Missing characters in fonts.google.com

[djstrong]

Defect Report

Missing characters in fonts.google.com

Issue

There is missing many (tens of thousands) characters in font.google.com, e.g. 㐀 U+3400. You can test it here: https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+HK?preview.text=%E3%90%80 (I am using Chrome on Linux)

On Noto Dashboard: https://notofonts.github.io/overview/ we can see that many fonts is supporting this character:

including Sans CJK HK.

When I download the family from fonts.google.com then this character is missing in font files.
In files from this repo (https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-cjk/raw/main/Sans/Variable/TTF/NotoSansCJKhk-VF.ttf) the character is present.

I would like that CJK fonts from fonts.google.com will support the same set of characters as font files in this repo. Why there is a difference?

[tamcy]

Noto Sans HK and Noto Sans CJK HK are not the same. Noto Sans HK is the regional subset version, and its coverage is limited to Big5 and HKSCS characters. While Noto Sans CJK HK, a language-specific variant, comes with full character coverage and the ability to access glyphs of other regions via language-tagging.

[djstrong]

Thank you for explanation! So, there is no font on fonts.google.com supporting such characters? If yes then I need to use font files from this repo or are there other options?

[tamcy]

I believe no single font in Google Fonts offers a complete coverage of Noto Sans CJK. On desktop, The CJK version i.e. Noto Sans CJK HK is your best choice. On the web, you'll need to use add other fonts (Noto Sans CN or even JP and KR) as the fallback if you need to use Google Fonts and do not want to build your custom webfont from the CJK family.

Alternatively, you may give Chiron Hei HK a try (disclaimer: I am the author). The font is based on Source Han Sans / Noto Sans CJK but with an opinionated glyph forms which is close to but not 100% the same as the Noto Sans HK variant. It contains essentially the same number of CJK codepoints of the Noto CJK version (and even more), and its webfont (also available in jsDelivr and npm) build offers the same CJK codepoint coverage as the desktop version. You can use it as the primary font, or in case you prefer the glyph forms of Noto Sans HK, use it as a fallback of Noto Sans HK for the best of both worlds.