How do browsers deal with “Tofu” characters

Question

character. I am using the Orbitron font in a hybrid Cordova/Android app that I am creating - quite simply because it is compact and has the clean, futuristic look that I am

Answer 1

In Chrome you can inspect the element, then switch into the "Computed" tab and it will show the Rendered Fonts. Chrome (and I think most modern browsers) will use the font for all characters that are supported, and will silently use a local font to display the remaining characters.

E.g. for Japanese it will use "Yu Gothic" for 5 glyphs and "SimSun" for 3 glyphs.

For Tamil it uses 2 glyphs from "Orbitron" (the space and the exclamation mark) and the remaining 12 are rendered in "Nirmala UI":

For Spanish it only renders "Orbitron", I'm not sure why, but I guess it basically uses the existing exclamation mark and rotates it.

Which local font file is used can vary based on Browser and OS.