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Stewart Russell

In 1974, ANSI published the Standard character set for handprinting (ANSI X3.45-1974). It proposed a uniform method of #handwriting acceptable to optical character recognition technology of the day. It included only upper case letters.

It had some quirks: letter O has a tail at the top, like Q rotated 90 degrees. S has a little tail at the bottom left. U has a square base. Z has a full-width bar at mid level.

I wonder if anyone ever used it?

#RetroComputing #Typography
6 February at 16:05 | Open on xoxo.zone
55 comments
Luigi :donor:

@scruss I find it interesting they went for the O like that instead of slashed zero to differentiate

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashed_

6 February at 16:08 | Open on infosec.exchange
Stewart Russell

@luigirenna the whole "modified zero" history thing in computers / radio communications is real fight-starting material to certain nerds I know.

For some people, the slashed zero is a commercial/telegraphic zero and has no place in programming.

6 February at 16:43 | Open on xoxo.zone
Aeon

@scruss

I write my zZ with a bar at mid-level to distinguish them from my handwritten 2

I also add a bar on top of my lower case u to distinguish them from my upper case U

6 February at 16:08 | Open on infosec.exchange
Stewart Russell

@theAeon ū is the long U sound in the Hepburn romanization system of Japanese, incidentally.

6 February at 16:49 | Open on xoxo.zone
Aeon
Stewart Russell

@theAeon it's quite important. English speakers tend to make Japanese vowel sounds too long. Many LOL-worthy moments arise, such as the word for "supervisor" apparently being one short vowel sound away from the word for a considered-rude part of the anatomy

6 February at 17:05 | Open on xoxo.zone
Advanced Persistent Teapot

@scruss @theAeon I mean that's probably by design tbh, we English missed a trick when we failed to make "manager" a homophone of "twat"

6 February at 17:08 | Open on hachyderm.io
Stewart Russell

@http_error_418 don't worry, in Scotland, we have that covered.

6 February at 17:09 | Open on xoxo.zone
Advanced Persistent Teapot

@scruss out of curiosity for a beginner Japanese learner what are these two easily confused words?

6 February at 17:14 | Open on hachyderm.io
Stewart Russell

@http_error_418 it's something like 黄門 vs 肛門, but I only got this secondhand from a learner

6 February at 17:27 | Open on xoxo.zone
Riley S. Faelan

@scruss As far as I know, no, with the possible exception of whoever worked it out. It was likely too computation-intensive for 1970s' OCR tech (that's when MICR was still the bleeding edge of writing that both humans and machines could read, as you recall), and by the time fuzzy recognition techniques ahem AI handwriting recognition ahem became feasible in common computers, the considerations had become slightly different. The closest, in concept (but not really in the quirks) would be Graffiti, the (non-OCR) handwriting recognition of Palm devices.

@scruss As far as I know, no, with the possible exception of whoever worked it out. It was likely too computation-intensive for 1970s' OCR tech (that's when MICR was still the bleeding edge of writing that both humans and machines could read, as you recall), and by the time fuzzy recognition techniques ahem AI handwriting recognition ahem became feasible in common computers, the considerations had become slightly different. The closest, in concept (but not really in the quirks) would be Graffiti,...

6 February at 16:10 | Open on toot.cat
Stewart Russell

@riley I can still write in Graffitti , but yes, it was a compromise.

I guess the reverse trend were fonts like Data70 and Westminster that mimicked the look of MICR, but weren't.

In other bizarre standards of typography, it seems that the original Adrian Frutiger tracings of OCR-B were accidentally thrown out at the standards agency that held them. OCR-B is required for use on passports, so it's kinda important
6 February at 17:02 | Open on xoxo.zone
Riley S. Faelan

@scruss FWIW, I'd still prefer Graffiti to the newfangled fancy handwriting recognition systems. Even though both Android and iOS have gotten pretty good at it.

