Is it possible to merge an AppleColorEmoji.ttf into another font? (to use with Image Magick label function)

Question

I need to write text over images using Image Magick. This text can contain emojis. The font I'm using for this obviously doesn't support any emoji symbols.

Am I able to merge emoji font file into this font with some software (merge two TTFS), or I have go the long way spitting this text into substrings with different fonts?

1. Which software can help me with merging TTFs?
2. Can I merge AppleColorEmoji.ttf with it's colorful images instead of one-color symbols into regular font? If not, I need a software to merge two regular fonts, because there are several one-colored emoji fonts out there to try.

Thanks!

Answer 1

There's a website called Fontcombiner which allows you to merge fonts. There's a powerful command line tool called TTX/Fonttools which seems to have a merge option, but I have never used it myself.

It's likely that merged fonts will look weird, as things like vertical metrics etc. will differ between the two fonts.

What'll happen to Apple's color fonts in such a conversion process, I have no clue. But do let us know :)