19 Sep
2012
19 Sep
'12
7:57 p.m.
On 19 Sep 2012 at 18:54, Fred Cisin wrote:
On Thu, 16 Dec 2010, Al Kossow wrote:
> There was an attempt at establishing what can roughly be described
> as an upside down Q for a slashed O. The only example I know of
> where someone used this are in line printer listings from SDS in the
> late 60's. I would have to do some serious digging in magazines to
> find who was pushing this as a standard. They end up looking like
> misformed 8's. It does terrible things to OCR.
Well, remember the OCR-A font? Square zero and diamond-shaped "oh"?
At some point, CDC decided that it would be great to use for office
correspondence (some manuals were even done in it). I had a
typerwriter in my office with that font and I thought it was one of
the ugliest fonts I'd ever seen. OCR-B was much, MUCH better.
Fortunately, CDC dropped the idea after a couple of years.
I probably still have a document somewhere with the "looped" ohs. I
can't recall for the life of me who used the convention.
--Chuck