6 February at 20:48 | Open on toot.cat
Computeum Vilshofen

@riley @scruss

As usual a measure overtaken by technology faster than expected. CGK/Siemens had by ~1977/78 perfected OCR of single letter handwriting in Forms good enough to process cheques and alike at very high speed (fast enough that a dedicated real mode mainframe was needed to record the data).

By 1980 small scale systems build on a network of 8085 could do the same as desk size units.

7 February at 2:34 | Open on mastodon.bayern
Enkiusz🇺🇦

@scruss i used the dashed z in university when writing discrete Laplace transforms to make it easier to read

6 February at 17:18 | Open on is-a.cat
2xfo

@scruss
I'll slash a zero, I'll slash a zee (hi, US American here) I'll even slash a seven.

But that oh has to go.

6 February at 17:21 | Open on infosec.exchange
chort ↙️↙️↙️

@scruss I feel like I've seen this in movies as "computery" font.

6 February at 17:23 | Open on infosec.exchange
Stewart Russell

@chort makes a change from Data70, Westminster and Amelia (the Moon Boot / Yellow Submarine font), then

6 February at 17:30 | Open on xoxo.zone
Taureon

@scruss i wonder why they didnt use Ø for O or 0

6 February at 17:26 | Open on wetdry.world
Stewart Russell

@taureon what, and annoy most of Scandinavia?

6 February at 17:29 | Open on xoxo.zone
Taureon

@scruss isn't the slashed zero already in use in a lot of places though?
6 February at 17:37 | Open on wetdry.world
Stewart Russell

@taureon yes, and its history is complicated.

6 February at 17:55 | Open on xoxo.zone
Jernej Simončič �

@scruss @taureon I remember the font on Hercules graphic card in our 286 having a slashed zero, while VGA (added a few years later) instead had a dot inside.

6 February at 18:54 | Open on infosec.exchange
Jordi (Vascular Ensemble)

@scruss

When writing by hand, I cross my z's and 7's, to the annoyance of many, I'm sure.

6 February at 17:49 | Open on beige.party
Matt :verified_mastodon:

@Jorsh @scruss me too, even though it’s less efficient! I’ve trained myself to stop diagonally crossing my 0s though; people just got confused.

6 February at 18:29 | Open on mstdn.games
Jessica, the Lavender Mess

@Jorsh @scruss me as well .. surely the most lasting legacy of my middle school German classes

7 February at 0:37 | Open on chaosfem.tw
rateexportpilot

@Jorsh @scruss Same. I also write my x's as two curved arcs, back to back. It was something my math teacher insisted on to differentiate between x and the multiply sign, and it stuck.

7 February at 1:05 | Open on infosec.exchange
Chris Halstead

@Jorsh @scruss same, and have been doing so for so long I don’t recall when I started. Pre-teens I’d guess. No idea where I picked up the habit
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

7 February at 2:23 | Open on hachyderm.io
Computeum Vilshofen

@Jorsh @scruss

That's the way they always were intended to be written :))

7 February at 2:39 | Open on mastodon.bayern
nebulossify

@scruss It's uncanny enough that it feels like a fantastic choice for some sort of scifi application. Might keep this in mind for some art/comics...

6 February at 18:19 | Open on comicscamp.club
KeladryStan :vpelican:

@scruss that is how I’ve written my z’s since Highschool calculus

6 February at 18:26 | Open on dftba.club
Koos van den Hout

@scruss my brain immediately voiced this text in the style of the A-Team tune.

