Noto means "no tofu": fixing dotted circles in Myanmar text

The DatoCMS engineering team recently explored the complexities of rendering less common scripts, specifically focusing on the Myanmar language. A common issue in web typography is the appearance of 'tofu'—the rectangular boxes that signify missing glyphs—or the improper rendering of dotted circles when combining characters. The article details the technical challenges of font fallback mechanisms and how the Noto font family, developed by Google, aims to eliminate these display errors across all languages. By leveraging modern CSS properties and font-loading strategies, developers can ensure that complex scripts like Burmese are rendered correctly without breaking the user experience. The piece serves as a practical guide for internationalization, emphasizing the importance of choosing the right font stacks and understanding how browser rendering engines interpret Unicode characters to maintain high-quality typography for global audiences.