What is the purpose of the "Latha" font?

[tarzan]

I've noticed when scrolling through the various available fonts in Avid Title Tool, or Photoshop, or even Microsoft Word, most of which I have no use for, usually I come across something that doesn't even resemble a written language. Take Latha for instance:
http://www.fonttrader.com/detailed~name~Latha~font~3483.htm

No matter what keys I hit with that font, all you see are a bunch of vertical rectangles. What the hell is that supposed to mean? What would be the purpose of a font like that?

 

[104imdirect]

Latha Font and more

From google groups....

Windows XY and Vista contain a number of fonts for displaying websites
in alphabets the average ("western") user almost never sees or uses.
Some of them contain a basic latin alphabet, others don't. The foreign
letters are in remote Unicode character slots so you won't see them when
you use the font for English text. You can view them however with a font
editor or in the special character selection table of your favourite
word processor.

When the font is used to display a character it does not contain, you
will see the famous rectangle in Windows versions 9x to XP. Vista seems
do do an automatic replacement with another font that contains the sign
in question. HTH