16 Dec
2010
16 Dec
'10
3:43 p.m.
On 16 Dec 2010 at 14:52, 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.
I may even have a few old listings with the "0" hand-adjusted in this
manner for publication.
I think I still might have an old CDC coding form that has "0 = zero
and slashed O = oh" pre-printed on it. I'll have to dig some.
None of this compares with the extreme measure that CDC embarked on
in the late 60's and early 70's--use of OCR-A for all correspondence.
Those ugly, ugly characters--they were on all of the typewriters,
regardless of vendor. Was it square = zero and diamond = oh? I
don't remember, except for hating the blasted font, except for
realizing that there were slight differences in the font between, say
Olivetti and Remington.
OCR-B was much more readable.
--Chuck