MainType: Panose code bug [Solved]

MainType - Font Manager MainType - Bug Reports
1

Hello,

PANOSE classification is on 10 rows. Within each of these ranks, there can be an infinite number of sub ranks.

Bug found

MainType sometimes displays 11 values instead of 10, because it simply aggregates the hexadecimal numbers of each row, which leads to big errors. A hexadecimal number can only go up to the value 15 (F). I suggest that MainType uses the same format as FontCreator.

Examples

MainType indicates for the Blackadder ITC font an 11-digit Panose code, 425551072D2, while the PANOSE code is rather a sequence of 10 values, here in hexadecimal 4-2-5-5-5-10-7-2-D-2, each value being able to go from 0 to infinity.

See also with 11 values:
Blackadder ITC
Chiller
Fette Fraktur
Gabriola
Gigi

Suggestions

As we can briskly exceed the hexadecimal value F (15), we now use the values in the form of an Arabic number: 4-2-5-5-5-16-7-2-13-2, as in FontCreator.

More about PANOSE: PANOSE 2.0.

  1. Display the PANOSE code as in FontCreator: 4-2-5-5-5-16-7-2-13-2.
  2. Add the “translation” of each row as in FontCreator, and better with an Internet field by value: Latin Decorative-Derivative-Book-Normal-Medium Low-Script-Drawn distressed-None-Cursive-Extended Collection, which is clearly more usefull than a complicated code to understand.
2

Good point. With a next upcoming release we will format it like this:
4-2-5-5-5-10-7-2-D-2

We will also include a new comma delimited font variable, {FONT_PANOSE_TEXT}:
Latin Text, Any, Book, Condensed, Medium Low, Any, Any, Normal/ Contact, Any, Constant/ Large

We want to avoid a dash, as there are individual descriptions like these:

  • Non-standard Elements
  • Wild Brush - Drips a lot
3

We have incorporated the improvements to MainType 10 which has just been released.

4

Thank you. That’s good work.

All that would remain is to add the IBM classification since it is widely promoted by Microsoft.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/ibmfc