Drop fonts-symbola from platform?

@Jeremy: I have no strong opinion on this in any direction, so I'm happy with whatever you decide.

I'm ok with replacing.

If qt does not support fonts-noto-color-emoji, replacing would be a regression, especially for Kubuntu, and may not be a good idea. I understand that the packages don't conflict to each other. What's the drawback with keeping it as is for now, and install both packages in Ubuntu?

I agree with Gunnar, I'm -1 with both my Lubuntu and Kubuntu hats on if this means a regression for Qt-based desktops.

Gunnar, Kubuntu and Lubuntu Next are free to install fonts-symbola if they want. (But they should really talk to Qt about getting color emoji support working everywhere too!)

The benefit of installing Noto Color Emoji by default is so that color emoji will work out of the box with any GTK+ app (with a few exceptions like Chromium, Firefox and LibreOffice). Color Emoji is advertised as an Ubuntu 18.04 LTS feature.

The benefit of not installing Symbola by default is that it's unneeded.

Also Ubuntu users install qt apps, don't they? And FF and LO are important exceptions. The archive size of fonts-symbola is 1.2 MiB.

How about including both in desktop-common for now?

Gunnar, could you test the apps before saying we need Symbola?

Firefox, Chromium, and LibreOffice don't need Symbola. Firefox uses an embedded version of EmojiOne currently. Chromium will probably eventually support Noto.

See https://community.ubuntu.com/t/try-color-emoji-in-18-04/1492/23 and 24 for some relevant upstream bug report links.

I'm on a slippery slope here; should probably have kept quiet. But it was your mentioning of qt which triggered me to post a couple of comments, since people tend to use some qt apps also in Ubuntu.

Anyway, my view in comment #1 still stands. ;)

> Gunnar, Kubuntu and Lubuntu Next are free to install fonts-symbola if they want. (But they should really talk to Qt about getting color emoji support working everywhere too!)

I don't think that's the point; if we're talking about inclusion in desktop-common, support for Qt *and* GTK needs to be there. Favoring the package that works with GTK apps and not Qt apps, then saying that the Qt flavors can install fonts-symbola if they want, makes me want to say the same to the GTK flavors about fonts-noto-color-emoji.

> The benefit of installing Noto Color Emoji by default is so that color emoji will work out of the box with any GTK+ app (with a few exceptions like Chromium, Firefox and LibreOffice). Color Emoji is advertised as an Ubuntu 18.04 LTS feature.

What about desktops that don't install GTK apps by default (Lubuntu Next)? I echo my comment above that it should be all or nothing here.

> The benefit of not installing Symbola by default is that it's unneeded.

I thought it was needed for Qt apps?

Xubuntu is OK with replacing.

Without checking, I don't think Ubuntu Studio have any objections.

There were a few responses on the ubuntu-release mailing list.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-release/2018-February/004283.html

It looks like we're going to drop fonts-symbola from desktop-common. Flavors are free to install fonts-noto-color-emoji themselves if they like since Kubuntu objects to it being in desktop-common.

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-meta/1.411