OpenMojis on dark background

[Pr0methean]

☃️ Snowman is transparent, whereas ⛄ Snowman Without Snow is opaque white, so they don't match when the background isn't white.

[dnlutz]

thanks for the hint. at the moment we have a some problems with openmoji on a dark background (to the left of the snowman there is a snowflake ; ) we have to think about how we can handle this.

[b-g]

Many thanks for the bug report! I guess for the two snowmans it is easy to fix ... but as Daniel hinted there are quite a few cases like this, where we should find a general way of dealing with the background problem. You can either do a PR and fix the background or wait for the next official release, which aims to fix open issues and to introduce new special interest categories.

[SlySven]

The simplistic solution for all emoji glyphs that have graphical elements that are thin and are monochrome is for a suitable contrasting colour outline around them so that it provides a background when the canvas onto which the glyph is painted is similar in colour as the original element...

[Pr0methean]

@SlySven Yes, this is what was done with Google's Noto Color Emoji to make them work on yellow backgrounds.

[carlinmack]

not a fix to issue at large but fix to the snowmen in question in #128

[dnlutz]

A 6px wide white contour line underneath would be the simplest and most pragmatic solution. It doesn't disturb on light backgrounds and can be removed if necessary. Actually I even like the extra line. The emojis look bolder and more stable on dark backgrounds.

[carlinmack]

I think this would generally work, but there's a few factors involved here:

1. The template
   
   Currently the margins are 4px, and I'm trying to make sure emoji fit in the margins
   
   I think it's okay for emoji to overlap the template with the wider stroke

2. I suggested in Android support through Whatsapp Stickers #112 that we decrease the template padding by 50%, so that emojis look similar in text to other platforms. However with the new outer stroke, that would mean that emojis would touch. I guess the alternative is to increase the size of the "smiley" circle in the template and increase the size of all emoji to be at least that width or height. Obviously this is a lot of work but I think that it would be worth it so that they are a practical size.

Overall, I think this is a good solution and I kinda like the "sticker" look.

A counter point I would suggest is that maybe not all emoji needs this treatment, I think lots of the emoji do fine without the background

or

and that maybe we only make them stickers if they are compromised in some way (like the paperclips)

maybe a rule is if there is any line without a stroke or fill? (like the needle in Syringe)

I am happy to accept that we need to be be consistent though :)

[dnlutz]

If we continue in this direction we should treat all emoji equal. Otherwise it could get complicated and inconsistent. The additional outline also helps for flags with black parts:

[dnlutz]

… and it would be really cool if we could somehow automate this whole thing ; )