Noto fonts

Noto is a font family comprising over 100 individual fonts, which are together designed to cover all the scripts encoded in the Unicode standard. As of October 2016^[update], Noto fonts cover all 93 scripts defined in Unicode version 6.1 (April 2012), although fewer than 30,000 of the nearly 75,000 CJK unified ideographs in version 6.0 are covered. In total, Noto fonts cover nearly 64,000 characters,^{[citation needed]} which is under half of the 149,186 characters defined in Unicode 15.0 (released in September 2022).

Noto

Category	Sans-serif (humanist); serif (transitional); non-Latin
Classification	Sans-serif (humanist); serif (transitional); non-Latin
Commissioned by	Google
Date created	2012–2020
Date released	2013
License	SIL Open Font License & Apache License
Website	notofonts.github.io

The Noto family is designed with the goal of achieving visual harmony (e.g., compatible heights and stroke thicknesses) across multiple languages/scripts. Commissioned by Google, the font is licensed under the SIL Open Font License.^[1] Until September 2015, the fonts were under the Apache License 2.0.^[2]

Etymology

When text is rendered by a computer, sometimes characters are displayed as substitute characters (typically small rectangles). They represent the characters that cannot be displayed because no font with the necessary characters is installed on the computer, and have sometimes been called by the slang name tofu because of their visual similarity to the food of the same name.

Google's aim for Noto (whose name is derived from no tofu) is to remove this kind of 'tofu' from the Web.^[3][4]

Characteristics

Emoji

 

 

 

 

 

Color emoji from Noto Emoji Project.

The Noto Emoji Project provides color and black-and-white emoji fonts. The color version is used on the Gmail, Google Chat, Google Meet,^[5] Google Hangouts, and YouTube web apps, as well as the Android, Wear OS,^[6] and ChromeOS^[7] operating systems. It is also used on the Slack apps on Windows, Linux, and Android.^[8]

Latin, Greek and Cyrillic

Noto Sans and Noto Serif contain Latin, Greek and Cyrillic glyphs. Noto Sans is based on Droid Sans and Open Sans, while Noto Serif is based on Droid Serif.^[9] They are designed by Steve Matteson.^[10]

Noto Sans includes an ambiguous lowercase l.^[11]

Noto Sans displays "U+10f LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH CARON" (ď) like d+apostrophe, no caron visible.

CJK

Main articles: Source Han Sans and Source Han Serif

 

 

Source Han Sans, the Adobe/Google collaboration rebranded as Noto Sans CJK for East Asian scripts

Noto CJK fonts are rebranded versions of Adobe Source Han fonts, developed by Adobe and Google which contains Chinese characters, Hangul and Kana;^[12] Latin-script letters and numerals are taken from the Source Pro fonts.^[13]

In addition to the standard distributions, Ken Lunde of Adobe maintains a "Super" OpenType Collection (OTC) version that provides the families under two names at once. Since OTCs reuse existing glyphs, such a file containing both Noto and Source fonts is only 200KB larger than one containing only Source fonts.^[14]

Coverage

As of 29 December 2020^[update] there are 195 Noto fonts, of which 156 are sans-serif style, 29 are serif style, and the remaining 10 fonts are not classified as serif or sans-serif.^[15] The Noto Color Emoji font only works under Android and Linux, and cannot be installed under macOS or Microsoft Windows.^[16]

The Noto fonts cover 150 out of the 154 scripts defined in Unicode version 13.0 (released in March 2020), as well as various syllables and emoji which do not belong to a specific script.

As of October 2016, all scripts encoded up to Unicode version 6.0 (released October 2010) were covered by Noto fonts, although not all characters defined in Unicode version 6.0 were covered. In particular, only about 30,000 of the 74,616 CJK unified ideographs defined in Unicode version 6.0 were covered by Noto fonts. None of the 53 scripts and 1 block encoded between Unicode versions 6.1 and 11.0 were covered by Noto fonts, although some symbols, emoji, and characters added to existing scripts after version 6.0 were covered. It is a design goal for 'Phase 3' to cover all characters in Unicode version 9.0 except for most of CJK unified ideographs outside the Basic Multilingual Plane.^[17]

The Noto Sans Symbols fonts include a large variety of symbols, including alchemical signs, dingbats, numbers and letters enclosed in circles for lists, playing cards, domino and Mahjong tiles, chess piece icons, Greek, Byzantine and regular musical symbols and arrow symbols. Among mathematical symbols, it includes blackboard bold glyphs, a mathematical sans-serif font modeled on Helvetica, Fraktur and script fonts, hexagrams, and Aegean numerals.

