fukuchi/libqrencode — Issue #7: possible QR-encoding bug
Author: fukuchi
Created: 2012-01-23 04:42:50+00:00
State: open

I want to print a QR-encoded vCard file on paper namecards for myself so smartphone users save time in adding me to their contacts. Being a translator, I made versions of my vCard 3.0 file in four different languages, namely English, German, traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese. Then I used qrencode, version 3.1.1 revision 1 which I installed via MacPorts to turn the vCards into QR-PNGs.

The QR-code for the simplified Chinese version caused a problem which I didn't expect: When scanning the code with different devices obviously only 10 of the 18 lines from the original vCard are read. This is especially strange because vCard-syntax is the same as in the traditional Chinese version and the only thing that differs are the Chinese characters that form the content of the different vCard records. Also, both files have been saved using line breaks as required by the vCard format specifications.

One more thing I'd like to just throw in for future considerations: vCard 4.0 which is under development right now will allow redundant records with certain defining parameters such as language etc. so people can add their name, job description, address and so on in different languages. But vCards containing that much information will become too large for QR-encoding (I already removed a lot of information to reduce the size in the versions I sent you). What might help here is perhaps base64-encoded ZIP-data but there is still no standard to read ZIP-encoded vCards from a QR code, I guess mainly because of security concerns. Anyway, this is probably a problem to be discussed by the scanner software and OS developers.