Bug#1135180: Bug#902981: Bug#1135180: Bug#902981: DFSG status of fonts-font-awesome

On Tue, May 26, 2026 at 12:45:36PM -0500, Rob Madole wrote:
>   On May 25, 2026, at 6:27 AM, Julian Gilbey <[email protected]> wrote:
>   What if, for example,
>   FortAwesome keeps their fonts in a database, with each record being an
>   icon in some format and its associated metadata?  (Rob: I'm not
>   fishing for information!  The details seem to be irrelevant here.)
> 
> =) I’m happy to engage in some fishing. The details may not be relevant but if
> they are I can help. I think it moved the conversation along the last time I
> spoke up.
> I don’t mind sharing the details.
> Preferred form: is actually Figma. Our designers have an entire system developed
> to manage them there. Figma is the source of truth. When we need to update an
> icon we have to go there to do it.
> We export icons in SVG format that we then import into an internal web app
> behind our VPN. The tools we’ve used to verify SVG data, resize, convert, are
> all developed in-house. Even the thing that creates web font files is written
> in-house. (We no longer use FontForge).
> We then store the raw SVG path data in a relational database.
> This is probably obvious but this is all very un-friendly to what I’m learning
> about how DFSG works. We can’t share these internal tools because our company
> considers them a proprietary, competitive advantage.

Thanks Rob!

So I guessed correctly about a relational database :-)

I'm now getting out of my depth when it comes to this - I don't know
Figma at all (not being in the design field myself).  The following
questions might or might not be relevant....  Would you know: does
Figma store the icons (the source of truth) in a Figma-specific
format, which are then exported as SVGs?  If it is Figma-specific, is
it stored in a vector-graphics format that is interchangeable with the
published SVG format (meaning that you could recreate the Figma format
of the icons from the SVGs)?

Best wishes,

   Julian