DISCLAIMER: Este post va en Inglés.. pronto lo paso al español.. Sepan disculpar.
What is QtQR?
QtQR is an graphical application for creating QR Codes easily; It also let’s you decode a QR Code stored on an image file or scan a printed one with your webcam.
…a QR what?
I don’t know, ask the japanese guys.. all I can say is that a QR Code is a two-dimensional barcode that looks something like the image below. According to the Wikipedia:
QR Code used as logo for QtQR
“A QR code (short for Quick Response) is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code), readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera phones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data.
Common in Japan, where it was created by Toyota subsidiary Denso-Wave in 1994, the QR code is one of the most popular types of two-dimensional barcodes. QR is the abbreviation for Quick Response, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed[…]”
That’s for the formal definition, basically the QR Codes are useful for sharing a lot of information with a simple scan. They are used by the marketing guys for example in publicity. You can put an url, all your contact info, a predifined e-mail message, a sms message, a telephone number and anything you can think of on a QR code and anyone with a modern phone (not necessary a smartphone) can scan the code with the phone’s camera and decode all the data.
Say you want to make a personal presentation card with your contact information like your name, address, e-mail and phone number. You can put all that into a QR code, print it in the back of the card and instead of copying by hand your number a client can scan the code with his phone. 🙂 are you starting to like them?
There are several alternatives for creating a QR Code: websites, smartphone applications and there is even a command line application for Linux called qrencode. QtQR is a GUI front end for the latter made in Python and PyQt4.
QtQR 1.0
QtQR started as a simple wrapper for the command line program qrenconde inspired by a blog post. You can still download it from the google code page. Then I added the decoding feature using zbar; you can see how it worked in the following screencast:
At the same time David Green started to work on a GTK based GUI, so we got in contact and joined forces. From this the QR Tools project was borned; QR Tools project formed by:
- python-qrtools: a library for creating and decoding QR Codes.
- QtQR: a Qt4 based GUI.
- QR Code Creator: a GTK based GUI.
The next step was to add templates for encoding text, urls, email address, sms and telephone numbers; setting qrenconde parameters and the capability to decode using a webcam. This realease was called QtQR 1.0. You can see a screenshot below.
- QtQR 1.0 Screenshot
at that moment QtQR was covered by OMG! Ubuntu! and got a lot of interest from the community. Right now we are working on the 1.2 version of QtQR, fixing bugs and adding features.
