Optical Character Recognition (Unicode Block)

Optical Character Recognition
Range	U+2440..U+245F; (32 code points)
Plane	BMP
Scripts	Common
Symbol sets	OCR controls
Assigned	11 code points
Unused	21 reserved code points
Source standards	ISO 2033
Unicode version history
1.0.0	11 (+11)
	Note:

Short description: Unicode character block

Optical Character Recognition is a Unicode block containing signal characters for OCR and MICR standards.

Block

Optical Character Recognition^[1]^[2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
U+244x	⑀	⑁	⑂	⑃	⑄	⑅	⑆	⑇	⑈	⑉	⑊
U+245x
Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 13.0 2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

Subheadings

The Optical Character Recognition block has three informal subheadings (groupings) within its character collection: OCR-A, MICR, and OCR.^[3]

OCR-A

The OCR-A subheading contains six characters taken from the OCR-A font described in the ISO 1073-1:1976 standard: U+2440 ⑀ OCR HOOK, U+2441 ⑁ OCR CHAIR, U+2442 ⑂ OCR FORK, U+2443 ⑃ OCR INVERTED FORK, U+2444 ⑄ OCR BELT BUCKLE, and U+2445 ⑅ OCR BOW TIE. The OCR bow tie is given the informative alias "unique asterisk".

MICR

A British style cheque for a fictional bank, showing use of ⑆, ⑈ and ⑉ in the machine-readable line

The MICR subheading contains four punctuation characters for bank cheque identifiers, taken from the magnetic ink character recognition E-13B font (codified in the ISO 1004:1995 standard): U+2446 ⑆ OCR BRANCH BANK IDENTIFICATION, U+2447 ⑇ OCR AMOUNT OF CHECK, U+2448 ⑈ OCR DASH, and U+2449 ⑉ OCR CUSTOMER ACCOUNT NUMBER.

The latter two characters are misnamed: their names were inadvertently switched when they were named in the 1993 (first) edition of ISO/IEC 10646,^[4] a mistake which had been present since Unicode 1.0.0.^[5] Although their formal names remain unchanged due to the Unicode stability policy, they both have corrected normative aliases: U+2448 ⑈ is MICR ON US SYMBOL, and U+2449 ⑉ is MICR DASH SYMBOL^[6] (the standard notes that "the Unicode character names include several misnomers").

These symbols had previously been encoded by the ISO-IR-98 encoding defined by ISO 2033:1983, in which they were simply named SYMBOL ONE through SYMBOL FOUR.^[7] All four characters have informative aliases in the Unicode charts: "transit", "amount", "on us", and "dash" respectively.

OCR

The OCR subheading consists of a single character: U+244A ⑊ OCR DOUBLE BACKSLASH.

History

The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Optical Character Recognition block:

Version	Final code points^{[lower-alpha 1]}	Count	L2 ID	WG2 ID	Document
1.0.0	U+2440..244A	11			(to be determined)
			L2/10-416R		Moore, Lisa (2010-11-09), UTC #125 / L2 #222 Minutes, "Create two formal aliases, U+2448 MICR ON US SYMBOL and U+2449 MICR DASH SYMBOL for Unicode 6.1."
				N4103	Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 58, 2012-01-03
			L2/22-065		Whistler, Ken (2022-04-13), Editorial Committee Report and Recommendations for UTC #171Meeting
↑ Proposed code points and characters names may differ from final code points and names

References

↑ "Unicode character database". The Unicode Standard. https://www.unicode.org/ucd/. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
↑ "Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard". The Unicode Standard. https://www.unicode.org/versions/enumeratedversions.html. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
↑ "Unicode Code Charts: Optical Character Recognition". The Unicode Standard, Version 6.3. https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2440.pdf. Retrieved 27 February 2014.
↑ ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2 (2012-01-03), Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 58, p. 29, SC2 N4188 / WG2 N4103, https://www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n4103.pdf
↑ "3.8: Block-by-Block Charts". The Unicode Standard. Unicode Consortium. https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode1.0.0/CodeCharts2.pdf.
↑ Freytag, Asmus; McGowan, Rick; Whistler, Ken (2017-04-10), Known Anomalies in Unicode Character Names (4 ed.), Unicode Consortium, Unicode Technical Note #27, https://www.unicode.org/notes/tn27/tn27-4.html
↑ ISO/TC97/SC2 (1985-08-01), ISO-IR-98: E13B Graphic Character Set, ITSCJ/IPSJ, https://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/iso-ir/098.pdf

0.00

(0 votes)

Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical Character Recognition (Unicode block). Read more

[final-8] Proposed code points and characters names may differ from final code points and names

[1] "Unicode character database". The Unicode Standard. https://www.unicode.org/ucd/. Retrieved 2023-07-26.

[2] "Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard". The Unicode Standard. https://www.unicode.org/versions/enumeratedversions.html. Retrieved 2023-07-26.

[3] "Unicode Code Charts: Optical Character Recognition". The Unicode Standard, Version 6.3. https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2440.pdf. Retrieved 27 February 2014.

[4] ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2 (2012-01-03), Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 58, p. 29, SC2 N4188 / WG2 N4103, https://www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n4103.pdf

[5] "3.8: Block-by-Block Charts". The Unicode Standard. Unicode Consortium. https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode1.0.0/CodeCharts2.pdf.

[6] Freytag, Asmus; McGowan, Rick; Whistler, Ken (2017-04-10), Known Anomalies in Unicode Character Names (4 ed.), Unicode Consortium, Unicode Technical Note #27, https://www.unicode.org/notes/tn27/tn27-4.html

[7] ISO/TC97/SC2 (1985-08-01), ISO-IR-98: E13B Graphic Character Set, ITSCJ/IPSJ, https://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/iso-ir/098.pdf

Optical Character Recognition
Range	U+2440..U+245F (32 code points)
Plane	BMP
Scripts	Common
Symbol sets	OCR controls
Assigned	11 code points
Unused	21 reserved code points
Source standards	ISO 2033
Unicode version history

1.0.0	11 (+11)

Note: ^[1]^[2]