Publishing code books

Tim May wrote:

> Someone in Cypherpunks has a novel solution: print code in the most
> easily OCRable font---I think the suggestion was that OCR-A and OCR-B,
> or somesuch, are optimized for this (one would think so from the
> names, but I had thought they had something to do with the magnetic
> ink printing on checks...).
> 
> I'm sure Schneier would be entertain the idea of a special
> "exportable" version of his code in which purchasers paid the $30 he
> charges and received a loose-leaf book of very neatly and precisely
> printed code, ready for easy OCRing.

I think that it's a great idea for enterprising cypherpunk publishers to 
print "exportable versions of restricted code." There should be a good market,
whether or not code is OCR-able. There may be a lot of unavailable code that 
could be worth typing. As a matter of fact, any plain font OCRs very well.
The costs of such publishing would be very low, and I for one wouldn't mind 
paying >$50 for such 'code books'.

Phil Karn <karn@qualcomm.com> wrote:
> Oh come on, all this talk about OCR makes it sound like nobody would ever
> be willing to just type in the code by hand. It only need be done once,
> and the task could easily be divided up for a group. The listings for any
> particular cipher just aren't that long.

But the listings for a library of ciphers are. Besides OCRs are quite good
nowadays, you don't really have to print in an OCR font.
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How about publishing them as scantron coded circles with a checksum at the
end.  Granted this will be expensive, but it can be made portable, and
we could also include some decoding software that will do the OCR for you.
Most modern scanners are TWAIN compatible these days..  For those that
are not, we could have the program accept different file formats.  TIFF,PCX,
etc. and have it scan the picture and resolve it into binary in minutes.

We should also include the plaintext versions of the source code in the
same book in a large, clear OCRalble font... say Courier at 14 points.  This
way you are guaranteed that you can get at the sources...


The scantron version could also be compressed to a ZIP file let's say...
Text files compress pretty well, so it shouldn't be a problem, and the book
can include the decoding software.  Would this be exportable?

Do you guys remember those old Commodore program listings that had a checksum
at the end of every line?  We could do the same thing to verify OCR to typos.
If an error occurs, we could go and enter the text or binary pattern in by
hand.

Another option is the new 2D barcodes which can store a lot more info than
the regular kind.   Are bar codes on paper exportable?

We could simply include some software to read off the pages with a scanner
and be done with it.


Even so, I'm sure that >SOMEONE< outside the USA would be very willing to
pay a secretary to type in the source code of a book.  :-)  Whatever happened
to the mafias and undergrounds of other countries?  I'd imagine they'd have
the most to gain from crypto software...  Hell, they probably already typed
in all the code in all the crypto books...

In this day and age, this shouldn't be a problem anymore...

> Another option is the new 2D barcodes which can store a lot more info than
> the regular kind.   Are bar codes on paper exportable?

Just for general information, the 2D MaxiCode system by United Parcel
Service is mentioned in a LA Times article (4/13/94,D8).  Your can get
100 bits/square inch.


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> But the listings for a library of ciphers are. Besides OCRs are quite good
> nowadays, you don't really have to print in an OCR font.

But not good enough.

You can spell check a newspaper article but not "code." OCR fonts
I think would help. I think the code would still have to be
manually proofed ...