Considering Noto Fonts

Brought to my attention regarding multi lingual font support;

How to find Noto in Google Docs, Slides, Sheets and Sites    in the Google Blog. 

See also  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noto_fonts

The Noto fonts in Workspace now support almost all living written languages

By Rebecca Hsiao, Interaction Designer

With the addition of Noto support for thousands of languages, you can now type in Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, and Slides) using Noto fonts for almost every living language that is written.

Google Fonts’ Noto project has fonts in multiple weights, widths, and styles for over 1,000 languages and over 150 writing systems. The Noto name, short for "no tofu," explains part of the project’s mission: to eliminate the blank rectangles that look like tofu that are shown when no font is available for your text.

The Noto fonts in Workspace support almost all living written languages in Unicode, a standard for text that now supports 161 writing systems. Here’s what you need to know.

What’s a writing system?

A writing system is used to write a language, and consists of a script (a visual representation of verbal speech, such as Latin or Cyrillic) and a set of usage conventions (known as an orthography).

How does this impact you?

Maybe you write in Adlam. Previously, you couldn’t use Google Docs to type in that language, because there was no font available for it. Well, now you can by using Noto Sans Adlam.

Noto also includes characters with diacritic marks, which are needed in many languages. For example, tonal languages such as Yoruba use characters that are not available in many popular Latin fonts, including: ẹ ẹ́ ẹ̀ ọ ọ́ ọ̀ ṣ ń ǹ n̄ ḿ m̀ m̄.

The Founder of the Noto program, Bob Jung, who is now director of internationalization at Google, is focused on the underlying promise of open source Noto fonts to improve accessibility, globally. That has been a key goal from the start of the program, and Bob recently observed, "The addition of new fonts builds on years of ongoing work. Noto’s ambition is to provide a basic high quality font family covering all online languages with a harmonious design for aesthetic intermixing of languages — which is especially useful for the inclusion of ‘long-tail’ languages, and expanding accessibility.”

How to find Noto in Docs, Sheets and Slides

Want to try out one of these cool fonts? Here’s how to find the Noto font you need in Docs, Slides and Sheets. To use these fonts in Workspace products, select “More” in the Fonts menu and type “Noto” in the search bar.

Step 1: Go to the Fonts Menu and select “More fonts.”... ' 

Google Rebrands G Suite

Working with clients and universities have often had to use G Suite.   Just recently received a message saying that some of the spaces I created there will be removed, so need to scramble on that.   A rebranding but also a repositioning  of uses they say

Introducing Google Workspace from Cloud.Google

Javier Soltero,  VP and GM, Google Workspace.  For more than a decade, we’ve been building products to help people transform the way they work.

Now, work itself is transforming in unprecedented ways. For many of us, work is no longer a physical place we go to, and interactions that used to take place in person are being rapidly digitized. Office workers no longer have impromptu discussions at the coffee machine or while walking to meetings together, and instead have turned their homes into workspaces. Frontline workers, from builders on a construction site to delivery specialists keeping critical supply chains moving, are turning to their phones to help get their jobs done. While doctors treating patients and local government agencies engaging with their communities are accelerating how they can use technology to deliver their services. 

Amidst this transformation, time is more fragmented—split between work and personal responsibilities—and human connections are more difficult than ever to establish and maintain.

These are unique challenges, but they also represent a significant opportunity to help people succeed in this highly distributed and increasingly digitized world. With the right solution in place, people are able to collaborate more easily, spend time on what matters most, and foster human connections, no matter where they are.

Google Workspace: everything you need to get anything done, now in one place. Google Workspace includes all of the productivity apps you know and love—Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, and many more. Whether you're returning to the office, working from home, on the frontlines with your mobile device, or connecting with customers, Google Workspace is the best way to create, communicate, and collaborate.    ... "