2 ms·
Perhaps it is a bit rude. But the problem is that Google's Noto have sucked all the oxygen out of the room. There were lots of people who were working on fonts
by edent 6y ago
Perhaps it is a bit rude. But the problem is that Google's Noto have sucked all the oxygen out of the room. There were lots of people who were working on fonts with broad coverage. They now find it hard to get funding because "Why bother? Google is doing it."
Just like any monopoly, they dominate and then abandon.
They could have funded an independent foundation, or sponsored existing teams, or paid an external agency.
Instead they made a big fanfare, got a lot of attention, and tried to make themselves the arbiter of what should receive attention.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoSo there were efforts before the Noto fonts that were significantly better funded than they are now? Is there any publicly available documentation for this claim? I'm looking at the Wikipedia page for OSS Unicode typefaces and the stuff from before Noto looks to mostly be collections of other OSS typefaces. Maybe MPH 2B Damase had some independent funding? I can't tell. But if these efforts had significant funding it is not apparent from their output. Based on the information I have available to me at this time, I can only conclude that the space of broad Unicode fonts is in a much better state now with Google's efforts on Noto than it would have been in the counterfactual where they did not make those efforts.