Please help identify the font that is used in the image file at the
following location.
http://briefcase.yahoo.com/rdulepet123

Please goto myshare folder that has a JPEG image file, fontTest.jpg

Thanks for asking!

The font appears to be an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) font, in
fact, OCR-B, by Linotype.

"OCR A and OCR B are standardized, monospaced fonts designed for
"Optical Character Recognition" on electronic devices. OCR A was
developed to meet the standards set by the American National Standards
Institute in 1966 for the processing of documents by banks, credit
card companies and similar businesses. This font was intended to be
"read" by scanning devices, and not necessarily by humans. However,
because of its "techno" look, it has been re-discovered for
advertising and display graphics. OCR B was designed in 1968 by Adrian
Frutiger to meet the standards of the European Computer Manufacturer's
Association. It was intended for use on products that were to be
scanned by electronic devices as well as read by humans. OCR B was
made a world standard in 1973, and is more legible to human eyes than
most other OCR fonts. Though less appealingly geeky than OCR A, the
OCR B version also has a distinctive technical appearance that makes
it a hit with graphic designers."

Linotype - OCR-B
http://www.linotype.com/12819/ocrb-font.html


OCR-B Fonts are also available for purchase or license from many
additional vendors:

Azalea Software - OCR-A/B Licenses  
http://www.azalea.com/OCR/

Monrovia Fontware - OCR-A / OCR-B
http://morovia.com/font/ocr.asp

Fonts.com - OCR-A, OCR-B, MICR Package
http://www.fonts.com/findfonts/detail.asp?pid=242557

or alone, 

Fonts.com - OCR-B
http://www.fonts.com/findfonts/detail.asp?pid=201463

My Fonts offers a full character set chart, and a customized demo,
allowing you to compare the font using your own words or phrases. The
font is available in Postscript for Macintosh or Windows, and TrueType
for Window.

MyFont - OCR-B - Style Details
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/ocr-b/ocr-b/


Further Reference
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Optical Character Recognition (Wikipedia Article)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition


Google Search Terms
----------------------------------------------------------------------

OCR-b font


I hope you find this information helpful. If you have any questions
about the material or links provided, please, feel free to ask for
clarification.

---larre

---

Request for Answer Clarification by rdulepet-ga on 16 Jun 2004 16:15 PDT

IANAGAR
I agree with your comments that it is NOT OCR-B due to difference in
how "3" is represented. On the other hand, I don't have the printer
model from which this document was printed since this document was
printed about 15 years, and it was infact printed in India and not in
the US. By the way, can you please clarify what is GAR? Is it a
truetype font that is available. Also regarding Daisy wheel or NLQ,
are these printers, and if so do you know where I can find these
fonts?

Regards
Rajiv

---

Clarification of Answer by larre-ga on 16 Jun 2004 17:15 PDT

OCR-B is the closest commercial grade TrueType font match. 

In order to *exactly* match the daisy wheel font, you'd need to know
the exact printer model, and either acquire that printer, or hope that
a font maker somewhere has decided to duplicate a 15+ year old
hardware font in TrueType.

A GAR is a Google Answers Researcher. Researcher names are clickable
links, to differentiate them from questioners and other site users.

A Daisywheel -type- of printer, old, mostly obsolete. The daisywheel
itself is a printer part - a plastic disk with characters extruded.

Daisywheel Printer
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/daisy_wheel_printer.html

NLQ stands for Near Letter Quality, another term applied to older,
pre-inkjet and laser printers, usually dot-matrix.

Near Letter Quality
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/N/near_letter_quality.html

These are not printer brands, but types, and apply to hundreds of
manufactured printers.

---l

---

Clarification of Answer by larre-ga on 16 Jun 2004 22:38 PDT

A hardware issue. ;-) I like it!

