PANOSE

The PANOSE System is a method for classifying typefaces solely on their visual characteristics, developed by Benjamin Bauermeister. 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 font pool. The word "PANOSE" is composed of letters taken from the six classes in which the creator of the system organized the Latin alphabet.

The original PANOSE System was developed in 1985 by Benjamin Bauermeister. In 1988, it was published by Van Nostrand Reinhold Company Inc. under the title A Manual of Comparative Typography: The PANOSE System. This initial version of the PANOSE system consisted of seven classification categories and was based on subjective visual parameters.

In 1990, the Weight category was added, and the Arm Style category was split off from the Stroke Variation category, bringing the number of classification categories to 9. Objective classification criteria were also added at this time.

In 1991, the Family Kind category was added, completing the PANOSE 1.0 definition.

In 1992, there were attempts made to classify Han ideographic typefaces, which allows applications to suggests the most appropriate Latin typeface to match a given Han ideographic typeface. Transliteral mapping could also be used to match between, for example, decorative or script faces and text equivalents.

In 1993, Mapper Application Interface (MAI) was developed. PANOSE 2.0 was also released in the same year, which is the basis for Hewlett Packard's Infinifont font synthesis technology.

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.

It was published in 1988. A PANOSE classification number consists of 10 concatenated values. Each value from a given category was computed from a specific visual metric, such as the weight of the font and the presence or absence of serifs. Special values "Any" (0) and "No Fit" (1) exist for every category, which have specific meanings to the mapper. "Any" means match that digit with any available digit, which allows the mapper to handle distortable typefaces. "No Fit" means that the item being classified does not fit within the present system.

The standard classifies fonts in following categories in following order:

...
Wikipedia