Are the Noto fonts from Google OpenType?

[jonb52042718]

Are Google's Noto font family OpenType and will they work in Adobe InCopy?

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

Regardless of whether you activate the Noto Sans fonts via the Adobe Fonts service or download and install them directly from Google, the Noto Sans font family are OpenType TrueType fonts (i.e., OpenType with TrueType quadratic outlines) from Monotype that should work without any issues in Adobe applications including InCopy (and more importantly InDesign) as well as Illustrator, Photoshop, FrameMaker, Acrobat, etc.

            - Dov

[susansien]

How do I delete NOTO fonts.  They are annoying and leaves long fonts before I can look for the right font.  Thank you.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Just discovered your post from last year.

I admit, Noto's premise is to create a font for every language and dialect on the planet, including ancient and indigenous peoples' languages, so when the entire family is downloaded and installed, you end up with the unwieldly list of fonts shown in your screen captures. There are close to 200 language and symbol variations at this time.

How to remove them:

If you have a font manager installed, use it to locate, select, and either deactivate or fully delete the unneeded versions from your system.

If you acquired them through Adobe's font service, use the Creative Cloud manager app to remove them from your system.

If on a Mac, use Apple fontbook to view and delete the versions you don't need.

And if on Windows, go to C:/Windows/Fonts, select the fonts, and select Delete from the right-click menu.

Hope this helps.

[Alistair-MB]

Well, I know this is an old thread, but I've just discovered a significant difference between Noto Sans from Google, and Not Sans from Adobe: the Google versions support Stylistic Sets, but the Adobe versions do not. This has bitten us big time! By default, the capital I in Noto Sans has serifs (to help distinguish it from other similar characters, such as lowercase form of L). However, my company's product name happens to feature three capital I's and they definitely want the sans form. Originally, using the Google fonts, I set up a GREP routine in our basic paragraph style which automatically applied Stylstic Set 4 whenever capital I appeared as part of our product name: this produces the sans form of the character. But now our translation service is insisting that the Google Noto fonts are problematic (reasons not stated) and want to use the Adobe fonts instead. But, as I have just discovered, these have no alternate Stylistic Sets. I don't know why Adobe has removed that feature! 

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

I think there's an error on the Google Fonts website: When I search for "Noto Sans," it brings up "Noto Serif" instead.
https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans?  looks identical to https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Serif 

Try using Noto from GitHub where the latest versions of the fonts are available for public download. These include versions with the latest updates, bug fixes, etc. https://github.com/notofonts  and https://github.com/notofonts/notofonts.github.io/tree/main/fonts 

By default, the capital I in Noto Sans has serifs (to help distinguish it from other similar characters, such as lowercase form of L).

By @Alistair-MB

Right now, I find that both Adobe and Google's versions have the slab serifs on the Noto Sans capital "I". I don't see any difference between Adobe's and Google's.

I just downloaded the lastest NotoSans from GitHub, installed it, and checked the glyphs panel. The font has 3 stylistic variations:

1. With slab serif
2. Without slab serif
3. Small Cap

So choose the variation you want for your company's logo.

 

[Alistair-MB]

Thanks—I hadn't thought of downloading Noto Sans from GitHub. Actually, I was quite happy with what I downloaded from Google Fonts: it was our translation service that objected to those 'versions' and insisted we use Noto Sans from Adobe instead.

My bad, I didn't explain the capital "I" issue correctly. Yes, by default, Noto Sans has slab serifs for the capital "I", and that is true whether you source it from Google, Adobe or (I assume) GitHub: it's a feature of the core font design (and I understand why that was done). But with the version from Google, you can work around this by applying Stylistic Set 4 to the character: this applies the alternate glyph which has no serif. (I am not sure if this also works with the font from GitHub, but based on your screenshot, I would think it does.)

But what I was trying to explain is that with Noto Sans downloaded from Adobe, this doesn't work—because for some unknown reason, Adobe did not include Stylistic Sets with its versions of Noto Sans.

Here is what I see in the glyphs panel, corresponding to yours except that in my case, Noto Sans was downloaded from Adobe Fonts:

As you can see, the only available variant is the small caps glyph. The others do not appear—because they're not there. (The same is also true for other alternates: for example, in Noto Sans, the default capital J descends below the baseline. But you'll notice in your screenshot, there's an alternate version which sits flush on the baseline. Again, this is not available in the Adobe version.) 

As further evidence, you can see below that when I select the capital "I" in Noto Sans, then go the Character options OpenType > Stylistic Sets, all 20 of the standard Stylistic Sets are enclosed in square brackets, which is InDesign's way of saying they don't exist:

And, as a further update since my original, I have since discovered something else: Adobe's version of Noto Sans does not include the minus sign (U+2212), which my client uses a lot. I can work around this by embedding a GREP style that applies a character stylesheet using Noto Math (from Google, as Adobe don't have it), but again, it ought to be unnecessary. (I understand a lot of designers wouldn't bother: they'd just use a hyphen or dash instead. But they are distinct characters—and if you ever ask a screen reader to read your copy aloud, you'll find out why!)

Anyway, I will talk my translation service and see if they're prepared to download and use Noto Sans from GitHub, instead of Adobe.

Cheers, and thanks.

—Alistair 

[David__B]

I've shared this issue internally to see if we can get the stylistic elements added to the Adobe version of Noto Sans.

[Alistair-MB]

Thanks, David, I appreciate you looking into this. Here's hoping! Cheers!