[Freefont-bugs] Re: Frreefont PANOSE numbers suggestion

[Primoz Peterlin]

Hello,

On Sun, 5 May 2002, Josef W. Segur wrote:

> I took a few hours to work through the measurements and calculations
> from http://www.panose.com/hardware/pan2.asp and came up with this set
> of numbers for the fonts:
>            FreeMono.ttf    2   7   4   9   2   2   5   2   4   4
>        FreeMonoBold.ttf    2   7   6   9   2   2   5   2   4   4
> FreeMonoBoldOblique.ttf    2   7   6   9   2   2   5   9   4   4
>     FreeMonoOblique.ttf    2   7   4   9   2   2   5   9   4   4
>            FreeSans.ttf    2  11   5   4   2   2   2   2   2   4
>        FreeSansBold.ttf    2  11   7   4   2   2   2   2   2   4
> FreeSansBoldOblique.ttf    2  11   7   4   2   2   2   9   2   4
>     FreeSansOblique.ttf    2  11   5   4   2   2   2   9   2   4
>           FreeSerif.ttf    2   2   6   3   5   4   5   2   3   4
>       FreeSerifBold.ttf    2   2   8   3   7   5   5   2   3   4
> FreeSerifBoldItalic.ttf    2   2   7   3   6   5   5   9   3   4
>     FreeSerifItalic.ttf    2   2   6   3   5   4   5   9   3   4
> For someone with all the fonts installed, having those numbers in the
> fonts would mean that an application could choose the correct one to
> match some other font which is missing some needed characters.

Thank you very much! I can imagine it was quite a time-consuming job. I
have already updated the SFD files in the CVS repository, and will soon
update the Truetype files as well.

Just for information - the Panose values for the Monotype TrueType fonts
supplied with Microsoft systems:

          Arial-BoldItalicMT.sfd:Panose:  2 11  7  4  2  2  9  9  2  4
                Arial-BoldMT.sfd:Panose:  2 11  7  4  2  2  2  2  2  4
              Arial-ItalicMT.sfd:Panose:  2 11  6  4  2  2  9  9  2  4
                     ArialMT.sfd:Panose:  2 11  6  4  2  2  2  2  2  4
   CourierNewPS-BoldItalicMT.sfd:Panose:  2  7  6  9  2  2  9  9  4  4
         CourierNewPS-BoldMT.sfd:Panose:  2  7  6  9  2  2  2  2  4  4
       CourierNewPS-ItalicMT.sfd:Panose:  2  7  4  9  2  2  9  9  4  4
              CourierNewPSMT.sfd:Panose:  2  7  3  9  2  2  2  2  4  4
TimesNewRomanPS-BoldItalicMT.sfd:Panose:  2  2  7  3  6  5  9  9  3  4
      TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT.sfd:Panose:  2  2  8  3  7  5  2  2  3  4
    TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT.sfd:Panose:  2  2  5  3  5  4  9  9  3  4
           TimesNewRomanPSMT.sfd:Panose:  2  2  6  3  5  4  2  2  3  4

The numbers are almost completely equal, and actually differ exclusively
in the third column (weight). There is one thing I noticed. I would expect
the upright and slanted form of a typeface to be of equal weight. In this
aspect, Monotype fonts show more unwanted(?) variability than URW fonts.
Does that mean URW fonts are better, or is the Panose algorithm skewed?

PfaEdit seems to be unable to write the Panose information selected in the
user interface to the file. I have changed the SFD files by hand (i.e.
using a text editor).

Another change I made to the SFD files is adding some hopefully correctly
labelled textual information that goes to Truetype font headers. Two
languages supported right now are en_US (code 1033) and sl (code 1060).
Which standard do these codes correspond to and where I can get the
complete list of them I have yet to discover.

Yet another change I made was replacing the fixed "Version" number with
RCS Revision tag. I am not yet certain if this is going to get me into
troubles or not.

With kind regards, Primoz

--
Primož Peterlin,   Inštitut za biofiziko, Med. fakulteta, Univerza v Ljubljani
Lipičeva 2, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenija.  address@hidden
Tel: +386-1-5437632, fax: +386-1-4315127, http://sizif.mf.uni-lj.si/~peterlin/
F8021D69 OpenPGP fingerprint: CB 6F F1 EE D9 67 E0 2F  0B 59 AF 0D 79 56 19 0F