to keep existing engagement (and prevent conflict).

This font actually would be helpful to use as a general chat font, because it supports a LARGE chunk of Unicode, not just emoji. It even supports stuff like musical notation, playing cards, and dominoes (among MANY other things). I give full permission to do this. I hope you like what I do (also, UnifontEX is barely scratching the surface of my tech projects.) Oh and it has MANY other uses, many detailed on the Github page.

I'm glad you saw this worthy of inclusion in your project!

Best Wishes,
stgiga