Mark E. Shoulson <[email protected]> wrote:
> I made a font like this a while back (capital letters and numbers and
> selected symbols only) with the character in the lower right quadrant. If
> you turn the error-correcting up to high, it works fine.
Thank you for replying.
This is an interesting development.
There are in the United Kingdom some businesses that offer the facility to send
a personalized greetings card. One can go online and design the card, using
either a stock image supplied by the business or by uploading an image. Payment
is by credit card or debit card. The business then prints the card and sends it
by post to the recipient, who may, but need not, be the person sending the
card. A5 is a popular size: that is, the card is a piece of A4 size card folded
to produce a two-page A5 card.
It occurs to me that if there were artwork for a QR code keyboard made
available, free to use though not public domain so as to give provenance, then
someone could use the artwork in such a greetings card website to send, at low
cost, a one-off print of the keyboard printed well on high quality card.
If there were a suitable app for a mobile telephone, then the fact that the QR
card keyboards could be printed in high quality and distributed as needed could
be a useful facility.
I am thinking that there may be many details that need to be decided before
such a QR code keyboard could become a practical possibility. For example, how
does one ensure that one can get to the desired QR code without another QR code
being accidentally read? This seems to imply plenty of access space to get to
the desired character. So there is a design balance to be made over size of QR
codes, the number of QR codes on a piece of paper or card, the size of the
access pathways and the size of the piece of paper or card.
There could be a design that has the digits and * and # and an ampersand and a
% sign and intended to be used with an app designed to enable a telephone call
to be dialled and initiated without the end user needing to press any buttons
at all. This could perhaps be useful for some people. As it would have only
have fourteen QR codes, or fifteen if one included a + sign, this might make
design easier.
What is needed is a standardized protocol of how it is to work.
For example, automatic prevention of doubled characters unless an ampersand is
used between them, the ampersand being just to assist input and not recorded.
For example, use %1 to initiate a call to the number that has previously been
set up.
William Overington
9 April 2013