As of April 2021, the Noto fonts in the GitHub repository have this coverage of Unicode 13:^[18]

Unicode coverage of Google Noto fonts (April 2021)

	Noto	Unicode	% of Unicode
Non-CJK	46794	49256	95.0%
CJK	30867	94442	32.7%
All Unicode	77661	143698	54.0%

List of Noto fonts

Noto fonts and the scripts they support

Font face	Version	Styles	Characters	Glyphs	Unicode scripts
Noto Mono	1.00	Regular	875	897	Latin, Greek, Cyrillic
Noto Color Emoji	2.017	Regular			Emoji
Noto Emoji	1.05 uh	Regular	887	888	Emoji
Noto Kufi Arabic	1.04	Regular Bold	473	762 (regular) 763 (bold)	Arabic (Kufic style)
Noto Naskh Arabic	1.06	Regular Bold	1122	1533 (regular) 1540 (bold)	Arabic (Naskh style)
Noto Nastaliq Urdu	1.02 uh	Regular	267	1133	Arabic (Nastaʿlīq style)
Noto Sans	2.000	Normal, SemiCondensed, Condensed and ExtraCondensed in these weights: Thin, Extra-Light, Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold, Extra-Bold and Black. Available in upright styles and italics.^[19]	2785	3741	Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Devanagari
Noto Sans Adlam	2.000	Regular	96	371	Adlam
Noto Sans Adlam Unjoined	2.000	Regular	96	99	Adlam
Noto Sans Anatolian Hieroglyphs	2.000	Regular	588	589	Anatolian Hieroglyphs
Noto Sans Armenian	2.03	Regular Bold	97	98	Armenian
Noto Sans Avestan	1.04 uh	Regular	70	73	Avestan
Noto Sans Balinese	1.03 uh	Regular	130	182	Balinese
Noto Sans Bamum	1.03 uh	Regular	662	661	Bamum
Noto Sans Batak	1.05 uh	Regular	61	61	Batak
Noto Sans Bengali	1.03	Regular Bold	153	577	Bengali
Noto Sans Brahmi	1.03 uh	Regular	113	182	Brahmi
Noto Sans Buginese	1.05 uh	Regular	40	63	Buginese
Noto Sans Buhid	1.03 uh	Regular	27	39	Buhid
Noto Sans Canadian Aboriginal	1.03 uh	Regular	722	744	Canadian Aboriginal syllabics
Noto Sans Carian	1.05 uh	Regular	54	53	Carian
Noto Sans Chakma	2.000	Regular	94	193	Chakma
Noto Sans Cham	1.02	Regular Bold	119	127	Cham
Noto Sans Cherokee	1.03 uh	Regular	90	89	Cherokee
Noto Sans CJK JP	1.004	Thin Light DemiLight Regular Medium Bold Black	44683	65535	CJK (Japanese style) Hangul Hiragana Katakana Bopomofo
Noto Sans CJK KR	1.004	Thin Light DemiLight Regular Medium Bold Black	44683	65535	CJK (Korean style) Hangul Hiragana Katakana Bopomofo
Noto Sans CJK SC	1.004	Thin Light DemiLight Regular Medium Bold Black	44683	65535	CJK (Simplified Chinese style) Hangul Hiragana Katakana Bopomofo
Noto Sans CJK TC	1.004	Thin Light DemiLight Regular Medium Bold Black	44683	65535	CJK (Traditional Chinese style) Hangul Hiragana Katakana Bopomofo
Noto Sans Coptic	1.03 uh	Regular	159	192	Coptic
Noto Sans Cuneiform	1.05 uh	Regular	987	986	Cuneiform
Noto Sans Cypriot	1.03 uh	Regular	60	59	Cypriot
Noto Sans Deseret	1.02 uh	Regular	85	84	Deseret
Noto Sans Devanagari	1.06	Regular Bold	265	901 (regular) 906 (bold)	Devanagari
Noto Sans Display		Normal, SemiCondensed, Condensed and ExtraCondensed in these weights: Thin, Extra-Light, Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold, Extra-Bold and Black. Available in upright styles and italics.^[20]			Latin, Greek and Cyrillic
Noto Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs	1.04 uh	Regular	1076	1075	Egyptian hieroglyphs
