Notices

A couple of comments:
* Starting up is really slow. I don't think that this is a new issue, but I think that it would be good to work on it before pushing to extras. Remember, the most common use is that you see a barcode, and want to immediately scan it. Waiting for 10 seconds for the app to start up is rather annoying. :-) I don't mind working on this if you'd like.
* It seems like all camera control is stopped immediately after a scan is taken: I was scanning an image in low light, so the flash was coming on periodically. It happened to be on when it scanned, and the flash stayed on the entire time I was in the search results window. Could we at least turn off the flash after a successful scan?
* I really, really like the UI of having darkened edges, with a red line through the middle. The scrolling list of history is also nice.
* The history dialog title says "Dialog". :-) Maybe call it "History"?
* CPU usage is really high, at least sometimes, even when the cover is closed.

I agree. It was pointed out that this might have something to do with the plugins, but I've figured that those are among the fastest to load. mBarcode has a fair amount of debugging text during the start up. Running in a terminal will show you where it slows down. I haven't looked closely at it, but my guess is that the pipeline initialization uses some time to start.

I agree with you that this is a problem, and it has been persistent for a while. In other words, it does not seem to be related to the new changes.

If you feel like looking into it, please do so. I'll try to look at it myself, but this is one of the things that takes the most time. Adding/removing some code, testing again, adding/removing some code, and so on... In other words, this is something that I would be glad to get some help with

Just commit as soon as you make some performance enhancements so that we don't do any double work I will focus on the plugins and some other bugs for starters in any case, so you can have your go at it now if you like to.

I'm experiencing this myself, and I believe this has to do with that we're now pausing the pipeline instead of stopping it. Stopping the pipeline caused the application to crash, so I'm a bit uncertain about what to do with this.

The flash is turned on by the autofocus, so my best guess for a solution is to avoid pausing the pipeline before the autofocus is done.

I'll see what can be done about this.
Thanks! Glad to hear that you find the new UI appealing. The "Dialog" title is changed in SVN to "Recent History" already. I thought it was included in the update, but apparently I must have missed it.
I'm not sure why this is. The CPU usage seems like it has to be high while scanning due to reading data from the pipeline and drawing on screen. I believe it is high in the camera app as well, but I'll investigate that further.

Why it stays high after closing the cover is beyond me, but we should probably look into it and see if there is something going on that shouldn't.

Earlier there were some performance issues related to a too high frame rate even when the app was not scanning, but this is fixed by heightening the repaint interval to 500 ms now. Maybe it could be even higher.

Just thought I should share this. Mobile Barcoder is a plugin for Firefox on desktop that allows you to hover a little icon in the lower right corner of your browser to generate a QR code for the current page link. Quite nice to have when you want to transfer an URL from your computer to the phone quickly. For instance to download calendar events, etc.

Greets from San Diego, and just a quick "Thanks" chaps

I'll be back in just over a week (so get it all done before then ) so I can have a look at the pipeline CPU overhead then.

Regarding PythonQT, there's a nearly-finished plugin - ExternalDBusPlugin, which (when finished) would allow external apps (including those written in Python) to act as plugins. This might avoid the requirement to get PythonQT working (at least immediately) and will also be useful for some apps that don't suit the plugin model (e.g. map apps comes to mind immediately, or youtube players, etc).

I like mbarcode but it seems to have problem scan small qrcode maybe its my shaky hands but anyway,,,

Any plans to make it fcam API compatible maybe this API could make it better for scanning the barcodes?

I mean fcam is raw data and no lossy jpeg for example probadly faster to handle?

Maybe I am wrong here but it sound lilke fcam API is for stuff like mbarcode and similar projects :-)

Are you thinking about those micro QR codes that only allow 16 chars or just small as in the physical size? The micro codes are not supported by the zbar library as far as I know. Physically small QR Codes should be readable down to sizes about 2x2 cm, but this may depend on the quality of the image.

I doubt the fcam API would help us out on this one as we are now fetching raw RGB data from the camera and this is what our decoders are using. Using a non-lossy jpeg format wouldn't help as we would have to convert it back again to RGB or black and white.

zbar and libdmtx are the two libraries we use to decode the images and both are using either RGB or black and white data for processing. I think the best approach to make the decoding better is to improve these libraries.

I believe that he's referring to data matrix barcodes. I was certain that these were supported at one point, but don't seem to be working now. I see some dmtx references in the code; was support dropped at some point?

I've committed a few changes that cut startup time in half (at least with the lens cover closed.) It's still ~3.5 seconds for me, which isn't great, but better than it was.

I also notised that it won't read data matrix codes. At least the one I tried. My brother was installing the app to read a code but couldn't get it to scan (it was just focusing) I however could scan a similar code quite easily. I had an older version of mbarcode (0.1.10-1 I belive) so I upgraded to 0.2.1-1 (the one in devel at the moment, and the one he installed) and sure enough I couldn't read the code eighter. So yes I would say something has happened.

As for the size of the code, the code I easily read w/ the older version is about 7x7 mm.

And of course Love the app keep up the good work.


EDIT: My brother just told me he managed to scan the code w/ mbarcode from testing (0.0.8)

EDIT2: just to clarify I also have trubble reading larger data matrix codes (for example from wikipedia. I just keeps trying to focus, but never takes a picture of the code.

I just tested 0.0.8-0

It wont Scan any "normal" barcodes I try, and it fails to open any picture I take using the camera app first (error opening file)

Sorry but I think this thing should not be in extras-testing :/