Panose is still used

The manual says:

At the time of this writing, PANOSE was hardly in use.

I was surprised to find many issues relating to Panose and font creation on non-macOS operating systems - eg it seems to be important for fontconfig on Ubuntu/Linux†, Windows, etc.

Perhaps you could change this to say: “PANOSE parameters may be important if your font is to work correctly on all operating systems…”?

† (As a Mac user this feels like turning to the Dark Side… :))

I just tool a quick look at the link you provided, and all I saw was issues concerning font production tools treating the (panose) data in the font. IOW these are about editing and verifying the panose data, not about using it.

Can you provide a more specific source that shows that the data we put into the font is actively used, and has an effect for a user? Where does it make a difference? I do not want to create hours of extra work for users if the gain is minimal or nothing.

The only thing I know is the monospace setting is used in some OSes.

Hi Rainer - I wasn’t trying to make work for you…

I spent a couple of “extra hours” trying to find out why fonts weren’t being recognized by Linux fontconfig. The word on the street is that a full set of Panose parameters must be stored in the font. I don’t have anything more specific though. All this font technology is difficult enough on macOS, it looks to get much more complicated on Linux…

So I was simply suggesting that you mention a possible application of the data in the manual.

No problem - people might search this forum… :wink: