Re: A research idea for entering characters

Thank you for replying.
 
I have found on the following web page a smaller display of the image for which Jon provided a link.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code
 
Clicking on it leads to the following page.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Extreme_QR_code_to_Wikipedia_mobile_page.png
 
From there, there is a link to the page of the author of the image and from there a link to the following website.
 
http://qrc-designer.com/
 
Upon thinking about what I have learned as a result of studying Jon's post and studying the above website I have come to the conclusion that it might well be a better approach to use a QR code that encodes one Unicode character and that has a glyph of that Unicode character in the middle, though not going over the vertical clock pulses in the manner that the extreme example does.
 
Sometime ago I produced some pdfs. They are available from within two forum post.
 
a_simulation_about_an_idea_that_would_use_qr_codes.pdf
 
http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?p=16692#p16692
 
experimental_table_top_for_telephoning_1200_by_800.pdf
 
http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?p=17393#p17393
 
> What way is this meant to be better?
 
Oh, it was never intended to be better than QR codes. I wondered if it would be possible to have images that could be read by both humans and computers.
 
At the time, before reading your reply and then reading the website that I mentioned above, I had thought that adding an image of the glyph of a Unicode character on top of a QR code might be unwise.
 
So, the two wonderings that I included in my original post about my idea can now be applied instead to the idea of a QR code that encodes one Unicode character and that has a glyph of that Unicode character in the middle.
 
quote
 
I am wondering whether the idea could have practical application for entering some characters that are not available on keyboards.
 
I am wondering whether the idea could have practical application for being able to enter characters without pressing keys, for example if someone is travelling without a keyboard or if someone is unable to press keys.
 
end quote
 
Thus far I have thought of the following ideas.
 
1. A telephone table. Unlike the design in the pdf there would be just a row of a QR codes that each encode one Unicode character and that each have a glyph of that Unicode character in the middle and no separate row of printed digits.
 
2. A yellow safety jacket with the same codes as on a telephone table printed down the front of the left arm, so that a person outside on a cold day could make a telephone call without needing to take his or her gloves off.
 
A problem that would need to be solved would be how to cope with a sequence of two identical digits. I have suggested using an ampersand so that that would be used by an app gathering information from the reading of a sequence of QR codes so as to know that a sequence of two identical digits was not a double reading of one intended digit.
 
However, if one was trying, in a printed paper keyboard substitute application, to enter codes for characters in general, then an ampersand would not do as one might want to enter an ampersand.
 
Is that the best way to do it or have I misunderstood the problem?
 
3. A Z-card with many QR codes that each encode one Unicode character and that each have a glyph of that Unicode character in the middle printed upon the paper sheet. With a mobile telephone that has a suitable camera and app this could be used as an alternative to a keyboard.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-CARD
 
4. Would the idea be of use for producing Unicode code charts, not to replace the existing code charts, but as an additional facility, so that rarer characters could easily be entered into a computer system by scanning the desired QR code with a mobile telephone that has a suitable camera and app?
 
William Overington
 
8 April 2013
 
Received on Mon Apr 08 2013 - 06:04:59 CDT