Talk:OCR-A

message: This claim is from John Sauter, the font's creator. I've removed the 'citation needed'.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.232.228.174 (talk) 21:15, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  A site license for the OCR-A font is very expensive 

message: The font is not licensed under the GPL, since fonts are not subject to copyright in the United States.  The font is free as in no cost.  I will edit the article to make this clear.
The Debian packaging is licensed under the GPL.  Here is the copyright file from that package.  Note that my e-mail address has changed—it is now John_Sauter@systemeyescomputerstore.com.
This package was debianized by Gürkan Sengün <gurkan@phys.ethz.ch> on
Wed,  2 May 2007 16:17:15 +0200.
It was downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/ocr-a-font
Upstream Author: 
    John Sauter <J_Sauter@Empire.Net>
License:
    Public Domain.
The Debian packaging is (C) 2007, Gürkan Sengün <gurkan@phys.ethz.ch> and
is licensed under the GPL, see `/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL'.
John Sauter (talk) 13:26, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Licensing 

message: This seems wrong:
    The font is monospaced, with the printer required to place glyphs 0.1 inch apart, 
    and the reader required to accept any spacing between 0.9 and 0.18 inch.
Should that be 0.09, not 0.9? --Mr z (talk) 15:42, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spacing 

message: I have raised the OCR-A Extended section to the top level rather than have it a subhead under Code Points, since it is a separate font.  I do not have MS Office Publisher 2003 installed on my computer, so perhaps that is why I do not see the font samples correctly.  
It would be better to render the characters of OCR-A Extended as images, so everyone can see what they look like.  This is what was done with the characters of OCR-A.  It would be sufficient, in my opinion, to show only the characters not present in OCR-A, and give their CP1252 and Mac Roman code points. John Sauter (talk) 10:57, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  OCR-A Extended 

message: Someone marked the following text as a possible copyright violation:
"In 1968, American Type Founders produced OCR-A, one of the first optical character recognition typefaces to meet the criteria set by the U.S. Bureau of Standards. The design is simple so that it can be easily read by a machine, but it is more difficult for the human eye to read."
The footnote, labeled "background on OCR-A from Adobe", refers to the following paragraph:
"In 1968, American Type Founders produced OCR-A, one of the first optical character recognition typefaces to meet the criteria set by the U.S. Bureau of Standards. The design is simple so that it can be read by a machine, but it is slightly more difficult for the human eye to read."
Notice that in this two-sentence excerpt, two words have been changed.  It hardly seems like a copyright violation to extract a two-sentence description, particularly when it is footnoted so there is no question of its source.  In the absence of an objection by the copyright owner of this text, I regard the accusation of copyright violation as frivolous.  
A google search for this text reveals several web sites that include it; perhaps it just needs more reference footnotes? John Sauter (talk) 20:24, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright Violation? 

message: John Sauter has apparently removed my edit which I intended to note (though I now realize that that's the wrong template for this meaning) that I believe the text of the first sentence from "In 1968" to "eye to read" is perhaps a copy/paste copyvio from the (first) link provided and that since WP:NOR says "Best practice is to write articles by researching the most reliable sources on the topic and summarizing what they say in your own words" (emphasis added by me) and re:WP:COPYPASTE I think the text should be changed.
Also, even though this is unrelated to this specific page, does anyone know if there is a template that transmits the meaning of the slightly intrusive Template:Copypaste as the inline-superscripted-style comment??  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.65.109.10 (talk) 08:30, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  To John Sauter (and everyone else) 

message: There are a large number of links to off-the-page sales adverts from individual font vendors, some of these masquerading as references. I found this while cleaning up after an SEO / marketeer who had a significant number of consecutive edits adding links to a commercial site. Guy (Help!) 19:45, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: After reading the Wikipedia article on citation spam at WP:REFSPAM, I think this is a close call.  The links provide useful background information about the font, in addition to the opportunity to purchase it.  For example, links to commercial vendors are used when discussing the inconsistency in assigning code points to characters by those various vendors.  The fact that the article contains a link to a free version also counts against a commercial motive. John Sauter (talk) 21:22, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Commercial links 

message: Someone changed the name of character U+0021 from Exclamation Mark to Exclamation Point.  I am changing it back to Exclamation Mark because that is the name used in the Unicode code charts.  See Unicode code charts: ASCII punctuation.  John Sauter (talk) 22:07, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Exclamation Point versus Exclamation Mark 

message: The alternate question mark as displayed here appears identical to the regular question mark. 72.229.42.246 (talk) 11:32, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The regular question mark has a dot at the baseline; the alternate question mark instead extends the vertical line to the baseline.  This is hard to see in the article, but if you click on the glyph you can see it easily in the magnified view. John Sauter (talk) 18:53, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  alternate question mark 

message: I have refocused the article on Matthew Skala's implementation of OCR-A, rather than mine, and on Linotype's implementation, which is well documented.  I have also fixed some obsolete links.  John Sauter (talk) 09:39, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Refocus of article 

message: It has been suggested that I might have a conflict of interest because I produced and distributed a free implementation of the OCR-A font.  I do not sell that implementation—it is freely available on SourceForge,
including sources, as noted in the article.  My employer at the time I produced and distributed that implementation appreciated the fact that it did not have to pay for an OCR-A font, but otherwise did not care what I did with it, and has received no benefit from my distribution.
I have no interest in OCR-A that conflicts with Wikipedia's aim, which is to produce a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia. John Sauter (talk) 12:48, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Conflict of Interest suggestion

message: The article claims that Westminster was "designed to be machine-readable" and has claimed this for a long time -- since 2008. Is there any proof this is true? Do any reliable references exist for this claim? Although I'm certainly no expert, it seems to me that (given Westminster's proportionally-spaced design) it was not designed to be machine-readable, but merely to visually mimic the E-13B MICR font [which is machine-readable]. The only reason I didn't go ahead and remove it was that I wanted to ask those of you who have more expertise than I do whether there's any proof it actually was designed to be machine-readable. Additionally, the article on Westminster is woefully devoid of references. Microsoft's page about Westminster says it was "made ... along the same lines" [as E-13B] but does not say that Westminster is, nor that it is not, designed to be machine-readable. Does anyone have any thoughts to add?  -- 12.218.76.10 (talk) 06:15, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Westminster? 

message: The reference to the IDAutomation implementation of OCR-A has been flagged to say that the information on code points is “not in citation given”.  The information is visible in the referenced page if you click on the “Product Information” tab.  If there is no objection I will improve the reference to make this clear, and remove the “not in citation given” tag.  John Sauter (talk) 04:59, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you, John! Actually, we don't even need any words of clarification, it already links to the correct tab when we add the anchor #product-information. — Sebastian 05:13, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  reference to IDAutomation