For a lot of users (at OSUL and outside OSUL) making use of Windows and MacOS systems, the MS Arial Unicode font has played an important role for users that work with mult-language materials. At OSUL, this font is the default font use in tools like Sierra’s cataloging client and OCLC Connexion. It’s also disappearing, and that can cause some problems.
From the early days of Microsoft Office (1997ish), the MS Arial Unicode font has been distributed as part of the Office Suite. Users could install the font by enabling Office’s International Support options. And once you installed the font, it stayed with you through software upgrades and operating system changes. However, in 2016, this changed. Microsoft no longer makes this font directly available to users — the font is now part of a 3rd party licensing program. This means the font no longer is part of a normal MS Office installation, and isn’t distributed as part of the Windows Operating Systems (this isn’t true of Apple’s MacOS system, which licenses this font for use in their software).
For most users, this change in distribution and licensing shows up when they get a new PC. Suddenly, Unicode characters stop working. Our catalogers notice it in Connexion or Sierra — others will notice it in different ways. So what does this mean for users? Do we license the font separately? Probably not. Go back and install Office 2000 (please no). Actually, the solution is found in the open web community.
A couple of years ago, Google sponsored the development of an open Unicode font, the Noto Font family. This was created to be an open source font that could work on any platform and support a comprehensive set of languages. And it does — its current language range is almost twice that of the former MS Arial Unicode font, and its free.
You can download the font from the project page: https://www.google.com/get/noto/. Its large, but its the most comprehensive font I’ve ever worked with, and the best part is, its free and open and doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon.
–tr
