PANOSE
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The PANOSE System is a method for classifying typefaces solely on their visual characteristics. It can be used to identify an unknown font from a sample image or to match a known font to its closest visual neighbor from a pool of candidates.
PANOSE definitions exist for Latin Text, Latin Script, Latin Decorative, Iconographic, Japanese Text, Cyrillic Text and Hebrew. The original PANOSE System was developed in 1985 by Benjamin Bauermeister and produced a 7-hexadecimal digit number (later expanded to 10 digits) for each font. Each digit was computed from a specific visual metric, such as the weight of the font and the presence or absence of serifs.
For example, the PANOSE digits for Times New Roman are:
| Family Kind | 2 (Latin text) |
| Serif Style | 2 (Cove) |
| Weight | 6 (Medium) |
| Proportion | 3 (Modern) |
| Contrast | 5 (Medium low) |
| Stroke variation | 4 (Transitional) |
| Arm style | 5 (Straight arms) |
| Letterform | 2 (Round) |
| Midline | 3 (Standard) |
| X-height | 4 (Large) |
PANOSE was incorporated into a variety of digital font metadata tags in 1992 by ElseWare Corporation. The classification system, its matching algorithms reference databases, classification parameters, and trademarks were purchased by Hewlett Packard in 1995. A font synthesis engine named Infinifont was also purchased by Hewlett Packard at that time.
In 1996, during the W3C's draft process for CSS1, Hewlett Packard proposed a PANOSE syntax extension for font substitution. It was not included in the final CSS1 recommendation partly because of licensing concerns.