6 February at 18:27 | Open on infosec.exchange
Winchell Chung ⚛🚀

@scruss

One would think they would have put a slash through the number zero, instead of making letter oh a backwards Q

6 February at 18:55 | Open on spacey.space
Stewart Russell

@nyrath they were probably only digitizing on a 3x3 or 3x4 matrix per character. They might have hit false positives between slashed-0 and /

6 February at 19:53 | Open on xoxo.zone
AzureCerulean

@scruss [Thank You]
A link to the original PDF and the extended version:

American National Standard
for information systems —
character set for
handprinting:
nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Lega

American National Standard
character set for
handprinting:
nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Lega

#Standards

@scruss [Thank You]
A link to the original PDF and the extended version:

American National Standard
for information systems —
character set for
handprinting:
nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Lega

American National Standard
character set for
handprinting:
nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Lega

6 February at 19:08 | Open on 4bear.com
AzureCerulean

@scruss

I would LOVE to see this made in to a #FONT, if any Font Designers out there see this!

6 February at 19:25 | Open on 4bear.com
Stewart Russell

@AzureCerulean as a semi-skilled typographer, I may take a stab at it

6 February at 19:50 | Open on xoxo.zone
AzureCerulean

@scruss

If you do take a look @

### Nerd Fonts - Iconic font aggregator, glyphs/icons collection, & fonts patcher

> Nerd Fonts patches developer targeted fonts with a high number of glyphs (icons). Specifically to add a high number of extra glyphs from popular ‘iconic fonts’ such as Font Awesome, Devicons, Octicons, and others.

nerdfonts.com/

6 February at 20:25 | Open on 4bear.com
Stewart Russell

@AzureCerulean my fonts don't have many glyphs because if it's not in FORTRAN-66, I don't need it

6 February at 20:27 | Open on xoxo.zone
Stewart Russell

@AzureCerulean thanks for the links!

I also had a Datamation article about it, but can't find the link. It used the then-briefly-in-vogue term "alphameric" as a contraction for "alphanumeric".

6 February at 19:26 | Open on xoxo.zone
mi

@scruss thanks! i tried to search for something like that many times. that was back in the days where OCR was envisioned as heuristics written by humans

6 February at 19:39 | Open on social.hackerspace.pl
shroomie/joan glub edition

@scruss@xoxo.zone god i wish there was an actual standard for latin-script typography

6 February at 19:50 | Open on glub.slipfox.xyz
Greg Bell

@scruss @simonzerafa putting a line on the capital O instead of a slash through the number 0 was a wild disambiguation choice

6 February at 23:06 | Open on mastodon.online
Simon Zerafa :donor: :verified:

@ferrix @scruss

Indeed. Wouldn't be my choice.

I specifically used fonts with slashed 0's (Zeros) not dotted or other weird changes 🫤🤷‍♂️

6 February at 23:09 | Open on infosec.exchange
Stewart Russell

@simonzerafa @ferrix as I said earlier, they were likely only digitizing on a 3x3 or 3x4 matrix per character, so uniqueness was important

6 February at 23:55 | Open on xoxo.zone
Brandon

@scruss @penaddict I find it fascinating the 7 is unadorned

7 February at 0:35 | Open on mastodon.world
Stewart Russell

@Bfury @penaddict this was likely mostly a US committee, where they don't do that sort of thing

7 February at 0:56 | Open on xoxo.zone
Brian Enigma

@scruss This feels very similar to the old OCR-A typeface that cash registers used to scan before barcodes were a thing. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCR-A

7 February at 1:35 | Open on xoxo.zone
Computeum Vilshofen

@scruss

Interesting,no slashed zero - which was commonly told over here - would have avoided that strange O. Also the horizontal bared Z is as well standard. Last but not least the 7 being as well bared. helps to distinguish from ones and slopy I and T.

7 February at 2:37 | Open on mastodon.bayern
Martin Seeger

@scruss I would confuse 0 and O nonstop. I am used to a strike through with a zero and the tail at the O would be interpreted as such.

7 February at 5:54 | Open on infosec.exchange
Stewart Russell

@masek but you're not an early 1970s OCR system

7 February at 22:43 | Open on xoxo.zone
Martin Seeger

@scruss Nah, I am a bit older... more like a "late 60s model" 😄​.

8 February at 7:28 | Open on infosec.exchange
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