It seems to be impossible to find a version of OCR-B, the typeface, that actually is reliably monospaced, meaning that 10 characters, regardless of which characters, always take up the exact same space.

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@ptesarik (I also note that many free OCR-B typefaces prefer rounded caps instead of the butt caps in the original. Very V.A.G. Rounded vibes

Gareth Kitchen

@jwildeboer I sense that the spec was devised in the era of daisy wheels, golfballs and line printers.

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@gruff Elegant tools from a more civilised age

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

OK. I sorta kinda solved it

- Create a textbox, fill it with 30 identical characters (I use spaces)
- Make sure all spacing is set to 0
- Now set the width of that box to the desired size (in the TD1 case 77,7mm) and take note of the character size Inkscape calculates based on that
- Set the three text lines to that character size
- Align the three text lines using the "Align Text Anchors Horizontally" option
- Resize the group again to the desired width of 77,7mm

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

For the TD2 sized documents do the same dance but with 2 lines of 36 characters each and a size of 93,3mm. For TD3 (passport) 2 lines with 44 characters and a size of 114mm. It's a pragmatic solution that delivers acceptable results for the MRZ scanners I can test with, so I consider this solved for now.

Xavier «X» Santolaria :verified_paw: :donor:

@jwildeboer Working on your passports counterfeiting skills?

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@0x58 I design and create my own documents based on the ICAO9303 standards for my own organisation, which is not a country, so it is no counterfeiting

Xavier «X» Santolaria :verified_paw: :donor:

@jwildeboer Practice makes perfect.

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@0x58 10 years of that already under my belt. But now I want to have the complete production process as Open Source.

Matija Šuklje

@jwildeboer, if you come up with a whole tutorial, I would be quite interested.

@0x58

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@hook @0x58 my last two blog posts already dive deep into the topic. Including a link to a MRZ (Machine Readable Zone) generator I made: https://jan.wildeboer.net

Matija Šuklje

@jwildeboer, ah, sweet, thanks!

I guess I really should subscribe (again) to your blog’s RSS/Atom feed.

@0x58

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@hook @0x58 And just for the fun of it, I made MRZ generators for all official travel document sizes:

TD1 (credit card): https://jan.wildeboer.net/assets/TD1MRZ.html

TD2 (A7 size): https://jan.wildeboer.net/assets/TD2MRZ.html

TD3 (B7 size for passports): https://jan.wildeboer.net/assets/TD3MRZ.html