A really free OCR A font (Postscript and TrueType)

[Demonstration of what OCR A looks like]

This font is used for a variety of purposes including printing part of the ISBN labels on books. It was one of the first fonts designed for easy recognition by computers, was widely used, and so will have strong familiarity for many humans. You might find it useful if you're trying to give text an "obsolete computer printing" feel. For optical character recognition applications, OCR A has now been mostly superceded by OCR B, but as far as I can tell, strictly compliant book labels are still supposed to use OCR A for the human-readable ISBN printed above the bar code.

You can download OCR A in a ZIP file containing the TrueType and Postscript Type 1 files. Details of where it came from are in the README file included. Please don't substitute Helvetica for OCR A, especially not if you're then going to turn around and substitute Arial for the Helvetica. Use this font and get it right.

At some point in the future, I'll probably update this page with links to other tools for generating UPC labels; but if you're trying to do that, you probably already have some. The font seems to be the hard-to-find piece.

My own self-published book doesn't have an ISBN yet, but at some other point in the future I'll probably get one and use this to make the label.

Comments

Dave Conrad from 24.108.1.166 at Fri, 17 Nov 2006 06:26:05 +0000:
Your font works like a charm and I appreciate you letting me use it. You can see an example of your font on the ISBN for my book "The Last Heretic" by DS Conrad at this address http://www.downhome.top-ereviews.com/annamaria.html

Thanks you Matthew - Dave Conrad in North Saanich

Carlos A from 66.245.65.120 at Sat, 06 Jan 2007 23:31:56 +0000:
Thank You so much for letting me use the font!

A Mac user from 62.16.153.11 at Sat, 10 Mar 2007 14:19:16 +0000:
The font doesn't work with my Mac G4 PowerBook (MacOS 10.4.8). I get the error message "Missing opentype data" and a warning that this font should not be installed as it can cause problems.

Would you consider making a Mac compatible version of this and the OCR-B font?

Matthew Skala from 67.158.72.8 at Sat, 10 Mar 2007 14:51:41 +0000:
I don't understand why you're getting a OpenType error message, because it's not an OpenType font at all. Maybe there's something screwed up in the file that makes it look like there should be some kind of OpenType data attached. However, Apple's Web site claims that current MacOS supports both TrueType and Postscript fonts. One of each is included in the zip file on this page. If one of them doesn't work, have you tried the other? And have you tried installing the font despite the warning? It sounds like you're getting a warning that it "can" cause problems. If it can still be installed, and doesn't *actually* cause problems, I'd be inclined to ignore the warning. If it won't let you install the font, that's more serious. I'd like for these fonts to be as widely usable as possible, but I don't have a Mac here to test on and that limits how much debugging I can do.

By the way, please don't use fake email addresses on this page. If you don't want to disclose your real one, just leave the box blank.

Robert from 138.251.255.25 at Thu, 22 Mar 2007 12:10:13 +0000:
I'm using ocr a and ocr b on a powerbook with 10.4.9 with no problems whatsoever.

Thanks so much for putting the fonts online.

sara from 65.44.151.98 at Fri, 30 Mar 2007 19:42:49 +0000:
Thanks for the free font! I know that it takes a lot of work to make these things and letting download them for free makes our lives so much easier!

Svend from 128.208.226.244 at Thu, 31 May 2007 19:53:57 +0000:
The tilde character seems to be missing from the font. It exists in the ocra.mf file.

Matthew Skala from 129.97.79.144 at Thu, 31 May 2007 20:13:08 +0000:
The tilde appears in the font when I open it with FontForge. Which software are you using that doesn't display it, and in which font file (TrueType or Postscript) are you looking?

Note that as described in the comments at the start of ocra.mf, the tilde is not a standard part of the official OCR A font, and so for strict compliance with the standard, that character should not be used; the version that's supposed to be included in this font is an original design by Richard B. Wales intended to complete the set for non-OCR applications.

Svend from 128.208.226.244 at Tue, 05 Jun 2007 17:20:29 +0000:
I am using enscript with the PostScript version of the font (ocra10.afm and ocra10.pfb). Here is the error I am getting.

