What it is
Noto is a font family from Google that aims to cover every script in Unicode, so text in any language shows up instead of as empty boxes. noto-fonts-emoji adds Noto Color Emoji, the full set of color emoji. ttf-nerd-fonts-symbols adds the Nerd Fonts symbols: icons for files, folders, Git and programming languages that terminal tools draw with.
Why it’s here
- No empty boxes. Web pages and documents in any language display properly.
- Emoji everywhere. In chats, mail and the terminal.
- Icons in the terminal. The starship prompt and the
lsaliases use them.
On CoreDesktop
CoreDesktop installs all three packages from pacman. Nothing needs setting up: apps pick the fonts up automatically, and the icons show in the starship prompt and in ls, ll, la and lt, which run eza with icons, as described in the shell setup. update keeps them current.