Add trans flag emoji support [Current status: 🏳️‍⚧️]

[Harest]

Hello,

Following a discussion thread submitted 3+ years ago, and a bit mislabeled, it might be time to add the support of the trans flag emoji in Firefox? It's been a while now. Hence why i created this as an idea, for it to maybe be seen a bit more, and maybe taken into consideration faster.

Currently, Firefox still displays the trans(gender) flag with a blank flag and the transgender symbol right next to it.

Have a good one! 

[Jon]

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[Fränky]

I use Firefox on Windows and Android and the flag is displayed correctly on both. I don't think Firefox has its own emoji management. So it seems that your system cannot display the flag correctly.

[Harest]

Hello,

I'd like to add slightly more context as i searched a bit more from where the issue came from. In Firefox, the emoji fonts being used are listed in the variable "font.name-list.emoji" accessible from "about:config". In Windows 10 and above, the value is "Segoe UI Emoji, Twemoji Mozilla". The issue encountered here is that the version of the font in Windows 10, while supposedly supporting Unicode 13.0, isn't supporting the trans flag despite it's an emoji ZWJ sequence from Unicode 13.0 (source). Twemoji Mozilla does support it, as it supports up to Unicode 14.0 if i'm not mistaken, but since Segoe UI has priority despite an inferior support when used in specific cases like on Windows 10, it's not properly displayed.

I can see why the emoji system font is set in first: to assure better compatibility with the emoji system selector window (Win + . on W10), so what you see is what you can get*, visual consistency across the OS, along many potential other reasons. But i feel like it'd be better to just have the most updated font first (according to its Unicode version support), or simply having a single emoji font up-to-date with the latest Unicode version inside the browser. Here that'd require to update that quite old now Twemoji Mozilla.

There is also something called font fallback, but there might be an issue there? I've no idea how it technically works in the details. It might be a good thing to dig to potentially fix the issue at hand. Of course, if the system font returns it has the glyph available when it's not the case, not much the browser can do. Also depends how it's checked since here it's an "emoji ZWJ sequence", aka several glyphs mixed into one emoji ("🏳️ White Flag [...] and ⚧️ Transgender Symbol"). If they're checked individually, it might be the issue. Also unsure how that fallback is handling color vs monochrome emojis.

*With some weird issues though. Surprisingly, the pride flag is visible in that selector window and everwyhere, but it's badly displayed in any input fields when clicked. But i recall having a similar issue with the red heart emoji, so there's just some inconsistencies here and there.

I'm not editing the OP, and put all this in a message instead to avoid the idea to go back in the moderation queue.