Forcing old-style figures from a font in Kindle - Page 2

Quoth · 03-09-2020, 03:59 PM

Ah, it's worse than that. I've documents, manuals and books so old that the text is obviously from the ancient kind of typewriter that saved numeric keys, didn't have One or Zero only 2 to 9.
Then some publishers didn't spot this on the proofing so stuff can be type set with I or l for 1 and O for 0.

I don't much fancy correcting OCR anyway unless I have the original, and even then I think I'd rather someone else did it.

Tex2002ans · 03-09-2020, 04:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quoth

Ah, it's worse than that. I've documents, manuals and books so old that the text is obviously from the ancient kind of typewriter that saved numeric keys, didn't have One or Zero only 2 to 9.
Then some publishers didn't spot this on the proofing so stuff can be type set with I or l for 1 and O for 0.

I discussed "O vs. 0" last year in more detail on Reddit, and brought up this example:

"So 1,000 would look like I,OOO or l,ooo."

Also mentioned ! missing from keyboards (so you had to apostrophe + backspace + period).

DaleDe · 03-09-2020, 05:02 PM

To: Tex2002ans

See Typography#Figure_Typography in our wiki. The only difference is the height of the number. In your example it would be the same height as the o.

Dale

Quoth · 03-09-2020, 05:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

I discussed "O vs. 0" last year in more detail on Reddit, and brought up this example:

"So 1,000 would look like I,OOO or l,ooo."

Also mentioned ! missing from keyboards (so you had to apostrophe + backspace + period).

I'd forgotten that gem. OTOH, you can do that with C and = too. I remember using non-destructive print backspace in Wordstar in early 1980s for creative characters on stupid printers. Also it was only 7 bit ASCII so the only way to do accented letters.

Tex2002ans · 03-09-2020, 09:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaleDe

See Typography#Figure_Typography in our wiki.

Thanks. I'll toss that on my resource list.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaleDe

The only difference is the height of the number. In your example it would be the same height as the o.

Since we don't have access to old-style figures here on MobileRead... the IOlo were approximations of what it looks like on paper.

And OCR definitely trips up on books with old-style numbers, so it's a very common error to look for:

I always do a Regex+Spellcheck pass for O/o or l/I next to a number (I942 -> 1942). And 1,ooo -> 1,000 is pretty common too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quoth

I'd forgotten that gem. OTOH, you can do that with C and = too. I remember using non-destructive print backspace in Wordstar in early 1980s for creative characters on stupid printers. [...]

Way before my time... but C and =, I assume it was an approximation for € Euro?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quoth

Also it was only 7 bit ASCII so the only way to do accented letters.

Yuck. Glad those times are over. :P

Tex2002ans · 03-10-2020, 08:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hobnail

Old style numerals have decenders, so the 9 is like a p.

[... On] my body tag [I use] "font-variant: common-ligatures oldstyle-nums proportional-nums;" and for h1, h2, h3, h4 it's "font-variant: common-ligatures lining-nums proportional-nums;" [...]

I was also reading through the CSS3 Fonts Specs on "font-variant-numeric" and saw they have a nice comparison table showing differences between Proportional/Tabular + Lining/Old-Style numbers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

And OCR definitely trips up on books with old-style numbers, so it's a very common error to look for:

I always do a Regex+Spellcheck pass for O/o or l/I next to a number (I942 -> 1942). And 1,ooo -> 1,000 is pretty common too.

Aaaand it comes up today!

The book scan in:

"How to handle images in books while doing OCR of books?"

was published in 1918.* Lots of tables and numbers, all in Old-Style:

Click image for larger version

Name: Humphrey,Milford.-.Some.South.Indian-p70[Old-Style.Numbers].png
Views: 262
Size: 145.6 KB
ID: 177635

"Ist July"
"IO July"
"IOO"
"I,OOO"

It has 'em all!

* I mean, I9I8.

Quoth · 03-11-2020, 04:07 AM

Typewriters were invented before reliable fountain pens in the Victorian Era. Wordprocessing only came in during 1970s, originally as dedicated machines.
So I'd expect this to be common between 1890 and 1980.
I had to type my weekly report in my first full time job in the mid 1970s. A big company that had no wordprocessors.

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03-09-2020, 03:59 PM	#16
Quoth Still reading Posts: 14,038 Karma: 105092227 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Ireland Device: All 4 Kinds: epub eink, Kindle, android eink, NxtPaper	Ah, it's worse than that. I've documents, manuals and books so old that the text is obviously from the ancient kind of typewriter that saved numeric keys, didn't have One or Zero only 2 to 9. Then some publishers didn't spot this on the proofing so stuff can be type set with I or l for 1 and O for 0. I don't much fancy correcting OCR anyway unless I have the original, and even then I think I'd rather someone else did it.

03-09-2020, 05:02 PM	#18
DaleDe Grand Sorcerer Posts: 11,470 Karma: 13095790 Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Grass Valley, CA Device: EB 1150, EZ Reader, Literati, iPad 2 & Air 2, iPhone 7	To: Tex2002ans See Typography#Figure_Typography in our wiki. The only difference is the height of the number. In your example it would be the same height as the o. Dale

03-11-2020, 04:07 AM	#22
Quoth Still reading Posts: 14,038 Karma: 105092227 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Ireland Device: All 4 Kinds: epub eink, Kindle, android eink, NxtPaper	Typewriters were invented before reliable fountain pens in the Victorian Era. Wordprocessing only came in during 1970s, originally as dedicated machines. So I'd expect this to be common between 1890 and 1980. I had to type my weekly report in my first full time job in the mid 1970s. A big company that had no wordprocessors.