Panose

[RosaWagner]

I wonder how you set up the PANOSE these days. I read you define one per instance and not a general one, but…

• How specific are you with it?
• What is your recommendations for multiscripts fonts ?
• Do you use a script ? Do you do it manually ? Or Fontmake does it?

Thx

[tphinney]

What a great question! I do not think most font developers bother with PANOSE numbers these days for most fonts, although some of the largest still do (including Adobe and Monotype, at least last time I checked).

In monospace fonts, Google requires at least a partial PANOSE number be set, because of some minor issues with treatment of fallback for missing characters (see https://github.com/googlefonts/gf-docs/tree/master/Spec#monospace-fonts). Definitely need to make clear whether this is the only case in which Google cares about PANOSE—I think that is true, but I do not know it for a fact.

FontMake will certainly pass through PANOSE data already present in the source, but does not synthesize/generate PANOSE data from scratch. Doing so by algorithmic analysis of the font is technically possible, and some vendor(s) may have tools for it, but I don’t know any publicly available tool or script that does it. (This would be a great candidate for an open source tool, IMO.)

(Disclaimer: I know a fair bit about PANOSE, and am doing some contract work for Google, but this is not an official Google statement or position, just my thoughts.)

[RosaWagner]

Thank you for you answer :) For what I see, if there is no PANOSE parameter in the font, Fontmake generate one with 0 to all categories. I just wonder if it is okay? In that case it could be mentioned in the specs. Maybe @m4rc1e can give some insight here.

[m4rc1e]

Thanks Thomas!

For what I see, if there is no PANOSE parameter in the font, Fontmake generate one with 0 to all categories. I just wonder if it is okay?

It's fine.

[davelab6]

Is there a FB check for panose which can PASS the 0 values?