On Wed, 13 Jul 2005, S.Woodside wrote:
> Yeah, we specify that a semacode tag can only contain a URL. But now,
> you see that there's a good reason for that. When you get loose in your
> spec you get the situation like in Japan where the 3 operators all have
> fragmented specs for how to encode other kinds of information. Semacode
> is all about interoperability and future proofing.
I'm not sure I'd call not being able to encode anything but a URL
"future proof." You could have just as easily defined a format that
tagged the data at the beginnning to indicate it was a URL and then
reserved the other tags, allowing you to add vcard data later.
> Besides, why encode
> the vCard directly when you can put in a URL to a vCard that's online?
Because if you're my friend's office, you have to scan the card and then
take your phone outside to get network connectivity. Even without that,
why take the extra time to connect and pay the packet charges?
> Saying that QR codes can encode more kinds of information is
> ridiculous, since a URL can address ANY kind of information.
A URL can *address* any kind of information, but there's no standard
for making it *contain* any kind of information. You already see the
weakness in this with the vcard thing. Any docomo user that can read
QR-Code can use a business card to instantly add contact information to
his phone book. How many of your users can do that?
> But the same name "QR"
> is used for the mobile system which is a layer above and adds URL and
> vCard encoding etc.
Are you sure? I had thought that Vodafone and AU were also calling their
codes QR-codes. If they indeed are QR-codes, the URL and vCard encoding
is not part of QR-codes; just text encoding is.
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974
*** Contribute to the Keitai Developers' Wiki! ***
*** http://www.keitai-dev.net/ ***
Received on Thu Jul 14 04:12:30 2005