Bug 170590 - Color emoji not rendered on PRINTING or PDF export
Summary: Color emoji not rendered on PRINTING or PDF export
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 151057
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
25.8.4.2 release
Hardware: All Linux (All)
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2026-02-03 20:08 UTC by iam
Modified: 2026-02-04 11:09 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Source document with printer emoji (10.00 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2026-02-03 20:08 UTC, iam
Details
PDF export result on Arch, Fedora, Ubuntu (12.36 KB, image/png)
2026-02-03 20:10 UTC, iam
Details

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Description iam 2026-02-03 20:08:09 UTC
Description:
If the Libreoffice Writer ODT document contains color emoji (such as 🖨️), it could not be printed or exported to PDF correctly.

On ArchLinux, LibreOffice 25.8.4.2 580(Build:2): tofu character
On Fedora 43, LibreOffice 25.8.4.2 580(Build:2): blank character
Ubuntu 26.04, LibreOffice 25.8.4.2 580(Build:2): black-and-white printer emoji (different font)

This is a regression (but I'm unsure if in Libreoffice or in font rendering or fonts itself), as it used to work until very recently.

It's reproducible both when printing the document and when exporting it to PDF with any settings except PDF/A-1b.


Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open the attached document
2. Export it to PDF with default PDF-1.7 settings format
3. Open PDF in the PDF viewer

Actual Results:
Tofu character / nothing / black-and-white icon instead of a color emoji.

Expected Results:
Color emoji properly rendered


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: Yes

Additional Info:
This seems to be similar to bug #168412, but for me it is also reproducible on PDF export. Maybe PDF export process is different on Windows and Linux.
Comment 1 iam 2026-02-03 20:08:42 UTC
Created attachment 205344 [details]
Source document with printer emoji
Comment 2 iam 2026-02-03 20:10:56 UTC
Created attachment 205345 [details]
PDF export result on Arch, Fedora, Ubuntu
Comment 3 Buovjaga 2026-02-03 20:17:48 UTC
(In reply to iam from comment #0)
> 1. Open the attached document
> 2. Export it to PDF with default PDF-1.7 settings format
> 3. Open PDF in the PDF viewer

Works fine here.

If you indeed do not see the issue in 25.2, you could bibisect it with the 25.8 repository:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/Bibisect
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/Bibisect/Linux

I recommend Fedora or Ubuntu as Arch might have issues running the builds.

Arch Linux 64-bit
Version: 25.8.4.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 580(Build:2)
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 6.18; UI render: default; VCL: kf6 (cairo+wayland)
Locale: fi-FI (fi_FI.UTF-8); UI: en-US
25.8.4-1
Calc: CL threaded
Comment 4 iam 2026-02-03 20:39:06 UTC
(In reply to Buovjaga from comment #3)
> If you indeed do not see the issue in 25.2

I've tested it just now in Docker containers of the distros, with

    soffice --convert-to 'pdf:draw_pdf_Export' printer.odt

Just re-tested it with google-noto-color-emoji-fonts installed.

Arch (libreoffice-fresh 25.8.4-3): no changes, tofu character
Fedora 42 (LO 25.2.7.2-1.fc42): OK proper rendering
Fedora 43 (LO 25.8.4.2-2.fc43): blank
Ubuntu 26.04 (LO 25.8.4~rc2-0ubuntu1): OK proper rendering


I don't know how to check which font is used for the exact emoji. Something with fc-query?
Comment 5 iam 2026-02-03 20:42:53 UTC
Downgraded LO to 25.8.1.1-0.2.fc43 on Fedora 43, no changes, still blank character. So it's not a LO, probably fontconfig/freetype?
Comment 6 Buovjaga 2026-02-04 09:07:46 UTC
This was discussed in the dev chat and while fontconfig is the likely root cause, LibreOffice should do better.

I'm interested in hearing

- what is the result with 25.8 on Fedora 42
- what is the result with 25.2 on Fedora 43

Guided by those results, you could do bibisecting per what I said in comment 3

Just now I tested 25.8 in a Fedora 42 distrobox container, but did not see the issue.
Comment 7 iam 2026-02-04 10:56:18 UTC
In Fedora 42, the font inside PDF file contains images (XObjects of type Image) of emojis, however in Fedora 43 it's just a font, which I can't properly open in any font application (fontforge segfaults, https://opentype.js.org/ shows nonsense).

Downgrading google-noto-color-emoji-fonts did not fix the issue.
Comment 8 iam 2026-02-04 11:06:01 UTC
Downgrading to google-noto-color-emoji-fonts-20241008-2.fc42 does fix the issue.

Newer version of the packge uses COLRv1, according to the changelog. So it's really is a bug #168412.
Comment 9 Buovjaga 2026-02-04 11:09:10 UTC
Thanks, let's dupe to bug 151057 as it is the root issue in this particular case.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 151057 ***