I'm actually wondering if there could possibly also be a
country-specific difference involved. Patents don't necessarily extend
across country borders, especially back 15 years ago. An impact
printer manufactured in India, or to Indian specs may have used a
version of OCR-B with some slight variations from the standard
character set. That sort of proprietary hallmark used to be more
common than it is today, when fonts (typefaces) are relatively
inexpensive. It used to be quite costly to license a commercial
typeface. Make a small change, so that the character set could be
considered different, a knockoff, and therefore a new typeface/font on
its own, exempt from licensing requirements and costs.

---l

Excellent response except for the confusion regarding one number in
the font "3". The detailed response and clarifications really helped
me a lot.

I thought this was OCR-B as well, it is the most likely choice for a
current font, but the 3 is round in the image and angular in the ocr-b
font.

The image is likely from a proprietary font built into a printer. The
quality appears to be fairly good, so I'd hazard a guess that it's
either NLQ or Daisy Wheel.

it may not have a name per se, but the printer model from which the
sample was generated could help greatly to narrow it down further.
Otherwise, the GAR has the best answer anyone is likely to give.

IANAGAR

As a mainframe Programmer / Application Systems Analyst for more than
15 years on 5 different hardware manufacturer platforms, I recognized
this font immediately. It is indeed an OCR-B font, seen on massive
numbers of high-volume mainframe impact printers for decades. In
recent years, businesses have been gradually converting to high-volume
laser printers for the nice font and appearance obtainable for
documents such as banking, investment, and billing statements;
however, there are still probably hundreds of thousands of systems
still producing output in this font.

ace

Example:

http://www.tno.nl/instit/fel/museum/computer/images/printer.jpg
"CDC 580-1200  Chain-style line printer, attached to mainframe
channel. 800 lines/minute with 48 character train, 136 columns with 6
or 8 lines per inch spacing. Paper advance single line 11 ms (6 lpi)
or 10 ms (8 lpi). Included a powered stacker, train image storage.
Skip rate: 70 inch/sec. Required a train cartridge, either 64
character set or 94 character ASCII set."
http://www.tno.nl/instit/fel/museum/computer/en/cybequip.html
http://www.tno.nl/instit/fel/museum/computer/images/printer.jpg

To all involved, please understand that I'm in agreement with the
Researchers, here. (Not that I'm anyone important to Google Answers, I
just don't want to appear contrary to the researchers). OCR-B *is* the
font except for the 3. (And that because, if I had to guess, the
powers that be have rightly determined NOT to confuse a 3 with an 8,
thus the change.) If it matters, the "font" might more appropriately
be called a typeface, as that was probably the more likely term used
for a printer at the time.

The researcher larre-ga is accurate in all areas of the 17:15PDT
clarificarion, and gave the absolute best answer possible originally.

As Microsoft might say, "We can't help you. That's a hardware issue." :)

Another point where the commercial font and the print-out differ is in
the shape of the 0 (number zero) and O (capital letter oh); the
print-out has a narrow zero and wide oh while the font at
http://www.linotype.com/12819/ocrb-font.html has the shapes the other
way around.

Just to reiterate: It's fruitless to compare this text sample to
built-in desktop computer printer samples which can be found on the
Internet today. This sample came from a report produced by one of the
big old mainframe high-speed impact printers.

15 years ago, when this report was printed, companies with big
mainframe computer systems had started using laser printers for
documents such as statements and reports that went to customers or
clients, because the quality and appearance were so much better.

However, for reports which were usually only seen by employees
internal to the company, and which often had hundreds or even
thousands of pages, the appearance and quality of the print were not
as important -- speed and cost savings were paramount. For those
reports, companies still used (as many still do today) the big old
impact printers, which in most cases printed in either Courier or
OCR-B, and which could do speeds like 800 lines lines a minute. This
is why the letter quality in the Question example is so fuzzy.

Often, to save money, these reports were printed on "greenbar" paper,
or low-quality newsprint-like paper, with pinfeed holes along both
edges. This is why the background in the Question example is so fuzzy.

http://halstedweb.com/images/GREENBAR.GIF
http://www.fm.emory.edu/recycling/rebar.jpeg

Thank you. Glad we could help. ---l