Machine-readable passport#Format

A machine-readable area (English Machine Readable Zone, abbreviated MAR ) is the one visible part of an identity document, which was specially created for this to be read by optical character recognition.

This reading area is located generally at the bottom of a personal identification document ( for example, the laminated side of a passport card). For labeling the font OCR-B is used. This font is not proportional ', which means that each character has the same spacing. Instead of spaces, the symbol '<' is used so that each point of the reading area is occupied by a character.

The content of machine-readable areas is regulated by national or international standards. The standard ICAO document 9303 (specification for machine readable travel documents ) describes three formats:

• Three lines of the field, each with 30 characters per line for other identification documents in a small format ID-1 / td -1 ( credit card size ) on the back of the card,
• A two-line field with 36 characters per line for identification documents in the medium format ID- 2 / td 2 on the front of the card,
• Also a two-line area, each with 44 characters per line for passports in large format ID- 3 / TD -3 ( MRP or machine readable passport ) on the front of the card.

The current German ID card has a machine-readable area in the ID-1 format / td -1. The machine- readable range of the older identity cards, which were applied between April 1987 and October 2010, the format ID -2 / td -2.