maemo.org - Talk - New mBarcode release on its way

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- - New mBarcode release on its way (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=49201)

Re: New mBarcode release on its way

The use is a bit limited since we don't have too many plugins developed for the application yet. For the moment you may do this with regular barcodes (1D):
- Look them up on the web to see if any other stores have them in stock for a lower price. Currently this is only possible through search engines, but we (or other developers) will try to scrape this information from shops like for instance Amazon automatically.
- Share your opinion using Informed Individual (alpha).
- Get others' opinions using Informed Individual (alpha).
With QR codes and datamatrix codes:
- See what the code contains.
- Open it up in the browser if it is an URL.
- Add a contact if it's a VCard (probably in the next version)
+ more to come

The reason one would often like to find out what the product really is (as in it's full name) could be to do more searches for info about the product without having to type it in manually. It's just a way of doing things a bit faster and making it more convenient :)

Re: New mBarcode release on its way

Ok.
I understand more now.
So ideally, with maybe more development, you could find a product in a shop, record the barcode, and find out if any local store or online shop has it cheaper.

Re: New mBarcode release on its way

Yes, and reviews about the product as well. Both from Amazon, Informed Individual and other places too.

Hopefully, a lot of that functionality will be ready during this summer.

Re: New mBarcode release on its way

Thanks dragfly
Any idea when it will get into extras-testing or extras?

Re: New mBarcode release on its way

I'd like to do some finishes to the UI (at least see how a full screen scanner would be like) and fix some more bugs before we push it up to extras-testing, but I guess that it could be ready in about a month's time (no promises, though).

Re: New mBarcode release on its way

Quote:

Originally Posted by dragly (Post 695922)

I'm actually seeing this myself from time to time. When I think about it, this might be a problem caused by the constant autofocusing, although I remember having seen this some time ago as well. Maybe we should wait until the previous image has been decoded before calling autofocus again, just to make sure it does not get called again and again when the autofocus is temporarily causing the image to be out of focus?

Or would it be better to wait for the autofocus' success signal before calling the decoders at all? A simple way would be to set a "bool readyForDecode" to true whenever the autofocus callback returns with success and to false whenever autofocus is initiated?

Interesting. I'd be tempted to set a timer so that the autofocus is only started again once the previous one has returned something (though I'll have to check the api to see if it returns an "I've timed out" message).

Re: New mBarcode release on its way

Actually I don't see any issues with pushing to extras-testing so that users can give it a go now (though up to dragly to say whether he's happy with the current state).

One thing we need to work out is how to avoid it then being sucked into the rating process (mainly as it annoys me to receive loads of curt messages saying why have you not done this/that/the other and still expect to be promoted. Grrr!) as it's not finished, just being put in there for people to be able to access more easily.

Re: New mBarcode release on its way

Quote:

Originally Posted by lardman (Post 696773)

With "returned something" do you mean that the autofocus has returned with a callback? If so, it does already wait for that before calling the autofocus. The refocus checks a flag which is called "focusing" which is set to false whenever the autofocus returns with a state (failed, success, etc.). The state is what you see in the output when running mbarcode.

I think we should test to see if it helps to wait for the decoders to finish decoding the previous image as well (if that is possible in a smart way, given that there are two decoders).

Re: New mBarcode release on its way

Quote:

Originally Posted by lardman (Post 696781)

GIven that we'd get more people testing it, I wouldn't mind at all to put it in extras-testing. It's just that I don't think it is ready for promotion yet, but we seem to agree there ;)

So if we are able to do as you say, and get it there to be tested without having people promote it yet, that would be a good idea :) I guess we won't be able to completely avoid those comments about these and those features missing, but we could probably put a disclaimer out in the app description or something similar. After all, I guess people use extras-testing because they like giving reviews as well :p

By the way, what do you see necessary before we can call it a 1.0 final release? What I can think of is this:
- finish the QR-plugin with all the features we've set place for (vCards, .install links, etc.)
- do some testing with different UI layouts and see if we could make an overlayed semi-full screen scanning (semi as in "with titlebar")
- ability to save/open images
- a better result list layout, with an option for plugins to show results before being clicked (for instance lowest price) with a user option to disable this when roaming

I'm sure there is more too, but I can't think of anything right now.

Re: New mBarcode release on its way

Yep, those sound like reasonable steps for 1.0, and possibly also get Python support added in.... (hmm, I seem to keep thinking I should do that and never getting round to it, I'll see what I can do [he says!])