[Alexandria-list] CueCat scanners, was: Website

[L.C. Karssen]

On Tue, 2007-04-10 at 15:39 -0400, Topher Cyll wrote:
> Hi folks,
Hi Topher, 

Glad to see you're still on the list :-).

> 
> I'm the author of userland cuecat code in Alexandria cvs.  It's been a
> very long time, but here's what I can tell you.
> 
> Both the original kernel driver and my userland code are for
> unmodified cuecats.  If you've defanged your cuecat you don't need any
> special code since it will just output barcodes as plain text.
IIRC defanging the CueCat didn't really help in my case, but I might be
wrong. It's been quite a while since I tried to work with it. 

> 
> Unmodified cuecat input comes in as regular keyboard input, but it's
> encoded.  There was a kernel driver that intercepted that data and
> then passed it on up to userspace decoded, but it was brittle (and
> never made the jump to 2.4 I think) and it was overkill anyways.
Of course a kernel driver would be able to intercept the Alt-F10
sequence and dump it to /dev/null when followed by CueCat input. Single
Alt-F10's would be passed on to the windowmanager. I guess it's
impossible to realise that in userland, right?

> I may however, be the only the one who has ever successfully used the
> userland cuecat code with Alexandria, because Laurent and I held off
> committing my UI code changes because he was working on a revised GUI
> at the time.
Would it be possible to merge them in now? Joseph?

> 
> Anyways, it should be relatively easy to get working if someone is
> interested, and I'd be happy to provide help.
I'd love to see working CueCat support in Alexandria!

> 
> The one concern (as someone pointed out) is that the cuecat sends
> Alt-F10 before it sends the rest of it's encoding (the key combo was
> designed to get the attention of the windows software the cuecats
> originally shipped with).  If a window manager has bound an action to
> that key pair, you can get some exciting results.  Of course, maybe
> it's possible we could grab that hotkey to popup an Alexandria Add
> Book window...?
Both in Gnome's own window messenger Metacity and in Beryl Alt-F10 is
bound to "Maximize Window". Of course this is easily changed and I guess
it will only result in the maximisation of the Alexandria window, since
multiple Alt-F10's don't do anything.

I guess it's time for me to look for the Cat again.

> 
> Great to see Alexandria moving again!
> Topher Cyll
> 
> 
> On 4/10/07, Petr Vanek <vanous at penguin.cz> wrote:
> > On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 11:45:47 -0400
> > "Lissa Potter" <potter.lissa at gmail.com> (LP) wrote:
> >
> > LP> On 4/10/07, Joseph Method <tristil at gmail.com> wrote:
> > LP> > But it was free right? Mine came in a box in the mail. I had no
> > LP> > idea what it was, or what I would use it for, and eventually
> > LP> > threw it away :(. I am thinking that we should replace the CueCat
> > LP> > description with a plug for another barcode scanner that works
> > LP> > with Linux, the way that Delicious Library sells a (very
> > LP> > expensive) barcode scanner on their web page. Can anyone make a
> > LP> > recommendation for a (preferably cheap) barcode scanner that
> > LP> > works?
> > LP>
> > LP> The problem is that the CueCat is about the only cheap scanner out
> > LP> there. There are a ton of different kinds of scanners, most over
> > LP> US$100 used. Some attach via USB, some via PS2, some require
> > LP> keyboard wedges, some are serial. Then there are the pen scanners,
> > LP> which have never worked well.
> >
> >
> > I would disagree. After similiar kind of discussions i got the CueCat
> > long time ago. I got it working with 2.4 kernel and have to say that the
> > result was terrible: i guess i had one correct scan out of five. After
> > this I got a "regular" scanner through ebay for less than 30$ and am
> > very happy ever since. This was about 18months ago. Currently I can
> > administer my library without a choke when friends of mine come and get
> > some books - one scan to get a book included into library, second
> > scan to set it as borrowed. No second scanning, except when i have to
> > switch keyboard to disable my Czech character on the numeric keys.
> >
> > If you have better results with the CueCat, lucky you :-)
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > --
> > Petr
> > -------------------------
> > Petr Vanek
> >
> > mailto:vanous at penguin.cz
> > http://vanous.penguin.cz
> > http://biodynamika.cz
> > -------------------------
> >
> >
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> >
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-- 
----------------------------------------------------
L.C. Karssen
lennart at karssen.org

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