$ echo '~' > tilde
$ cat tilde
~
$ enscript -E -f ocra10@9.5 -p tilde.ps tilde
[ 1 pages * 1 copy ] left in tilde.ps
1 characters were missing

When I view the ouput PS, there is a '?' where the tilde should be. I can get the tilde using the TrueType font.

Matthew Skala from 129.97.79.144 at Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:35:20 +0000:
I think this is a font-encoding issue. I wasn't able to reproduce the error with my local copy of enscript, but I'd suggest trying different -X options, such as "-X ascii"; see the man page of enscript to get a list of supported encodings.

Simon from 81.221.21.190 at Mon, 18 Jun 2007 13:12:44 +0000:
Hello Matthew,

Awesome work! Almost bought the font from Adobe till I discovered your page. You saved me 29$ :)

OZMAN from 72.199.17.127 at Wed, 20 Jun 2007 22:14:11 +0000:
GREAT FONT, KNOW I CAN DO MY FAKE CHECKS.

Matthew Skala from 216.75.189.154 at Wed, 20 Jun 2007 22:31:11 +0000:
Wrong font for that, I'm afraid. You need one called "E-13B".

A Nonny Mouse from 62.49.105.94 at Sun, 25 Nov 2007 00:33:46 +0000:
You can get a free E13B font from here:

http://www.symtrax.com/index.asp?file=forms.asp&formSeul=true&mere=1&freeware=MICR_Font

Carolyn from 12.159.56.75 at Wed, 09 Apr 2008 18:53:57 +0000:
Would you consider proving the OCR-A font in pcl?

Nate from 64.236.139.249 at Mon, 12 May 2008 21:34:35 +0000:
I get some weird looking characters on my Mac (10.5) when I type a f then an i next to each other (fi). Also happens with ff and fl

Ben from 203.118.123.205 at Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:33:51 +0000:
Thanks for the fonts. You're kind.
Please grant me permission to
download the two OCR a & b for
non-commercial use.

They're great and useful with no
problem when I downloaded them onto my Windows XP PC at my house.

I must thank you again.
warmest regards,
Ben

Dave from 76.74.206.189 at Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:17:19 +0000:
Thank you for your hard work yo create this.

Dave

daelin from 138.69.160.1 at Tue, 25 Nov 2008 23:23:04 +0000:
Definitely, I agree with everyone else. Thanks for hosting these OCR fonts. I was looking for good OCR fonts that my scanner would accept and the OCR-B font worked better than anything I downloaded elsewhere.

Andrea from 81.174.46.154 at Sat, 09 May 2009 15:46:52 +0000:
Thanks for the great looking font. My only gripe is that the TryeType version is missing the single-quote character (ASCII 39). This, at least, is what I observe on Linux with X 7.1.1.

Jason Frame from 82.70.135.174 at Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:22:20 +0000:
Thanks for this font. I'm seeing the same issue as Nate, above - on my Mac (10.6.2) "fi" is displayed as a letter "o" with an umlaut.

D.Wang from 211.99.194.53 at Sun, 27 Dec 2009 07:37:28 +0000:
I really appreciate your work on these fonts. Thank you so much.

Sebastian Diaz from 69.3.240.194 at Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:31:05 +0000:
Just downloaded your OCR fonts. Thank you,

Sebastian

Reeve from 203.6.240.10 at Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:08:50 +0000:
The fi ff fl error is due to a font issue called ligatures. Designers see groups of text as shapes rather than letters and so linked letters together to make the shape look better. in the early days of desktop publishing, old school designers derided typography produced by computers because they didn't have the ability to do ligature.
The open-type fonts now do include the ability to substitute ligatures. Unfortunately if the option is turned on in your program and the font doesn't have them (and isn't marked as not having them) the program will access a font character for that ligature that is an empty space.
If you can turn off ligatures, you will see the issue disappear.

Nealos from 94.192.174.42 at Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:16:00 +0000:
Many thanks for the font, It is greatly appreciated!

:o)

Nealos

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