Desperately seeking a
"Barcode Recognition" Operating System Service?

You can't decode these barcodes on any PC

Abstract
Barcode recognition has for the past 25 years been either been
  • a closed source hardware service
  • a closed source software service
more often than barcode recognition on PC's has been implemented with proprietary hardware or proprietary software interfaces. This approach to decoding barcodes is no longer viable, and has severely stifled innovation and the useful deployment of barcodes. Only by implementing a operating systems independent middleware service on personal (or embedded computers) could it become possible for barcodes to achieve their proper economic benefits. The side benefit of this service is that consumers that would usually not have access to barcode decoders would gain access to the technology. The service must however be 100% open source.




How it works

The operating system must interact with the barcode recognition service via this model
  1. The barcode image is copied to the OS clipboard or other like storage area
  2. The image is analyzed to find as many existent barcodes on its surface via open source decoders for each barcode type
  3. Each barcode is subsequently decoded regardless of its type
  4. All the recognized bar codes are passed via an XML wrapper to the host application




References
Operating System Services
BOINC Distributed Computing Service, a partial example of how a barcode decoding service might be implemented -- minus the external applications virturalization capability that is not applicable ...
Barcodes
Image Processing Pipelines




Initial Idea
22 March 2006
Created
01 September 2009
Last Revised
21 January 2010