@hj @a1ba @vertka you don't "need" to write it, you can put them in the emoji directory on the server and it will work like that, just without special metadata. If after that you press the "import emoji from filesystem" button in the pleroma admin panel, it will generate a pack for you. This will only create a pack if it didn't have a json before, so after that you gotta use the admin panel to add emojis or delete the json and press the button again.

You can also use `mix pleroma.emoji gen-pack PACK-URL` (or pleroma_ctl) to input data for it interactively. For that you need to upload a zip file with all the images somewhere (literally anywhere, just how it was coded, maybe i oughta fix that part) and put PACK-URL as that place you uploaded it to. It will then ask you a few questions, download the file, and make a pack for you.

Unfortunately the entire thing did not get almost any adoption and therefore not enough people saying that it's difficult to use or interested about doing anything about it. Lack of developer interest in that one as well (usual pleroma problem), it was mostly just me with various fixes from others.

There is also a manifest system for hosting emoji pack repositories and there is exactly 2 of those, so that's not exactly well known either.