PURPOSE: To make the forming of a designated program easy and to decrease the man-power for program formation, by forming an actual form surrounding a reading objective area in a frame with a specified writing tool and converting the frame position of the form into reading position control information.

CONSTITUTION: A reading objective area 2 of an actual form 1 for reading objective area designation is surrounded with a black frame by using a black pencil. An optical character reader OCR3 is provided with a reading section 3a, a signal processing section 3b and a control section 3c, and a storage section 4 is connected to the OCR3. The position of the area 2 surrounded with the black frame of the actual form 1 is converted into reading position information at a signal processor 3b. The position information is registrated at the storage section 4, and the information of the OCR form information writing characters, numerals or symbols on a specified area to be read next is read at the reading section 3a, the information is coded at the processor 3b and outputted to an electronic computer from the control section 3c. The designated information is read by the control information registered in the storage section 4 and the formation of program can be made easy.