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typeworship

Monotype create Noto for Google: An open-source typeface family for all the world’s languages

With a goal of encompassing every written language, Monotype and Google have released Noto as an open-source typeface for everyone to use.

Noto is one of the largest typographic projects ever undertaken; more than five years in the making, covering over 800 languages with over 100 writing scripts (some never digitised before), each with a harmonious look and feel.

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Tofo is the nickname used to describe the blank boxes that appear when a computer or site lacks font support for a particular character. The ambitious brief from Google to Monotype of “no more tofu” which gave rise to the type family’s name. 

“Our goal for Noto has been to create fonts for our devices, but we’re also very interested in keeping information alive,” he adds. “When it comes to some of the lesser-used languages, or even the purely academic or dead languages, we think it’s really important to preserve them.” Bob Jung, Google internationalization expert.  

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Intense Research

Rising to this enormous challenge Monotype coordinated an intense research effort, partnering with researchers, designers, linguists, cultural experts and project managers around the world. 

The more obscure scripts required significant research to ensure the scripts adhered to their traditions and rules. Experts were consulted and direct feedback was sought from communities using the scripts. 

For the Tibetan face, Monotype conducted in-depth research into a vast library of writings and then enlisted the help of Buddhist monks to critique the font and make adjustments to the design.

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Sketches for Adlam (left) and Tibetan (right)

Using Noto

Not only will the breadth of languages covered by Noto expand the availability of information to more readers and preserve rare writing systems, the typeface is also “a digital workhorse”. It powers the text shown across Android and Chrome devices and importantly because it has been released as a suite of open source fonts it can be used any where.  

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Download Noto from Google here. and read more about making Noto at Monotype.com

mynameisgoliath

But do they have Old Church Slavonic?

languageoclock

yup! both the glagolitic alphabet and the entire extended cyrillic alphabet

Source: monotype.com

More you might like

allthingslinguistic
allthingslinguistic

Two recorded talks from typography conferences about increased cross-linguistic font support, from Zachary Scheuren, one of the people working on the Google Noto font which aims to support all the writing systems of the world. Description of the first talk, Invisible Letters, Invisible Languages: 

If we can’t see a language, does it exist? Of course it does, but in an increasingly computerized world, many languages remain invisible. Some languages have no writing system to be seen. Others are not necessarily accessible in the digital realm. What are the implications for these languages in light of today’s technologies? Computing in general is grounded in the assumption that spoken language can be transcribed and manipulated. But who are we leaving behind and why should we care? The benefits of digital representation aren’t limited to the locale of a particular language, script, or culture. The possibilities range from linguistic analysis to all forms of cross-referencing across disciplines like linguistics, history, archaeology, literature, sociology, economics, anthropology, and more. This presentation will look at a number of historic and minority writing systems and consider what can be gained by digitizing them and making them accessible to the world.

Watch on youtube. 

Here’s what the second talk (Writing Systems of the World) is about: 

There are hundreds of writing systems in the world, some no longer in use, some in use by small groups, and some (like the words you are reading now) in use by larger groups. Many writing systems have been encoded in various ways for use in computing, but encoding is just the first part of the process. Without fonts and proper support in applications a writing system might not be usable at all. The current state of technology allows us to do so many amazing things yet many writing systems are not adequately implemented for use in computing. How can it be that some scripts are so difficult to use? What is standing in the way? Why are shaping engines so complicated? (They aren’t). Why is dealing with text encodings so hard? (It shouldn’t be). Why are there little to no fonts for some writing systems? What can we do to move forward? 

 This presentation will provide an overview of world scripts and the common problems that keep some scripts from being used. We will then look at what needs to be done to remedy this and how everyone can help.

Watch the whole thing on youtube.

sunbun21 asked:

Hallo! You posted about noto a while, and I downloaded and installed it, but I'm not very familiar with font stuff. Is there a way I can get wiktionary/wikipedia/honestly any site to default to noto fonts so it can render Gothic and Hittite and Etruscan and such? Why don't some fonts get rendered in browser but do in the url bar? what is the actual reason for tofu, so that I can treat the problem, prophylactically, as it were?

Basically you have to set the right (default) font in your web browser’s settings, then it should work. If it works in the url bar but not the page content, the url bar draws the characters not from the browser’s settings but from the system (I presume).

[referring to this post]

fonts unicode language problems q&a
anthrocentric
aaronalbin.com

PraatR, an R package for controlling Praat
allthingslinguistic

Praat is an open-source phonetics program, and R is an open-source programming language often used by linguists to do statistics. Both of them are excellent and well-established, but it’s fairly tedious to use them together. PraatR is a new free tool for doing just that, and looks really useful for linguists doing numbers-heavy acoustic phonetics, and possibly other things. From PraatR’s website: 

An increasing number of researchers are using the R programming language for the visualization and statistical modeling of phonetic data. However, R’s capabilities for analyzing soundfiles and extracting acoustic measurements are still limited compared to free-standing phonetics software such as Praat. As such, it is typical to extract the acoustic measurements in Praat, export the data to a textfile, and then import this file into R for analysis. This process of manually shuttling data from one program to the other slows down and complicates the analysis workflow. 

