61 lines
3.3 KiB
Text
61 lines
3.3 KiB
Text
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Mostly-free OCR B
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This font is used in UPC bar code symbols, including the ISBN symbols on
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most published books.
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A freely distributable version seems to be sorely needed. Until now, it's
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been very difficult to find the font in computer-usable format except by
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paying a high fee to a commercial font vendor. Even many serious commercial
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publishers have so much trouble getting it right that they just go ahead and
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use Helvetica instead, or even (shudder) Arial. Since the OCR B font is
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required by an international standard, it seems like it ought to be free.
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So here it is. The font in this package is not a "ripped", pirated, or
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shadily reverse engineered version; every effort has been made to ensure
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that it genuinely derives from free sources and all the creators involved
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have actually intended it for free public use.
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Converted by Matthew Skala from Metafont format to Postscript and TrueType
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formats, July 28, 2006, using mftrace 1.2.4 by Paul Vojta, which is
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available from
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http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen/mftrace/
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and Autotrace 0.31.1 available from
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http://autotrace.sourceforge.net/
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The Metafont files (not included - see notes below) were coded by Norbert
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Schwarz in the 1980s, based on German standards documents. He has attached
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a notice, notably not actually claiming any copyright - see the file
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"ocrbinfo" - saying that the fonts are "given to free non commercial use",
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but commenting that he is only free to grant rights to his own work on the
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digitization, because he did not design the original letter forms. He
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suggests that there may be other copyright claims attached to the letter
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forms themselves, which Schwarz credits as being originally designed by
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"Adam Frutiger" [sic], almost certainly a mistake for Adrian Frutiger. My
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(Matthew Skala's) understanding of copyright law, at least in the USA and
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Canada, is that in fact typefaces per se cannot be subject to copyright
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claims, so the software embodiment is the only thing subject to copyright
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and Schwarz's release makes it available for whatever "non commercial use"
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means.
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To avoid muddying the waters further, any copyright claims by Matthew Skala
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on these files are hereby released to the public domain. I'd like for these
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fonts to be freely usable even in marginally commercial applications, such
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as to generate UPC labels for books that will be sold for profit, but it may
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not be within my power to grant that myself because I didn't write the
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Metafont files although I did do considerable, and probably copyrightable,
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work on the translation to Postscript and TrueType. It was *not* a purely
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automated process; try using the tools I used and see how far you get
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without human editing! I'd also like for these fonts (the fonts themselves
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as opposed to documents made with them) not to be sold, not even indirectly
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by those Web sites that advertise "free downloads" but make it difficult to
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actually download fonts without paying a fee.
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NOTE: This ZIP archive is a stripped-down version containing just the
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essential files for using the main OCR B font on most systems. If you want
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the much larger complete package, which contains Metafont sources and several
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variant fonts (reverse-video, outline, and slanted), look for a ZIP archive
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called ocrb-complete.zip wherever you found this one.
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Matthew Skala
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mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca
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http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/
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