A free-for-noncommercial OCR B font (Postscript and TrueType)

[Demonstration of what OCR B looks like]

This font is the correct one for the numerals that appear along the bottom edge of a UPC bar code; many people use Helvetica, Courier, or other fonts, but to really get it right you need OCR B. The typeface was originally designed by Adrian Frutiger, and has become an internationally-specified standard. In a sane world, such fonts would be released to the public domain; but in ours, they tend to be tightly controlled by commercial interests. With considerable effort, I've found free Metafont code for a version of OCR B and converted it to TrueType and Postscript to create an OCR B that can legitimately be used without paying a fee. As well as making your own UPC and ISBN labels, you may find this to be a nice general-purpose monospace typeface; at least it's a welcome break from Courier.

The files most users will need are in a file named ocrb.zip. That includes Postscript and TrueType versions and should be usable under Linux, Windows, and MacOS. I also found several special versions of the font (outline, slanted, sharp-corners, and negative) which most users won't need (only the main version seems to be really suitable for book labels). Together, the special versions make a ZIP file roughly 10 times the size; to cut down on frivolous downloads I'm not linking it directly here, but you can find it by replacing "ocrb" with "ocrb-complete" in the download URL.

As far as I'm concerned, my work on this font is public domain. The Metafont sources I used contain an unclear notice that doesn't specifically claim copyright, but says the font is "given to free non commercial use", and speculates that there may also be an applicable copyright claim held by "Adam Frutiger" [sic]. I consider such a claim unlikely, because typefaces in the abstract are not subject to copyright. For more information, read the README file included with the font.

If you like this font, you may also be interested in OCR A, an earlier and more artificial-looking design used for similar purposes. I will refuse offers of payment for this font because the whole point is that it's supposed to be free, but if you want to support me, you could read my Web comic.

Comments

Les Henderson from 209.91.164.231 at Mon, 28 Aug 2006 15:48:50 +0000:
Many thanks for the font. I was using the bookland generator and going crazy with the fact that Distiller would not generate a pdf from the eps without errors. No font found.

Even when I added your font it still had problems until I generated the ISBN using "ocrb10" in the font box instead of the default OCRB. Renaming your file from ocrb10 to OCRB was a waste of time and didn't alter the internal identifier.

Bookland suggests using a -f code in front of the file name for Ghostscript but that won't work on a straight Distiller conversion.

All is well now and I can start re-implanting my hair.

Randy from 69.109.246.198 at Sun, 10 Dec 2006 18:05:48 +0000:
Thank-you. You have made my day.

Cheers,
Randy

Krish from 59.144.70.236 at Wed, 24 Jan 2007 07:32:04 +0000:
Thank you very much. I really appreciate you with all from my heart. Great help indeed.

Victor from 86.123.42.90 at Mon, 19 Feb 2007 01:17:44 +0000:
I have a request.. if you can help me.
Would you please convert me the "ocrb10" font to ttf, but WITHOUT THE SMOOTH EDGES! Please reply via mail. Thanks you!

Matthew Skala from 67.158.72.8 at Mon, 19 Feb 2007 01:48:31 +0000:
I answered this by mail as requested, but for others reading this page: the square-cornered version is included in the "ocrb-complete.zip" file mentioned above. Take the URL for ocrb.zip, put in ocrb-complete.zip instead, and you'll get that file. I'm not directly linking to it to prevent search engines and casual users from soaking up bandwidth downloading it unnecessarily, because it's a large file and almost all the contents are not interesting to the vast majority of visitors, but if you need it, go ahead and download it.

Be warned that the square-cornered version of OCRB is not as nice as the round-cornered version; it's evident that the designer of the Metafont files (not me, I only did the format conversion) didn't take much care with the details of the square-cornered version.

Depending on what you mean by "smooth edges", it's possible that you might actually be looking for OCR A, not OCR B at all. Fortunately, there's also a free OCR A on this site - see the link in the text above.

