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
