Reactions show as blanks

[UnitedMarsupials]

This may be some sort of local (mis)configuration here, but the reaction-messages I'm getting do not show the actual reaction :(

Once I copy/paste the reaction-message elsewhere -- such as into this browser, I see the emojis:

Such and Such : reacted with 😂 to message "Вочевидь, " from 24 Jan 24 14:12 EST.

But in the pidgin-window the above smiley -- between the words "with" and "to" -- appears blank. Is it because my default font does not have renderings for the emoji part of UTF8? Can the plugin switch the font for those few characters -- as the browser seems to be doing?

Or is this something Pidgin itself is supposed to do (and does not)?

[EionRobb]

If you're on windows, pidgin won't show emoji without using a smiley theme as a workaround eg pidgin-emojione-smiley-theme, but if you're on Linux that sounds like it might maybe also work as a workaround?

[UnitedMarsupials]

If you're on windows

No, I'm using an X11 desktop -- XFCE4 to be more specific.

My own smilies are sent using the character-combinations, for example: ":-D"

pidgin won't show emoji without using a smiley theme as a workaround eg pidgin-emojione-smiley-theme, but if you're on Linux that sounds like it might maybe also work as a workaround?

I have the default smiley theme enabled already -- the "Hylke Bons". But, I think, that only matters for translating the character-combinations into icons locally. When the text contains an emoji expressed as a UTF8 character, Pidgin shows a blank...

[EionRobb]

Yeah the emoji smiley themes also translate unicode emoji characters too

[hoehermann]

I just tried reacting with that very emoji.

1. The "symbola" smiley theme from https://github.com/stv0g/unicode-emoji.
2. No smiley theme.
3. Smiley theme by "Hylke Bons".

1. The emoji glyph is replaced by the smiley.
2. It looks like in case of "no theme", GTK tries to render the glyph with any font available. On Ubuntu, I have fonts-noto-color-emoji installed, so I guess that's it.
3. I suspect, the smiley theme by "Hylke Bons" does not contain a smiley for that particular emoji. GTK might fall back to the method described above.

Can you install fonts-noto-color-emoji (or an equivalent) and see if that improves the situation for you?

[UnitedMarsupials]

Can you install fonts-noto-color-emoji and see if that improves the situation for you?

Yay, that helped. Added the x11-fonts/noto-emoji port, restarted Pidgin, and now they work. Don't know, why that font was not necessary for the browser to show the pictograms, but, perhaps, I don't need to know.

[hoehermann]

Thank you for letting us know it works that way.