Tian from 218.186.9.5 at Sat, 17 Mar 2007 02:53:06 +0000:
Dear Mathew, Massive thanks for your community spirit!

wendy from 74.99.131.144 at Sun, 13 May 2007 03:53:53 +0000:
Thank you so much!!! I was finally able to finish my book tonight and it wouldn't have happened without your work.

cheers!

*MM* from 213.144.73.240 at Tue, 15 May 2007 08:23:19 +0000:
Thank you very much for the fonts.

Jes from 24.205.37.143 at Thu, 09 Aug 2007 03:44:52 +0000:
Many, many thanks!

Juan from 200.6.8.14 at Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:03:18 +0000:
Thank you a lot!!

Did you know the OCR B font is also used for visas and passports??

Thanks again!!

Student from 83.64.58.150 at Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:43:11 +0000:
Thank you very much for you help to the comunity.

I found only specific software containing the OCR fonts with a unlogical cost (30 - 90$) for "nothing". I don´t understand that I must pay for a "standard" font that should be included in "microsoft office or similar".

Thank you again!

Lob from 83.77.232.57 at Tue, 11 Dec 2007 13:47:00 +0000:
Don't know if I'm missing some technical information... While trying to install these fonts on mac os x, it says:

OpenType files missing..

Can anyone give me a hint how to solve this problem?

Thanks a lot

dave ! from 71.106.16.2 at Wed, 12 Dec 2007 05:48:08 +0000:
Lob: I ran into the same problem in OS X, so I ran both the basic (rounded) font and the square-cornered version through FontLab and re-exported them out as TTF files. They install fine through OS X's FontBook now. The new files are available at wondermark dot com/y/. Matthew, if you want to re-host them you're welcome to.

Juan from 80.31.71.151 at Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:23:02 +0000:
Thank u so much for being like that, sometimes it looks like somebody´s putting a hand over your head not letting u finish your work properly. With people like u, i take over my hat, as we say it in spanish.

thanks
Please excuse my english!

Z from 90.149.79.114 at Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:06:30 +0000:
Thanks from sweden for the great work. Its time to OCR!

Francis from 41.221.178.158 at Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:51:16 +0000:
Thanks a lot! I've been looking for this font since morning and simply couldn't get. Thanks, thanks, thanks...

alex verlinden from 84.197.254.83 at Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:12:03 +0000:
Matthew, thanks a million ! ... financial authorities here require ocrb font in submitted documents for scanning reasons ... it should be included in Office, and in OpenOffice, but in the versions I have, it isn't ... that was a problem, untill you ! :-)

Christoph Grenz from 91.55.127.121 at Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:15:19 +0000:
At first, thanks from Germany for the great work,
but there's a big problem i discovered when trying to use umlauts: all non-ASCII characters are on the wrong Unicode code points.
(For example the umlauts have to be moved by -30 and the ß have to be moved by -82 positions)
Could you please fix that?

Thanks a lot!

hielke from 193.173.35.66 at Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:22:34 +0000:
thanks for this great font!

But I basically have the same "problem" as Christoph Gentz: the font does not seem to support unicode. Is there anyway you can add unicode support to the font?

alex ghignola from 79.27.15.203 at Sat, 10 May 2008 03:47:16 +0000:
Thanks, it's hard to find interesting monospace fonts, looks like few people care to put some together today (and I tried myself, concluding that building a good font is a great deal of work, that's why I felt like... compelled to at least say thank you). I'll see if this OCR-B fits well for programming.

flat@serverart.com from 77.12.225.220 at Wed, 14 May 2008 14:48:32 +0000:
I'm very interested in that font. Unfortunately I'm experiencing very strange behaviour using the .ttf on OS X 10.5.2:
If I type 'ff', the two letters are 'converted' into an minuscule: œ. I'm not sure if that character will be displayed correctly, so here the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%92

Is anybody else experiencing this problem ? What can I do to prevent it ? Is it a bug ?

