In message <200410051751.SAA02663(a)citadel.metropolis.local>al>, Stan Barr writes:
Ron Hudson <ron.hudson(a)sbcglobal.net>
I once was wondering if a backup software could
be written that writes
to laser printer.
Backups would be read in with a scanner..
I remember reading about a system like that, wrote data as a pattern of
dots on a laser printer and read using a primitive scanner (it was a
while ago and definitely on-topic). Developed by someone in Germany
I think. A query in various newsgroups a while back turned up no info.
You folks are bad for the sanity. You've gotten me thinking
about implementing a PDF417[1] reader. I've done some barcode
decoding stuff at work, but I've managed to avoid doing any
2-D stuff. Now I may not be able to resist.
[1] For those who may not be familiar with it, PDF417 is a standard
2-D barcode. It's something like a bunch of really short (vertically)
1-D barcodes stacked on top of each other. It's not the densest
thing in the world, but you could get a lot more on a piece of
paper than printing text to OCR later. Most FedEx Ground labels
have examples of this code. (UPS labels have a different 2-D
code called Maxicode.)
Brian L. Stuart