Printing Keys and using OCR (was: Proofreadable base64)

[Peter Palfrader]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Brian Smith wrote:

> Peter Palfrader wrote:
> > Nice idea.  When trying to find decent backup methods for my 
> > new Tor identity key I cam accross this thread.
> > 
> > I played all day with ocr and friends.  In the course I wrote 
> > a small script that does what you suggest.  I tried to keep 
> > it small enough to print it along with whatever data you have 
> > - I clearly failed there.
> > But other than that it works nicely.
> > 
> > That didn't work out so well at  first
> > - gocr had real trouble distinguishing zeroes and the 
> > letter D like Delta. 
> 
> Why not use a 2D barcode like a QR code? A QR code will hold most
> typical keys, is easy for machines to read, is small, and has redundancy
> features that allow it to work even if you hole-punch or black out part
> of the code.

Because I like to have a fallback to entering the data manually.  Who
knows how easy it will be to get barcode software for a specific version
of barcodes 10 years in the future.  And will it even compile?

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