A workaround for using colour fonts in some application programs that do not support colour fonts

[William_J_G Overington]

Hi
Some readers might like to know of a workaround that I have devised for 
using colour fonts in some application programs that do not support 
colour fonts.

The technique works because the Unicode code point for each character is 
exactly the same whether the character is displayed in a colour font or 
in a monochrome font.
The technique is to compose the design using the application program, 
the characters appearing in plain monochrome form, then export as an svg 
file without selecting the option to convert the text to curves.
The svg file is then displayed using an application program that does 
support colour fonts.

This works simply because the application program places the Unicode 
character code points in the svg file and those Unicode character code 
points are successfully used by the colour font supporting application 
program. This is because the Unicode code point for each character is 
exactly the same whether the character is displayed in a colour font or 
in a monochrome font.
For example, I started with Serif Affinity Publisher, which at present 
does not support colour fonts, produced an svg file without converting 
the text to curves, displayed the svg file using Microsoft Edge, made a 
'print screen' image, then trimmed out the browser window parts using 
Microsoft Paint and saved the result as  a png file.
The technique has been found to work with Affinity Publisher, Affinity 
Designer and two legacy Serif products, PagePlus and CraftArtist2.
Please find attached a graphic made by me using Affinity Publisher, 
Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Paint and the Playbox colour font designed and 
kindly supplied free with a licence by Matt Lyon.
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/128285-colour-fonts-and-affinity-products/ 
<https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/128285-colour-fonts-and-affinity-products/>
William Overington
Friday 4 December 2020

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