Google Looking to Fix Font Display Issues with Free Download

Fonts come in all shapes and sizes, and many fonts are slight variations of each other that share the same core name and are differentiated by having additional descriptive words in their names. In a classic example of this, the common "Arial" font is commonly included alongside variations such as "Arial Bold" and "Arial Narrow." A selection of named font variations centered on a core font concept is collectively referred to as a font family, but some users may be perplexed to find occasional examples of font families in which there is no discernible difference between the text at all. One such font family goes by the name "Baloo."

Because countless languages and writing systems do not use Latin script but have to be supported by word processors regardless, many thousands of different text characters can conceivably exist in a digital text format. It is unrealistic for a single font to include designs for that many letters, so many writing systems must use exclusive fonts that cover little more than their own alphabets and the universally recognized Latin alphabet. Baloo is an example of a font family in which the font variations are identical in their support of the Latin script but are otherwise differentiated by exclusively supporting different languages' alphabets.

Whenever text that uses a particular font attempts to display a text character the font is not designed to recognize, the font will default to showing an empty square if the program is not set to automatically pull up a different font that is capable of showing it. These meaningless symbols are colloquially called "tofu," but Google has been releasing "Noto" font family variations since 2013 that collectively aim to encompass almost every Unicode text character that could conceivably be expected to be used in modern writing. The font family is freely downloadable, and while the sheer number of text characters encompassed between the fonts results in massive file sizes, its presence on a computer should ensure that any writing system can be expressed with a similar look and without the remote possibility that square symbols will occur. For more information click here https://i.redd.it/cwibeqsfsb131.png.