Forget it. - Just found out, it's only happening when using the Apple 'TextEdit'. But at least now it's documented.

Donna Freed from 159.87.49.218 at Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:44:58 +0000:
I must be doing something wrong because I can't pull of the ocrb-complete URL.
Thanks,

Dominique from 193.72.144.232 at Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:49:11 +0000:
Hi

Good job but I am missing the "space" in the OCR B font. Can you add it?

Thanks

Wink Grise from 202.161.23.224 at Fri, 05 Dec 2008 23:43:22 +0000:
Thanks for the great info and resource! OCR-B looks great.

Adam from 130.238.121.128 at Sun, 14 Dec 2008 17:09:35 +0000:
Thank you so very much! You've done a wonderful deed.

John from 162.83.219.187 at Sat, 14 Feb 2009 19:09:48 +0000:
Awesome. Thank you. I read your comic too.

Rob from 24.85.192.218 at Thu, 21 May 2009 21:03:19 +0000:
I used this font in conjunction with fpdf which is a free, php based PDF generator. The ocrb font rendered quickly into the format I needed, and was easily embedded into the resulting PDF documents.
IMPRESSIVE JOB!
(oh - and I read your comic too. You should put up some google ads in there, that way we could click on 'em for ya! - at least it would cover the hosting for this fine product)

Tyler from 68.58.185.78 at Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:58:01 +0000:
What's the encodation for the OCR-B font? 1252?

Thanks,
-Tyler

Autana from 80.35.117.231 at Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:25:02 +0000:
Thank you so much. It's people like you that make the Internet great. Cheers!

Steve from 24.14.72.112 at Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:32:54 +0000:
Hey thanks a bunch. I agree with Autana in that people like you keep the Internet a thriving positive place. Nice job!

markit from 88.149.177.66 at Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:45:29 +0000:
Thanks for the font, I've installed it but when I preview it I miss not only accented vowel (ok, they are not ascii), but also apostrophe '.
Is it possible to have a complete, at least, ascii set? Would be wonderful to have also all the european vowels, at least the Italian ones ;) (òàèéìù).
Thanks a lot, I'm scared that copyright can cover also fonts! You can prevent everyone to write with a certain shape for author_death+70/90 years (thank Disney), is a shame.
I understand that nice fonts design is not trivial, but neither rocket science, and should be consider a "common" no one can take monopoly on at damage of society.

Les Golden from 205.188.116.13 at Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:11:52 +0000:
Hi,
I downloaded the OCRB by hitting the link in your text. Got the ZIP file. Extracted the ocrb10.ttf. I then copied it to "c:\windows\fonts." But WORD doesn't find it. Soooo, how do I install it so that WORD recognizes it?

Thanks for the great service.

Les Golden
Oak Park, Illinois

napkinsketch from 173.11.114.37 at Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:02:50 +0000:
Thanks! This is great. OCR-B complete is perfect for UPC labels.

Flight from 74.36.175.24 at Sat, 09 Jan 2010 04:08:53 +0000:
This is a great service you are providing.
Just wondering ... do you have a PCL version?

Thaiman from 195.97.20.212 at Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:04:54 +0000:
Thanks a lot dude. Great work.

Poryhack from 96.42.226.25 at Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:33:29 +0000:
Thanks. Strip-o-meter made me lol.

Raesche from 84.74.3.183 at Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:52:48 +0000:
Thanks a lot, I think you really did a great job!! I was looking for this for a long time and finally found it here.

Be blessed!

kelly from 81.36.4.220 at Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:00:41 +0000:
I really need this font so thanks for making it available. I am having problems installing it though.
When I try to instal it via font book (I'm using Mac OS) it warns me that 'a serious problem was found - do not use this font'. It won't actually allow me to add it. I downloaded the zip file and used ocrb10.ttf.

I would be grateful of any assistance.
Many thanks

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