Repository navigation
[ENH] Support for SVG-encoded colour glyphs #31211
Description
Colour glyphs using the SVG tables are SVG documents embedded instead of vector glyphs, using tables designed by Mozilla and Adobe. FreeType only supports extracting the document as a blob. Also, unfortunately, Pillow does not support parsing&rendering SVG documents either.
Supporting this format would require an SVG parser (though I believe it is a slightly more constrained subset than the full SVG spec), plus wiring all that up to an Agg renderer. This is likely far too much work for us, but maybe if someone is motivated enough to do so...
Activity
Handle some simpler colour fonts
tacaswell commentedon Mar 19, 2026
mohdabid4333-dotcom commentedon Mar 19, 2026
Hi @tacaswell, I apologise for it . I admit that I did use an LLM to help structure my thoughts on the SVG tables requirements, but I've read through the AI policy now. I will not use LLM for this kind of thing from now on. But I'm genuinely interested in contributing to and solving this issue. Can I go ahead and solve this issue?
tacaswell commentedon Mar 19, 2026
This is not the best issue to start with as a first contribution. It is both technically difficult, likely a large amount of code, and commits us to what I worry may be a significant future maintenance burden (I could of course be wrong about any or all of those things).
I suggest starting with some smaller issue first (like the vmin vs vmax issue you also commented on).
mohdabid4333-dotcom commentedon Mar 19, 2026
Thank you for the advice. I understand the concerns about the technical difficulty and maintenance. I'll start with the vmin vs vmax issue as you suggested to get some experience first. Once I’m more familiar with the technical work of issues, I’d love to revisit this one!
Handle some simpler colour fonts
Handle some simpler colour fonts
Handle some simpler colour fonts