[Alexandria-list] Slovak translation and using a webcam as a barcode scanner

[Cathal Mc Ginley]

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On Tue, 3 Mar 2009 20:42:38 +0100
Andreas Kotes <count at flatline.de> wrote:

> > Hm, I think it'd still be easier to deal with keyboard wedge
> > scanners through some kind of text widget.
> 
> so do I, and hacking something like that would be useful for 'generic'
> keyboard wedge scanners in any case. could be done in quite short time
> as well.
> 
> as I understand it, this only works with 'declawed' Cuecats, i.e.
> you'd need to have some separate code to read from the cuecat-device
> if the data isn't put in the keyboard data stream - but, I don't mind.
> 

Unmodified CueCats provide a form of Base64-encoded data directly as
keyboard input, so scanning an ISBN barcode in my e-mail window gives:
.C3nZC3nZC3n2ChnWENz7DxnY.cGf2.ENr7CNT7CxjYD3P7DxzXD3P2.

The 3 fields separated by dots are serial no., barcode type (in this
case IB5 = ISBN+5), and barcode data. I don't have a modified CueCat
myself, but I believe they provide just the barcode data, i.e. for the
same scan they would provide:
978188211498652495

There was a linux kernel driver for CueCats (back in kernel version 2.2
days) which made things much more complicated in some ways, by
detecting the CueCat and inhibiting its action as a type of keyboard:
instead scan data would show up in /dev/scanners/cuecat
The advantage was that an application wouldn't need to have the
keyboard focus before you scanned a barcode. Alexandria hasn't used
the /dev/scanners/cuecat approach since 0.6.2. (This is why the "Acquire
from Scanner" dialog has the rather unwieldy message "Click below to
scan barcodes"... the widget needs the keyboard focus to accept scan
data.)

   -   Cathal. 
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