Google Releases ‘Noto’, Free Font Covering Every Language and Every Character on the Web

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Google Releases ‘Noto’, Free Font Covering Every Language and Every Character on the Web

By CircleID Reporter
October 10, 2016, 3:54 am PDT Views: 14,652 Add Comment

Google has announced the release of a new open-source font called Noto that supports 800 languages and covers 110 writing systems. Noto, short for ‘No more Tofu’, has been a five year long project to address the issue of the default white box (dubbed Tofu) that appears when a computer doesn’t recognize a character on a website.

— Noto product manager Xiangye Xiao and Bob Jung, Google’s internationalization expert wrote: “The Noto project started as a necessity for Google’s Android and ChromeOS operating systems. When we began, we did not realize the enormity of the challenge. It required design and technical testing in hundreds of languages, and expertise from specialists in specific scripts.”

— “Today, Google’s open-source Noto font family provides a beautiful and consistent digital type for every symbol in the Unicode standard, covering more than 800 languages and 110,000 characters.”

— To accomplish the task, Google partnered with experts in the field of type and font design, including Monotype, Adobe, and a network of volunteer reviewers. Google says: “Beyond ‘no more tofu’ in the common languages used every day, Noto will be used to preserve the history and culture of rare languages through digitization. As new characters are introduced into the Unicode standard, Google will add these into the Noto font family.”

By CircleID Reporter — CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.
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