Noto is a font family comprising over 100 individual fonts, which are together designed to cover all the

scripts Script may refer to: Writing systems * Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire * Script (styles of handwriting) ** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of handw ...

encoded in the Unicode standard. , 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, which is under half of the 149,186 characters defined in Unicode 15.0 (released in September 2022). 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 The SIL Open Font License (or OFL in short) is one of the major open font licenses, which allows embedding, or "bundling", of the font in commercially sold products. OFL is a free and open source license. It was created by SIL International ...

. Until September 2015, the fonts were under the Apache License 2.0.

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. The name Noto also means ''I write, I mark, I note'' in Latin.

Characteristics

Emoji

The Noto Emoji Project provides color and black-and-white

emoji An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversat ...

fonts. The color version is used on the Gmail, Google Chat,

Google Meet Google Meet (formerly known as Hangouts Meet) is a video-communication service developed by Google. It is one of two apps that constitute the replacement for Google Hangouts, the other being Google Chat. It replaced the consumer-facing Google ...

, Google Hangouts, and YouTube web apps, as well as the

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

Wear OS Wear OS (also known simply as Wear and formerly Android Wear) is a version of Google's Android operating system designed for smartwatches and other wearables. By pairing with mobile phones running Android version 6.0 "Marshmallow" or newer, or ...

, and ChromeOS operating systems. It is also used on the

Slack Slack may refer to: Places * Slack, West Yorkshire, a village in Calderdale, England * The Slack, a village in County Durham, England * Slack (river), a river in Pas-de-Calais department, France * Slacks Creek, Queensland, a suburb of Logan City, ...

apps on Windows, Linux, and Android.

Latin, Greek and Cyrillic

Noto Sans and Noto Serif contain Latin, Greek and Cyrillic glyphs. Noto Sans is based on

Droid Sans Droid is a font family first released in 2007 and created by Ascender Corporation for use by the Open Handset Alliance platform Android and licensed under the Apache License. The fonts are intended for use on the small screens of mobile hands ...

and Open Sans, while Noto Serif is based on Droid Serif. They are designed by

Steve Matteson Steven R. Matteson (born 1965, Chicago, Illinois) is an American typeface designer whose work is included in several computer operating systems and embedded in game consoles, cell phones and other electronic devices. He is the designer of the Micr ...

CJK

Noto CJK fonts are rebranded versions of Adobe Source Han fonts, developed by

Adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...

and Google which contains Chinese characters, Hangul and Kana; Latin-script letters and numerals are taken from the Source

Pro Pro is an abbreviation meaning "professional". Pro, PRO or variants thereof may also refer to: People * Miguel Pro (1891–1927), Mexican priest * Pro Hart (1928–2006), Australian painter * Mlungisi Mdluli (born 1980), South African retired f ...

fonts. In addition to the standard distributions,

Ken Lunde Ken Roger Lunde (, born 12 August 1965 in Madison, Wisconsin)Lunde, 2008. is an American specialist in information processing for East Asian languages. Academic Background Ken majored in linguistics at University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1985, w ...

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.

Coverage

there are 195 Noto fonts, of which 156 are

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...

style, 29 are

serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...

style, and the remaining 10 fonts are not classified as serif or sans-serif. The Noto Color Emoji font only works under

and Linux, and cannot be installed under macOS or

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. The Noto fonts cover 150 out of the 154

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. 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 Mahjong or mah-jongg (English pronunciation: ) is a tile-based game that was developed in the 19th century in China and has spread throughout the world since the early 20th century. It is commonly played by four players (with some three-play ...

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:

List of Noto fonts

Usage

Some projects provide a package for installing Noto fonts, e.g.

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

, Arch Linux, Fedora Linux,

Gentoo Linux Gentoo Linux (pronounced ) is a Linux distribution built using the Portage package management system. Unlike a binary software distribution, the source code is compiled locally according to the user's preferences and is often optimized for the ...

, CTAN. Since version 6.0, LibreOffice bundles Noto. Since 2019, ''Noto IKEA'', a customised version of Noto Sans, is a corporate typeface of

IKEA IKEA (; ) is a Dutch multinational conglomerate based in the Netherlands that designs and sells , kitchen appliances, decoration, home accessories, and various other goods and home services. Started in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA has been t ...

. It is used in pair with standard versions of Noto Sans and they replaced Verdana as a corporate typeface.

References

External links

*
noto-fontsnoto-fonts-alphanoto-cjknoto-emojinoto-source
– GitHub repositories {{Free and open-source typography Unified serif and sans-serif typeface families Free software Unicode typefaces Software using the Apache license 2013 introductions IPA typefaces Latin-script typefaces Cyrillic typefaces Greek typefaces CJK typefaces