ISO 2033

The ISO 2033:1983 standard ("Coding of machine readable characters (MICR and OCR)")[1] defines character sets for use with Optical Character Recognition or Magnetic Ink Character Recognition systems. The Japanese standard JIS X 9010:1984 ("Coding of machine readable characters (OCR and MICR)", originally designated JIS C 6229-1984) is closely related.[2]

Character set for OCR-A

The version of the encoding for the OCR-A font registered with the ISO-IR registry as ISO-IR-91 is the Japanese (JIS X 9010 / JIS C 6229) version, which differs from the encoding defined by ISO 2033 only in the addition of a Yen sign (shown shaded below).[2]

ISO 2033 and JIS C 6229 OCR-A set

	_0	_1	_2	_3	_4	_5	_6	_7	_8	_9	_A	_B	_C	_D	_E	_F
0_ 0	NUL 0000	SOH 0001	STX 0002	ETX 0003	EOT 0004	ENQ 0005	ACK 0006	BEL 0007	BS 0008	HT 0009	LF 000A	VT 000B	FF 000C	CR 000D	SO 000E	SI 000F
1_ 16	DLE 0010	DC1 0011	DC2 0012	DC3 0013	DC4 0014	NAK 0015	SYN 0016	ETB 0017	CAN 0018	EM 0019	SUB 001A	ESC 001B	FS 001C	GS 001D	RS 001E	US 001F
2_ 32	SP 0020		" 0022	£ 00A3	$ 0024	% 0025	& 0026	' 0027	{ 007B	} 007D	* 002A	+ 002B	, 002C	- 002D	. 002E	/ 002F
3_ 48	0 0030	1 0031	2 0032	3 0033	4 0034	5 0035	6 0036	7 0037	8 0038	9 0039	: 003A	; 003B	⑀ 2440	= 003D	⑁ 2441	? 003F
4_ 64		A 0041	B 0042	C 0043	D 0044	E 0045	F 0046	G 0047	H 0048	I 0049	J 004A	K 004B	L 004C	M 004D	N 004E	O 004F
5_ 80	P 0050	Q 0051	R 0052	S 0053	T 0054	U 0055	V 0056	W 0057	X 0058	Y 0059	Z 005A		¥ 00A5	⑂ 2442
6_ 96
7_ 112													| 007C			DEL 007F

  Letter   Number   Punctuation   Symbol   Other   Undefined   Redefined compared to JIS-Roman

Character set for OCR-B

The version of the G0 set for the OCR-B font registered with the ISO-IR registry as ISO-IR-92 is the Japanese (JIS X 9010 / JIS C 6229) version, which differs from the encoding defined by ISO 2033 only in being based on JIS-Roman (with a dollar sign at 0x24 and a Yen sign at 0x5C) rather than on the ISO 646 IRV (with a backslash at 0x5C and, at the time, a universal currency sign (¤) at 0x24).[3] Besides those code points, it differs from ASCII only in omitting the at sign (@) and tilde (~).[3] An additional supplementary set registered as ISO-IR-93 assigns the pound sign (£), universal currency sign (¤) and section sign (§) to their ISO-8859-1 codepoints, and the backslash to the ISO-8859-1 codepoint for the Yen sign.[4]

Character set for JIS X 9008 (JIS C 6257)

JIS X 9010 (JIS C 6229) also defines character sets for the JIS X 9008:1981 (formerly JIS C 6257-1981) "hand-printed" OCR font.[5]^:fn1 These include subsets of the JIS X 0201 Roman set (registered as ISO-IR-94 and omitting the at sign (@), lowercase letters, curly braces ({, }) and overline (‾)),[5] and kana set (registered as ISO-IR-96 and omitting the East Asian style comma (､) and full stop (｡), the interpunct (･) and the small kana),[6] in addition to a set (registered as ISO-IR-95) containing only the backslash, which is assigned to the same code point as in ISO-IR-93.[7]

The JIS C 6527 font stylises the slash[5] and backslash[7] characters with a doubled appearance. The character names given are "Solidus"[5] and "Reverse Solidus",[7] matching the Unicode character names for the ASCII slash and backslash.[8] However, the Unicode Optical Character Recognition block includes an additional code point for an "OCR Double Backslash" (⑊), although not for a double (forward) slash.[9]

Character set for E-13B

The MICR E-13B font, showing the ISO-IR-98 character repertoire.

