[techtalk] Linux Barcode Scanner & Printer

[Ian Hall-Beyer]

On Thu, 1 Jun 2000, Magni Onsoien wrote:

> > there's no difference whether you type in the numbers with the keyboard or
> > read them with the scanner. 

Those are the easiest, since there are no drivers involved :). The
keyboard variety are very easy to integrate with a web-based form.

As a side note, you can also get magstripe readers that work in a similar
fashion, interfacing with the keyboard, and you can even get keyboards
with the reader built-in.

> They are using GNU-barcode to generate the barcodes, you'll find this
> and more similar programmes if you search on fex freshmeat.net.

If you're using a basic 3 of 9 (code 39) barcode, you can do it with a
truetype font in your favorite word processor. 

> ISBN-code, but the easiest seem to be to get the EAN-code (i.e. the
> barcode). So, is there a mapping between ISBN and EAN or is there any 

I believe on books, the EAN/UPC code actually *is* the ISBN number, plus
the extra 5 digits at the end indicating list price.

For example,

"A Practical Guide: Unix System V, 3rd edition", by Mark Sobell, has an
ISBN of 0-8053-7566-X. The EAN code reads: 9-780805-375664-53795. One can
clearly see the ISBN embedded in the EAN.

Another:

"Forgotten English", by Jeffrey Kacirk, ISBN 0-688-16636-9 has an EAN of
9-780688-166366-90000. I'm not sure how the last character of the ISBN and
the EAN translate out, they may be irrelevant.

> Have someone done anything like this before?

You could always have a perl script query a web database of ISBN numbers
(for example, amazon) and populate the DB with that info as well

-Ian

--
<cosmo> wow, this is kinda nifty. the win98 protocol stack is 
like a chinese finger puzzle, twist and turn in the right places, 
and it pops right off			--Seen on EFNet IRC