1398391 - Please add option to hide emojis

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Preferences, enhancement)

Description

[u491341]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/60.0.3112.113 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Please add option to hide emojis altogether! Very annoying to see them everywhere - subject, in messages...


Actual results:

Please add option to hide emojis altogether! Very annoying to see them everywhere - subject, in messages...


Expected results:

Please add option to hide emojis altogether! Very annoying to see them everywhere - subject, in messages...

Comment 1

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Nomis, do you know how/where that could be done?

Comment 2

[Nomis101]

(In reply to Jorg K (GMT+2) from comment #1)
> Nomis, do you know how/where that could be done?

Not exactly. We have different kinds of emojis. First, there are the Thunderbird own emojis, which are PNGs in the mail/themes folder. And than, there is the emoji font used from Apple in macOS and iOS, which are unicode characters and this is part of Cairo, gfx/2d (see Bug 715798). An than there is the Windows Segoe UI Emoji font, this is also part of gfx/thebes (see Bug 889401).
Thunderbird has: Tools > Options > Display: Display emoticons as graphics. But this does only work for the Thunderbird own PNGs, not for the emoji unicode characters nor for the Windows emoji font. So, maybe it would be possible to extend that pref to include the unicode/Segoe emojis. But I don't know how.

Comment 3

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Thanks for the answer. Maybe Richard could investigate this.

Comment 4

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

I think it's not possible to disable the unicode emojis. This could probably be done by using fonts without emojis but this isn't doable by TB as it can't know which emoji-less font on the system is installed. And then, what should be shown instead of the emoji, a not found character?

Comment 5

[u491341]

Attachment: msg-emoji.png

Message view with unicode emoji. I got unchecked Tools->Options->Display->Display emotions as graphics.

Comment 6

[u491341]

Attachment: subject-emoji.png

Subject view with unicode emoji. I got unchecked Tools->Options->Display->Display emotions as graphics

Comment 7

[u491341]

Attachment: msg-no-emoji.png

Message view with altered fonts/EmojiOneMozilla.ttf

Comment 8

[u491341]

Attachment: subject-noemoji.png

Subject view with altered fonts/EmojiOneMozilla.ttf

Comment 9

[u491341]

It has something to do with fonts/EmojiOneMozilla.ttf which you can find within Thunderbird installation folder. I altered it but probably with wrong code but now at least it shows spaces instead of emoji. Complete disappear would be perfect.

If I simply delete fonts/EmojiOneMozilla.ttf then I got black and white emoji, most likely they came from default fonts.

This appeared with some of the latest updates, not sure when exactly though.

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

These discussions should not happen in Untriaged component.

Seems like there are aspects of this in bug 1354922 which was wontfixed

Comment 11

[Eric Moore]

I deleted that fonts directory for TB 52.6.0 and it had no effect. Afterwards I also repaired the mail folder and restarted. I verified that the fonts directory was not somehow resurrected. Morat suggested I retest after using a -purgecaches command line argument for Thunderbird. It had no effect. 

Please see http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=3039069 . The original problem was images being displayed not just in the subject/from header but much larger versions of those "images" being displayed over the folder listing (one image covered six lines) and the message header in a message preview (covered 3 lines). It turned into a discussion of how to remove unicode emoji (what I initially called glyphs) after the author forwarded me several messages.

Windows 10 has native support for emoji but it appears my copy of Thunderbird 52.6.0 under Windows 10 Home x64 version 1709 is not using that. For example the snowflake that I see in a Subject doesn't appear to match either the corresponding windows 10 emoji or the Mozilla emoji. It appears to match one of the black snowflakes in https://apps.timwhitlock.info/emoji/tables/unicode , which is not as uptodate or complete as http://www.unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html (which has only blue or blue/black snowflakes). Its not listed in https://emojipedia.org/microsoft/ (Microsoft's emoji in the windows 10 fall update). 

Selecting the address bar in Microsoft Edge and pressing the windows key plus a semicolon displays a popup window to let you insert emoji. However, I can do the same thing when composing a plain text or HTML message in Thunderbird. Its confusing. 

The excerpt below has a squinty green face icon in the subject and a pair of eyes icon in the message body. I was created using my fastmail account in Thunderbird and sent to my gmail account in Thunderbird. It was displayed okay despite the fonts directory being deleted.

Subject: =?UTF-8?B?8J+kog==?=
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2018 19:52:57 -0400
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/52.6.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Language: en-US
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

👀

"And then, what should be shown instead of the emoji, a not found character?"
I suggest it get replaced with a space. I suspect most users want the option for them to just silently disappear.

Comment 12

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Eric Moore from comment #11)
> Please see http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=3039069 . The
> original problem was images being displayed not just in the subject/from
> header but much larger versions of those "images" being displayed over the
> folder listing (one image covered six lines) and the message header in a
> message preview (covered 3 lines).

I have big doubts that icons covering the main UI of Thunderbird have anything to do with Thunderbird. Pls file a screenshot.

Comment 13

[Eric Moore]

Attachment: artifact - not what the bug report is about

Comment 14

[Eric Moore]

Attachment: artifact - not what the bug report is about

Comment 15

[Eric Moore]

I uploaded the SiriusXM and ConsumerReports email screen shots from the thread. I mentioned the original problem mainly to explain why the first half of the thread wasn't about trying to hide unicode emoji. The threads original poster had forwarded me those two messages and I just saw normal sized colored unicode emoji on my system.

Comment 16

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Sorry I don't think we want to do this. They are just characters, and it could cause loads of complications.