Reduce the ttf file size

[inkeliz]

I downloaded the "ThickFallback" release (TwitterColorEmoji-SVGinOT-ThickFallback-13.0.1.zip), but the .ttf file is almost ~11MB.

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I use some online tools (such as convertio.co) to convert TTF to WOFF, then I use the same tool from WOFF to TTF. In general, it is TTF -> WOFF -> TFF. That process drops the file size from 11MB to almost 3.5MB. Far I'm testing, there's no issue.

In order to compare, the default Windows file (seguiemj.ttf) is around 2MB.

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There's any proper tool to reduce the size of the ttf file? Why the WOFF to TTF manage to reduces the file size so significantly?

[13rac1]

My first guess is that tool drops the SVG tables. Can you confirm your converted version still has all color SVGs?

I'm always concerned with performance and efficiency, but why does the file size matter in this case? Apple Color Emoji is 99MB for comparison

[inkeliz]

I don't know about the color. I'm only using one opentype library to parse the .ttf, and that library seems to only handle black-white. So regardless of the size, it will only use the black-white.

The size matters because the executable (the .exe, .apk or .ipa) have around 8MB. The inclusion of the font almost doubles the size. It's possible to compress (either using some zstd, zip, upx in some scenarios), but still significant.

I usually don't care about the size, but I want to keep as small as possible and avoiding plataform-dependent fonts. The ~3.5MB makes much more sense, if it gets smaller will be even better. 😂

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I can't confirm about the color, but your guess makes sense.

[13rac1]

Yes, then it's probably dropping the color tables. Not sure where to go from here? The ThickFallback is just an experiment for #74 but the build time is far too long to be implemented. The way to make the file smaller is to drop the characters you don't need.