Anyone else have any progress to share?
Not much, but I explored custom fonts a bit.

Not sure if you'll see the image, seems the host is having some issue now. Didn't notice right away as it was cached for me.
I wish color font were easier (via FontForge, or instead using 1-command to bundle SVGs into an OTF file).
Then again, I also prefer textmesh which does not support color font either (even though the vertex color shader itself does, maybe someone better can/has figured out some sort of per-glyph color map).