Development [LWN.net]

Store data on paper with Twibright Optar

Twibright Optar is a new and unique software project by Karel 'Clock' Kulhavý, developer of the Ronja optical network link project. Here's the project description:

Optar stands for OPTical ARchiver. It's a codec for encoding data on paper. Optar fits 200kB on an A4 page, then you print it with a laser printer. If you want to read the recording, scan it with a scanner and feed into the decoder program. A practical level of reliability is ensured using forward error correction code (FEC). Automated processing of page batches facilitates storage of files larger than 200kB.

One may wonder why, in this high tech world, would you want to use paper as a data archive medium. Paper tape and 80 column punch cards went out of style in the early 1980s. Optar is probably not for those who are intent on running a paperless office. Here are some unique benefits and features of Optar:

It can be used for storing images, sound, and any other type of data.
It requires a 600dpi laser printer and scanner.
Data is printed on 3x3 pixel dots and encoded with Golay code spread across multiple strips.
It prints synchronization imagery to handle media nonlinearities.
It is useful for sending data through the postal system.
It can be used for publishing data in magazines and other print media.
It can be used to archive data on microfiche.
Data on paper can be notarized and used for legal archives.
It has a much greater data density than printed characters, reducing the size of mandated paper archives.
It is useful for data distribution to those without network access.
Error correction is able to handle folding of the paper media and other noise.
Optar images can be quickly duplicated with a scanner or a digital camera.
Paper media is less expensive than floppy disks and USB memory sticks.

Usage of Optar is fairly straightforward, the optar command encodes data into a series of .pgm files. Those can easily be converted to PostScript with the convert command from the ImageMagick suite, then printed to most laser printers. Conversion from paper back to data involves scanning the pages with SANE or other scanner software, saving as .png files, then feeding those to unoptar, which outputs the original data.

While functional, Optar is still in an early stage of development. Some desirable options would be the ability to select output paper sizes such as US letter and legal on the command line, and choose the encoding density. The documentation is currently limited to a README file, there are plans to make man pages for the two Optar commands. The code is without a version number at this point, presumably because there is only one version that has been released.

Optar has been released under the Gnu GPL, the source code is available for download here. The code is written in C and builds with the standard make and make install commands.

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