Glyph Protocol
Glyph Protocol
Normative links
Scope
- Terminal protocol for registering custom glyphs at runtime and querying whether a codepoint can be rendered.
- Uses APC framing, a small verb set for support/query/register/clear, and Unicode Private Use Area codepoints as the safety boundary.
- Initial monochrome payloads use TrueType
glyf outlines; color support extends the protocol with OpenType colrv0 and colrv1 payload containers.
Notes
- The practical target is the "patched font" problem for prompts, editors, and TUIs: apps can ship the few glyphs they need instead of requiring users to install a full Nerd Font.
- The security idea is clean: do not allow arbitrary text codepoints to be visually overwritten; keep registered glyphs in PUA codepoints so normal URLs, commands, filenames, and shell output keep rendering as their bytes.
- Rio is the reference implementation.