Publishing code books

[rishab@dxm.ernet.in]

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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Rishab Aiyer Ghosh                                          rishab@dxm.ernet.in
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