Noto Sans Ethiopic	1.08	Regular Bold	500	559	Ethiopic
Noto Sans Georgian	1.06	Regular Bold	127	127	Georgian
Noto Sans Glagolitic	1.04 uh	Regular	99	98	Glagolitic
Noto Sans Gothic	1.03 uh	Regular	38	43	Gothic
Noto Sans Gujarati	1.03	Regular Bold	155	741 (regular) 740 (bold)	Gujarati
Noto Sans Gurmukhi	1.03	Regular Bold	151	301	Gurmukhi
Noto Sans Hanunoo	1.04 uh	Regular	28	43	Hanunoo
Noto Sans Hebrew	1.04	Regular Bold	144	155	Hebrew
Noto Sans Imperial Aramaic	1.03 uh	Regular	36	35	Imperial Aramaic
Noto Sans Inscriptional Pahlavi	1.02 uh	Regular	32	34	Inscriptional Pahlavi
Noto Sans Inscriptional Parthian	1.03 uh	Regular	35	45	Inscriptional Parthian
Noto Sans Javanese	1.06 uh	Regular	100	186	Javanese
Noto Sans Kaithi	1.05 uh	Regular	101	314	Kaithi
Noto Sans Kannada	1.04	Regular Bold	147	451	Kannada
Noto Sans Kayah Li	1.02 uh	Regular	53	54	Kayah Li
Noto Sans Kharoshthi	1.03 uh	Regular	70	133	Kharoshthi
Noto Sans Khmer	1.03	Regular Bold	192	265	Khmer
Noto Sans Lao	1.03	Regular Bold	120	166	Lao
Noto Sans Lepcha	1.03 uh	Regular	80	1471	Lepcha
Noto Sans Limbu	1.05 uh	Regular	73	73	Limbu
Noto Sans Linear B	1.04 uh	Regular	273	272	Linear B
Noto Sans Lisu	1.03 uh	Regular	55	54	Lisu
Noto Sans Lycian	1.04 uh	Regular	34	33	Lycian
Noto Sans Lydian	1.03 uh	Regular	32	31	Lydian
Noto Sans Malayalam	1.04	Regular Bold	161	318	Malayalam
Noto Sans Mandaic	1.02 uh	Regular	35	128	Mandaic
Noto Sans Meetei Mayek	1.04 uh	Regular	84	91	Meetei Mayek
Noto Sans Mongolian	1.04 uh	Regular	200	1511	Mongolian script
Noto Sans Mono		Normal, SemiCondensed, Condensed and ExtraCondensed in these weights: Thin, Extra-Light, Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold, Extra-Bold and Black. Only available in upright styles. No italics.^[21]			Latin, Greek and Cyrillic
Noto Sans Mono CJK JP	1.004	Regular Bold	44683	65535	CJK (Japanese style) Hangul Hiragana Katakana Bopomofo
Noto Sans Mono CJK KR	1.004	Regular Bold	44683	65535	CJK (Korean style) Hangul Hiragana Katakana Bopomofo
Noto Sans Mono CJK SC	1.004	Regular Bold	44683	65535	CJK (Simplified Chinese style) Hangul Hiragana Katakana Bopomofo
Noto Sans Mono CJK TC	1.004	Regular Bold	44683	65535	CJK (Traditional Chinese style) Hangul Hiragana Katakana Bopomofo
Noto Sans Myanmar	1.10	Regular Bold	198	540 (regular) 541 (bold)	Myanmar
Noto Sans Nabataean	2.000	Regular	43	45	Nabataean
Noto Sans New Tai Lue	1.05 uh	Regular	88	91	New Tai Lue
Noto Sans NKo	1.02 uh	Regular	76	174	NKo
Noto Sans Ogham	1.04 uh	Regular	34	33	Ogham
Noto Sans Ol Chiki	1.03 uh	Regular	53	52	Ol Chiki
Noto Sans Old Italic	1.02 uh	Regular	40	39	Old Italic
Noto Sans Old North Arabian	2.000	Regular	36	37	Old North Arabian
Noto Sans Old Persian	1.04 uh	Regular	55	54	Old Persian
Noto Sans Old South Arabian	1.03 uh	Regular	37	36	Old South Arabian
Noto Sans Old Turkic	1.02 uh	Regular	78	77	Old Turkic
Noto Sans Oriya	1.01	Regular Bold	151	671	Oriya
Noto Sans Osage	1.900	Regular	80	84	Osage
Noto Sans Osmanya	1.03 uh	Regular	45	44	Osmanya
Noto Sans Phags Pa	1.03 uh	Regular	97	382	Phags-pa
Noto Sans Phoenician	1.04 uh	Regular	34	33	Phoenician
Noto Sans Rejang	1.05 uh	Regular	42	41	Rejang