The present software architecture (‘PraatR’) is designed to overcome this inefficiency. Its core R function sends a shell command to the operating system that invokes the command-line form of Praat with an associated Praat script. This script imports a file, applies a Praat command to it, and then either brings the output directly into R or exports the output as a textfile. Since all arguments are passed from R to Praat, the full functionality of the original Praat command is available inside R, making it possible to conduct the entire analysis within a single environment. Moreover, with the combined power of these two programs, many new analyses become possible.

It’s definitely the kind of thing that assumes knowledge of R and Praat already though, so you may also wish to start with this R tutorial for linguists, these R exercises for computational linguistics, or the guide on the Praat site. 

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Productivity Resource List!*

lifting-books

*All these are free. Just sayin’.

Websites

Blank Slate  // Lets you type notes straight into your browser. Can save notes, export into Google Docs or pdf. Recommend pinning as a tab so it’s always available for a quick note.

Convert Files // Convert files online to a different file type.

PDFescape // PDF editor. Can edit files online, directly in browser or can download Windows program.

Pocket [also on Android and iOS] // Lets you save all your bookmarks in one place. Uses a tagging system to keep track of bookmarks. Automatically filters bookmarks by article, video, images.  Recommend for those of us who have multiple platforms to work on (ex, I own Apple, Android and Windows products), easy access to bookmarks if tablets/phones have trouble running Chrome or similar web browsers, and for bookmarks that can fall into multiple categories.

Pushbullet [also on Android and iOS] // Syncs devices in real-time. Send items from your computer to phone and vice versa. No compatibility between iPhones to Windows for text messages (assuming same goes for Android/Mac). Most effective for those who use one singular platform (if your computer + phone are both by Apple, and if you own an Android + Windows).

Pixel Thoughts // 1 minute meditation website. Watch your worries shrink, then float away (literally). 

Pomotodo [also on Android and iOS] // Simple, yet very effective. Tracks Pomodoros for those who use the Pomodoro technique. Includes to-do list. Charts completed pomodoros and shows graphs when pomodoros take place.

Sleepyti.me // Fix your sleeping schedule.

Cold Turkey + SelfControl // Block yourself from using specific Internet websites for a time period.

Coffitivity // Ambient coffee shop noise.

TitanPad // Multiple people working on one document simultaneously (pretty much same as Google Docs).

HabitRPG [also on Android and iOS] // Treat habits like leveling up in a video game.

Chrome Extensions

Prioritab  // Very simple interface. Shows daily, weekly and monthly to-do lists. Replaces the new tab page.

Overtask // Organize and save tabs into folders, which then can be opened at any time as needed without losing those tabs. Uses a tagging system, priority ranking and has a deadline alert feature. Recommended for when multiple projects are coming up and need to keep track of different websites for different things, or to group large amounts tabs into different sections. Replaces the new tab page.

Momentum // Shows weather, photography background, quote, goal for the day and has a to-do list feature. Replaces the new tab page.

New Tab Redirect // Replace the default new tab with a page of your choice.

Be Limitless // Photography background, goal for the day, a notepad feature with countdown and reminders. Shows how much time is spent on certain types of websites (shopping, social, etc) and most visited sites. Replaces the new tab page.

Cool Clock // Includes stopwatch, alarm and timer functions straight in your browser. Hourly pop-up alerts. Has to-do list function. Can be synced to Google Calendar. Can replace the new tab page.

Polar Clock // Simple, futuristic-looking clock. Shows the year by month, day, hours, minutes, seconds etc. Colors are customizable. Replaces the new tab page.

Black Menu for Google // At the click of a button, all (and I mean all, even the obscure ones no one knows about) of Google’s websites are a click away. This includes everything from YouTube, Gmail, Drive, Maps, etc.

Hola Better Internet  [also on Play Store, App store. Firefox maybe?] // Free VPN proxy service. 

Apps

Flat Tomato [iOS] // Pomodoro app. Minimalist design. Includes calendar function.

Focus Now [iOS] // Free version of Forest app. A few translations errors.

Forest [Android, iOS] // Free on Android. $0.99 on iOS.

Timeful [iOS] // Smart calendar app. Schedules reminders, project time blocks, to-dos, habits and everything for you. Integrates with multiple calendar platforms, Google Calendar included.

30/30 [iOS] // Schedule your tasks into time blocks, and alerts you when your time is up.

SolCalendar [Android] // Calendar app with color-coding, stickers and widgets available. Can sync to different calendar platforms, Google Calendar included.

Tasks: Astrid To-Do List Clone [Android] // Simple to-do list app app. Can organize by priority, type and reminders are included.

AirDroid [Android] // Sync your Android phone to your computer in real-time, wirelessly. Respond to texts, emails, and transfer files between the two without needing a cable.

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