Empty kerning class

Definition

A kerning class has no members. Empty classes pull their weight on the maintenance side but contribute nothing at run time — either fill them with the glyphs they're meant to group, or delete them.

How Patens surfaces this

The Patens audit module checks for class-empty across five teaching surfaces: the edit-panel inline issue list, the project-wide audit page, the release pre-flight check, the family hub, and the home-page project tile. Every surface shows the same plain-English explanation and links back to this page. This rule is detection-only — there's no automatic fix because the correction is design-dependent (it requires a judgment call about the glyph's intended shape or the font's intended behaviour). The audit message links to the specific glyph or field that needs attention.

Run this check yourself

Patens runs every audit rule live as you draw — including this one. The editor (in private alpha) shows class-empty firing on real glyphs, or check your own work from the CLI:

npx patens audit your-project.font.json

Related rules in Kerning classes

• class-missing-member Class member missing from project
• class-name-format Kerning class name missing "@" prefix
• kerning-class-singleton Singleton kerning class
• kerning-no-classes Many pairs but no classes
• pair-missing-glyph Kerning pair references missing glyph
• pair-orphan-class Kerning pair references undefined class
• sidebearings-no-classes No sidebearing classes