PANOSE Your Fonts

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honest.bern
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Post by honest.bern »

I have made an all-on-one-page illustration of Panose.
It is at my web site: "http://www.hughes-chavez.freeserve.co.uk/"
It borrows illustrations from the posts on this thread. As yet, it is still a work in progress. Criticism welcome.

honest bern
Dave Crosby
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Post by Dave Crosby »

An excellent attempt!
You went way beyond my three digits!
I REALLY like what you did with 2-10, 3-7, 3-8, 3-9, 4-7, 4-8, and 4-9!

I saved and printed out a copy.

Perhaps you could add a half inch to the length of the chart and add the names of the serifs below the representations in column 2-2 and 4-2. Words + illustrations help me understand what I'm looking at, but 5-2 could take pages all by itself.

3-4 Add Visual examples of Proportional and Monospaced.

2-5 could use an explanation and perhaps illustration of "What the heck is contrast?" The same is true for the weird words "Aspect Ratio" in 3-5.

As a Newbie, would I have a clue what the words in 2-7 and 8 mean?

If I could have the desires of my heart, 2-2 would begin with Sans Serif and conclude with Obtuse Square Cove; Contrast would be in the same column for all forms, ... But everyone has their own idea and I'd probably be the only one using MY version.

Thanks for sharing!
Aut nunc aut nunquam
honest.bern
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Post by honest.bern »

Thanks for the encouragement.

I have a revised version at my site now.
I have captioned the illustrations of serif style and decorative class as suggested.
Wherever possible (except 'weight') I have replaced the bit-mapped illustrations with scalable graphics (ttf of course).
Some illustrations are hard to find among free fonts - it doesn't help that most of the free fonts are not panosed.

Most of the unillustrated numbers are just too complicated. It is hard enough to understand the procedure, let alone fit in an illustration.
Dave Crosby
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Post by Dave Crosby »

Your 11May2008 version (at the bottom of the page) is a big help!

The Contrast images are things I never would have guessed on my own. Even seeing them, I have no idea how they were derived.

It is too bad a single page can't provide room for more information like:

Image
Perhaps words similar to Initial could be worked into the 3-4 space?

Also is needed room for definitions. For instance, Aspect?

The Dictionary states:

Aspect - 1. Position, facing a particular direction
2. Appearance, Look
3. Phase, recurring cycles as "aspect of the Moon."

But in Panose, "This is the ratio between the width and height of the face."
I would never have guessed that on my own. I'm sure somewhere there is a better word for what is meant than aspect.
Perhaps we could ask a font "Are you a shorty or a fatty?"
Someone will come up with a better term, but will it ever get into common Panose usage?

One correction. 4-2 is Derivative, not Standard. A Derivative is made from the standard by outlining it, or adding a shadow, or ...

I'm afraid definitions will always be a stumbling block in Panose.
Benjamin Bauermeister had his definitions.
Hulet Packard and Monotype personnel had theirs.
Each of us has ours.

I believe "2- 14 Flared" means slowly widening of the stems as in Bell Bottom Trousers.
I have seen another person's interpretation that the stem bottoms curve up into the stem.

I don't see how that could be the case. How could it curve high enough to convert the font from Sans Serif to Serif?
I can see the flare becoming wide enough to change to Serif so I like my definition better, but ...
Aut nunc aut nunquam
honest.bern
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Re: PANOSE Your Fonts

Post by honest.bern »

I have produced an updated version of my all-on-one-page chart. It is still a work in progress. I have added a few illustrations but most of the changes are tidying/cleaning.
The address is:
http://www.hughes-chavez.freeserve.co.uk/Panose02 15 Feb 2009.PDF
Erwin Denissen
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Re: PANOSE Your Fonts

Post by Erwin Denissen »

Here is the same file available from our server:
postedfiles/Panose.pdf
Erwin Denissen
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nabsltd
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Post by nabsltd »

Dick Pape wrote:Works faster when you remember what a Ewid and Eout are.
This is something that is driving me nuts. It's one of the many places where the PANOSE documentation either contradicts itself or is just plain unclear.

The picture of the uppercase E (figure 5) has lines at the top with the EWid and EOut measurements, but the text for those completely disagrees with the picture. The text says the left-most serif should not be included on either, while the descriptions for both also say they extend to the "right-most extent of the serif on the upper-most arm of the uppercase E", but the drawing shows them ending in different places.

Does anyone have a better drawing that shows where the start and end locations of these measures should really be?
ClintGoss
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Re: PANOSE Your Fonts

Post by ClintGoss »

Here's a question: If your document file (let's say we're talking MS Word .DOC/DOCX files) uses a font that is not on the authoring system, how does Word know the PANOSE signature of the missing font? This would be needed to find a suitable replacement font ...

Maybe the .DOC file format store the PANOSE signature of each font in the document, along with the name of the font?
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