# Pitch

Character pitch is a measurement of the distance from one character to the next based a specific starting point. For example, you could determine pitch by measuring the distance from the left edge of the mark rectangle for one character to the left edge of the mark rectangle for the next character in the string. The measurement can change from character to character, depending on the type of font. For fixed-width fonts the pitch does not vary, while for proportional fonts the pitch varies depending on adjacent characters.

By default the OCRMax tool does not consider pitch when performing the segmentation process, but being able to provide specific values for different pitch parameters can greatly increase the ability of an OCRMax tool to correctly differentiate the characters in your images.

To enable the tool to consider character pitch, change the AnalysisMode parameter from minimal mode to standard mode. With standard mode selected, the tool will factor in the following parameters to the segmentation process:

Parameter | Description
--- | ---
Pitch Metric | If you know the Pitch Metric for the characters in your string, you can specify that the pitch can be measured from the left corner, the center, or the right corner of each character.
Min Pitch | The segmentation process can be improved by having the Min Pitch that can occur between characters. If the pitch between two character fragments is less than this value, the OCRMax tool considers the fragments to be part of the same character, unless the combined character exceeds the Char Max Width value.
Pitch Type | Specify the Pitch Type depending on the font in your images, which is fixed, proportional, or variable if your character strings used a mix of different fonts.
Width Type | Specify how the widths of the mark rectangles for the characters in the string are expected to vary, either fixed or variable.