Noto Sans Runic	1.02 uh	Regular	86	85	Runic
Noto Sans Samaritan	1.03 uh	Regular	67	67	Samaritan
Noto Sans Saurashtra	1.04 uh	Regular	89	93	Saurashtra
Noto Sans Shavian	1.03 uh	Regular	53	52	Shavian
Noto Sans Sinhala	1.03	Regular Bold	140	614	Sinhala
Noto Sans Sundanese	1.05 uh	Regular	77	79	Sundanese
Noto Sans Syloti Nagri	1.04 uh	Regular	68	85	Syloti Nagri
Noto Sans Symbols	1.09 uh	Regular	5151	5356	Symbols, including Braille
Noto Sans Syriac Eastern	1.04 uh	Regular	151	319	Syriac (Eastern style)
Noto Sans Syriac Estrangela	1.04 uh	Regular	151	306	Syriac (Estrangela style)
Noto Sans Syriac Western	1.04 uh	Regular	151	313	Syriac (Western style)
Noto Sans Tagalog	1.03 uh	Regular	27	26	Tagalog
Noto Sans Tagbanwa	1.04 uh	Regular	25	24	Tagbanwa
Noto Sans Tai Le	1.04 uh	Regular	61	66	Tai Le
Noto Sans Tai Tham	1.04 uh	Regular	137	232	Tai Tham
Noto Sans Tai Viet	1.03 uh	Regular	82	81	Tai Viet
Noto Sans Tamil	1.07	Regular Bold	139	215 (regular) 216 (bold)	Tamil
Noto Sans Telugu	1.05	Regular Bold	154	762	Telugu
Noto Sans Thaana	1.02	Regular Bold	91	95	Thaana
Noto Sans Thai	1.04	Regular Bold	100	108	Thai
Noto Sans Tibetan	1.01	Regular Bold	221	1296	Tibetan
Noto Sans Tifinagh	1.05 uh	Regular	72	101	Tifinagh
Noto Sans Ugaritic	1.02 uh	Regular	36	35	Ugaritic
Noto Sans Vai	1.02 uh	Regular	305	304	Vai
Noto Sans Yi	1.02 uh	Regular	1251	1251	Yi
Noto Serif	2.000	Normal, SemiCondensed, Condensed and ExtraCondensed in these weights: Thin, Extra-Light, Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold, Extra-Bold and Black. Available in upright styles and italics.^[22]	2789	3243	Latin, Greek, Cyrillic
Noto Serif Ahom	2.001	Regular	61	79	Ahom
Noto Serif Armenian	2.03	Regular Bold	97	98	Armenian
Noto Serif Bengali	1.01	Regular Bold	154	591	Bengali
Noto Serif CJK JP	1.000	ExtraLight Light Regular Medium SemiBold Bold Black	43027	65535	CJK (Japanese style) Hangul Hiragana Katakana Bopomofo
Noto Serif CJK KR	1.000	ExtraLight Light Regular Medium SemiBold Bold Black	43027	65535	CJK (Korean style) Hangul Hiragana Katakana Bopomofo
Noto Serif CJK SC	1.000	ExtraLight Light Regular Medium SemiBold Bold Black	43027	65535	CJK (Simplified Chinese style) Hangul Hiragana Katakana Bopomofo
Noto Serif CJK TC	1.000	ExtraLight Light Regular Medium SemiBold Bold Black	43027	65535	CJK (Traditional Chinese style) Hangul Hiragana Katakana Bopomofo
Noto Serif Devanagari	1.01	Regular Bold	265	716 (regular) 715 (bold)	Devanagari
Noto Serif Display		Normal, SemiCondensed, Condensed and ExtraCondensed in these weights: Thin, Extra-Light, Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold, Extra-Bold and Black. Available in upright styles and italics.^[23]			Latin, Greek and Cyrillic
Noto Serif Georgian	1.06	Regular Bold	127	127	Georgian
Noto Serif Gujarati	1.01	Regular Bold	155	476	Gujarati
Noto Serif Kannada	1.01	Regular Bold	148	439	Kannada
Noto Serif Khmer	1.03	Regular Bold	186	378	Khmer
Noto Serif Lao	1.03	Regular Bold	120	166	Lao
Noto Serif Malayalam	1.01	Regular Bold	163	240	Malayalam
Noto Serif Tamil	1.01	Regular Bold	139	194	Tamil
Noto Serif Telugu	1.01	Regular Bold	154	672	Telugu
Noto Serif Thai	1.04	Regular Bold	100	108	Thai

