Could fontconfig add Unicode blocks of Emoji? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Blocks Then users can specify a font for them: <match> <test name="family">sans-serif</test> <test name="lang">emoji</test> <edit name="family">My Emoji Font</edit> </match> -- Guo Yunhe (郭云鹤) http://guoyunhe.me/