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Offline QR Code possibility? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 years ago by Gmork@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Is there anything similar to a QR code that works offline?

Say I have a flyer that I want to discreetly distribute and there is no internet.

Is there something like a QR code that contains the data itself and not just a URL?

This way someone with no data plan could scan the icon/code with an app and the unrecognizable bits and bytes from the icon/code would show up on their screen as a .JPEG of a flyer or something.

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[–] roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If it doesn't exist, then you can invent it.

QR codes are perfect for encoding text, even though most people just use them to send URLs. It should be a very good tool for flyers.

If you want rich text, colours and fonts and sizes, I'm sure that's easy too. But you might need to invent a type of markup to compress the style information better. Or it might already exist.

[–] Gmork@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

That's just it though, it is very limited and has issues with even simple text. Tryp said in this thread that they had to download additional stuff in order to display the text in a QR code.

I had similar issues when scanning a text QR Code. Being a QR code, it opened my browser... Simple text was displayed in my search bar in linear fashion. So basic formatting of text to make an ASCII bar graph, for example is not possible.

Without basic formatting capabilities it's almost useless for my purpose, unfortunately.

[–] roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Do all QR code phone apps do that, or just the one? Maybe it's a setting in the app that you can turn off. You'd think the app would be clever enough to recognise whether the message is a URL or not, and treat it appropriately.

QR codes can often be ticket numbers or lists of information. It's literally just text, but in a machine-readable form, instead of human-readable.

[–] liwott@nerdica.net 1 points 2 years ago

Being a QR code, it opened my browser...

This is very much a problem with the app you use to scan rather than with the QR code itself.