Usage

Some projects provide a package for installing Noto fonts, e.g. Debian,^[24] Arch Linux,^[25] Fedora Linux,^[26] Gentoo Linux,^[27] CTAN.^[28] Since version 6.0, LibreOffice bundles Noto.^[29]

Since 2019, Noto IKEA, a customised version of Noto Sans, is a corporate typeface of IKEA. It is used in pair with standard versions of Noto Sans and they replaced Verdana as a corporate typeface.^[30]

References

1. "Noto Font". GitHub. Retrieved November 24, 2015.
2. "Add NEWS for license change - googlei18n/noto-fonts". GitHub. Retrieved 2016-04-03.
3. Mizra, Tanvi (3 August 2014). "Can Google Build A Typeface To Support Every Written Language?". NPR. NPR. Retrieved 5 August 2014.
4. "Google Noto Fonts". google.com. Retrieved 18 January 2021.
5. Li, Abner (2021-02-17). "Google Meet adding emoji reactions, moderation tools". 9to5Google. Retrieved 2021-05-07.
6. Campbell, Ian Carlos (2021-05-06). "Google remembers Wear OS long enough to add a new keyboard". The Verge. Retrieved 2021-05-07.
7. Schoon, Ben (2018-06-06). "How to get Chrome's built-in emoji picker on Chrome OS, Windows, Mac". 9to5Google. Retrieved 2021-05-07.
8. "Slack Overhauls Emoji Support With One Catch". Emojipedia. 2018-02-06. Retrieved 2021-05-07.
9. "Noto use page". Google Fonts. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
10. "FAQ – Google Noto Fonts".
11. "Add a tail to the 'l' please (Lowercase L) · Issue #821 · notofonts/Noto-fonts". GitHub.
12. Nathan Willis (1 October 2014). "Google and Adobe's pan-CJK open font". LWN.net. Retrieved 23 February 2017.
13. "Guidelines for Using Noto". Google Noto Fonts. Retrieved 7 October 2016. Currently, the Latin characters in the CJK fonts are from Adobe's Source Sans Pro
14. Lunde, Ken. "Super, Mega & Ultra OTCs". blogs.adobe.com.
15. googlefonts/noto-fonts, Google Fonts, 2020-12-29, retrieved 2020-12-30
16. "Noto Color Emoji". Retrieved 8 October 2016.
17. "Frequently Asked Questions: What are Google's plans for Noto (so called "Phase 3")?". GitHub. Retrieved 8 October 2010.
18. "Current Noto Sans Scripts Coverage (Excepted CJK and Emoji) · Issue #2071 · googlefonts/Noto-fonts". GitHub.
19. "Google Noto Fonts - Noto Sans". www.google.com. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
20. "Google Noto Fonts - Noto Sans Display". www.google.com. Retrieved 2020-08-04.
21. "Google Noto Fonts - Noto Sans Mono". www.google.com. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
22. "Google Noto Fonts - Noto Serif". www.google.com. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
23. "Google Noto Fonts - Noto Serif Display". www.google.com. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
24. "Debian -- Details of package fonts-noto in sid". packages.debian.org.
25. "Arch Linux - noto-fonts 20190926-2 (any)". www.archlinux.org.
26. "rpms / google-noto-fonts". Fedora Project. Retrieved September 20, 2022.
27. "Gentoo Packages - media-fonts/noto". packages.gentoo.org.
28. "CTAN: Package noto". www.ctan.org.
29. "LibreOffice 6.0: Release Notes - The Document Foundation Wiki". wiki.documentfoundation.org.
30. Brewer, Jenny (21 August 2019). "Ikea swaps its brand typeface to Google and Monotype's Noto". It's Nice That. Retrieved 18 December 2019. Ikea has swapped its brand typeface to Noto, a collaborative type family from Monotype and Google, after a decade of using Verdana across its visual identity. Before 2009, the company used Ikea Sans – an adaptation of Futura – for 50 years, but moved to Verdana because its own-brand font didn't include Asian characters.

External links

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Noto fonts.

• Official website  
• noto-fonts, noto-fonts-alpha, noto-cjk, noto-emoji, noto-source  – GitHub repositories