The ISO-IR-98 encoding defined by ISO 2033 encodes the character repertoire of the E13B font, as used with magnetic ink character recognition.[10] Although ISO 2033 also specifies other encodings, the encoding for E-13B is the encoding referred to as ISO_2033_1983 by Perl libintl,[11] and as ISO_2033-1983 or csISO2033 by the IANA.[12] Other registered labels include iso-ir-98, its ISO-IR registration number, and simply e13b.[12]

The digits are preserved in their ASCII locations. Letters and symbols unavailable in the E13B font are omitted, while specialised punctuation for bank cheques included in the E13B font is added. The same symbols are available in Unicode in the Optical Character Recognition block.

ISO 2033:1983 E-13B set[11]

	_0	_1	_2	_3	_4	_5	_6	_7	_8	_9	_A	_B	_C	_D	_E	_F
0_	NUL 0000	SOH 0001	STX 0002	ETX 0003	EOT 0004	ENQ 0005	ACK 0006	BEL 0007	BS 0008	HT 0009	LF 000A	VT 000B	FF 000C	CR 000D	SO 000E	SI 000F
1_	DLE 0010	DC1 0011	DC2 0012	DC3 0013	DC4 0014	NAK 0015	SYN 0016	ETB 0017	CAN 0018	EM 0019	SUB 001A	ESC 001B	FS 001C	GS 001D	RS 001E	US 001F
2_	SP 0020
3_	0 0030	1 0031	2 0032	3 0033	4 0034	5 0035	6 0036	7 0037	8 0038	9 0039	⑆ 2446	⑇ 2447	⑈ 2448	⑉ 2449
4_
5_
6_
7_																DEL 007F

  Letter   Number   Punctuation   Symbol   Other   Undefined   Redefined compared to ASCII

References

1. ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 (1983). Information processing — Coding of machine readable characters (MICR and OCR). ISO. ISO 2033:1983.
2. ISO/TC97/SC2 (1985-08-01). ISO-IR-91: Japanese OCR-A Graphic Character Set (PDF). ITSCJ/IPSJ.
3. ISO/TC97/SC2 (1985-08-01). ISO-IR-92: Japanese OCR-B Basic Graphic Character Set (PDF). ITSCJ/IPSJ.
4. ISO/TC97/SC2 (1985-08-01). ISO-IR-93: Japanese OCR-B - Additional Graphic Character Set (PDF). ITSCJ/IPSJ.
5. ISO/TC97/SC2 (1985-08-01). ISO-IR-94: Japanese Basic Hand-printed Graphic Character Set for OCR (PDF). ITSCJ/IPSJ.
6. ISO/TC97/SC2 (1985-08-01). ISO-IR-96: Katakana Hand-printed Graphic Character Set for OCR (PDF). ITSCJ/IPSJ.
7. ISO/TC97/SC2 (1985-08-01). ISO-IR-95: Japanese Additional Hand-printed Graphic Character Set for OCR (PDF). ITSCJ/IPSJ.
8. Unicode Consortium. "C0 Controls and Basic Latin" (PDF). The Unicode Standard.
9. Unicode Consortium. "Optical Character Recognition" (PDF). The Unicode Standard.
10. ISO/TC97/SC2 (1985-08-01). ISO-IR-98: A set of 14 graphic characters of the E13B font (PDF). ITSCJ/IPSJ.
11. Flohr, Guido. "Conversion routines for ISO_2033_1983". libintl. Locale::RecodeData::ISO_2033_1983.
12. "Character Sets". IANA.

External links

• ISO 2033 distributed by ISO
• JIS X 9010 distributed by AFNOR