Thanks for the feedback about QR codes vs Data Matrix. After further investigation, one strike against Data Matrix is that I haven't been able to use the Python library pylibdmtx to extract a Data Matrix value except when the image contains ONLY the Data Matrix image. I'm sure there are solutions for this but "out of the box" it doesn't work as easily as reading QR Codes with Zbar. For my part of this project QR codes will work just fine but a colleague may need to use Data Matrix labels on microscope slides (higher data density in DM and limited space on the slides). For now, the only viable solution that I'm aware of for reading DM is the commercial product Inlite ClearImage Barcode Reader SDK. I'm going to keep looking into pylibdmtx and other open alternatives and will report back if I have any success.

Thanks,
Jason

Jason Best
Director of Biodiversity Informatics
Botanical Research Institute of Texas
1700 University Drive
Fort Worth, Texas 76107

817-332-4441 ext. 230
http://www.brit.org

> On Jul 4, 2022, at 10:00 PM, CODE4LIB automatic digest system <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> There is 1 message totaling 39 lines in this issue.
>
> Topics of the day:
>
> 1. QR code vs Data Matrix?
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2022 02:29:26 -0400
> From: ross-spencer <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: QR code vs Data Matrix?
>
> Very much with Jason on recognizability. Interesting too about thinking about how much data can be encoded.
>
> I looked up a brief comparison which describes differences in storage and error checking. May be of interest:
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> * https://www.laserax.com/blog/data-matrix-vs-qr-codes
>
> Personally, I didn't know about data matrix at all before this thread! Now I do I can see I have a letter on my desk with both a QR code and a data matrix! I am not sure what the data matrix is for, but given its placement I think it is used by the issuer to help routing at Deutsche Post. The QR code is the user-facing code, and allows me to pay the invoice via my banking app.
>
> There's definitely something around recognizability that's useful about QR codes. You can also use some of the redundancy to include a pixel-art logo of your organization. QR codes are also going to work on modern phones out of the box and there are some decent libraries, for example, in Python that can help you to start writing those, and then with your phone you can read them pretty quickly.
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> Culturally, I have had discussions with colleagues about QR codes and I personally thought their time had been and gone pretty quickly. Since the pandemic however there seems to be a renewed interest in them, especially for encoding URLs at places like restaurants to reduce surface transmission, e.g. by touching menus, and it seems like a largely positive outcome (if you have a phone with internet service and a camera). It suggests they might not disappear any time soon.
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> End of CODE4LIB Digest - 3 Jul 2022 to 4 Jul 2022 (#2022-154)
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