I'm using qrduino by @tz1 to generate QR codes. In Qrduino, the format information is generated and inserted only after choosing a mask: https://github.com/tz1/qrduino/blob/master/qrencode.c#L523

In your project (C version) you have:

	if (mask == qrcodegen_Mask_AUTO) {  // Automatically choose best mask
		long minPenalty = LONG_MAX;
		for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
			enum qrcodegen_Mask msk = (enum qrcodegen_Mask)i;
			drawFormatBits(ecl, msk, qrcode);
			applyMask(tempBuffer, qrcode, msk);

which seems to be inserting the format information with drawFormatBits before masking. Your web page here: https://www.nayuki.io/page/creating-a-qr-code-step-by-step

also suggests inserting the format string before masking: "Draw the actual format bits (adjacent to the finders):"

To try to find out which approach is correct, I had a look at the spec. According to page 18 of the spec (Information technology — Automatic identification and data capture techniques — QR Code 2005 bar code symbology specification), it says:

Step 6 Data masking

Apply the data masking patterns in turn to the encoding region of the symbol. Evaluate the results and select the pattern which optimizes the dark/light module balance and minimizes the occurrence of undesirable patterns.

Step 7 Format and version information

Generate the format information and (where applicable) the version information and complete the symbol.

Can you justify why you are calculating the format information and inserting it before the mask operation from the spec?

Originally I was going to report this as a bug to Qrduino, but although I don't understand why the format information would be omitted when calculating the penalties, it does look like Qrduino is correct to me from reading the spec. The illustration in figure 23 of the spec also seems to not show the format information when calculating the mask: It just has blank white there. This is different from the thing you're showing on the web site, where you show penalties being calculated with the format information in place.

hi, I think, that according to the QR standard (at least in the version of 2006), the calculation of then penalties is done a little bit different (it doesn't make much sense, the way they do it, but... still... maybe you want to have a look at it)

It would be nice to also be able to load this module as

• commonjs module (usage through webpack & browserify bundlers)
• AMD module and also ensure distribution through npm.

This project provide some hints on how to provide "universal module definition"

• https://github.com/umdjs/umd

To allow usage through commonjs, I just added a line to your code. But it would be better not to have to modify library code.

Bests, Marc

Thanks for this lightweight QR code generator!

Are you interested in making Java generator as a library? I can add gradle/maven config and make platform specific features (like Android specific feature) if you wish.

I used your library to create a QR code that encodes "00000". Zbar library can't detect or decode it. Next, I used https://www.the-qrcode-generator.com/ to generate the same text. Now, Zbar can detect and decode it I compared the generated QR codes and they are not same! The first image is the one generated by your library and the second image is the one generated by https://www.the-qrcode-generator.com/.

Hello @nayuki!

Thank you for qrencode crate!

I have added some cfgs that allow this crate to be compiled for no_std (no OS) environment. It would be nice if you merge this PR.

Let me know if you need some changes before merge.

Thanks in advance!

There is a competing QR code generator lib (kjua) that can render QR codes on a canvas in a pixel perfect way.

See https://github.com/lrsjng/kjua/blob/a88369f748926aee8e996e3f720f0f9534c8d86b/src/lib/defaults.js#L5-L6

And as I use your lib for SVG, I can really see the difference.

comparison.zip

AFAIK the lib increases the white space for some time, so it really renders in a better way.

Maybe you could implement this, too?

Hello,

we are using the javascript version of your library to generate QR code that contains binary data. We read such barcode in an Android application that uses Google Machine vision library (com.google.android.gms.vision.barcode package...).

The library does not correctly decode the binary payload. Googling around it appears that the machine vision library assumes that binary payload contains UTF8 bytes unless code contains an ECI header providing alternative encoding (in our case ISO-8859-1 will solve the issue). Is there any way we can set such ECI header using your javascript library.

We thank you for this project, as we found it well documented and easy to use.

First off, I really like what you've done with your QR-code-generator project.

I came across your work while searching (web + GH + BB) for pure python-based programs to handle QR code decoding / encoding. Much as you describe in your writeup [1], I found a lot of projects with sub-optimal dev choices---too many external dependencies, insufficient documentation (internal comments and external manuals / examples), incomplete or unfaithful compliance with Denso-Wave and ISO/IEC 18004 standards (models 1&2)---some don't even implement Reed-Solomon. Anyway, kudos to you for a really clean and concise project:

• for clearly defined API;
• for simultaneous / equal coverage across four in-demand languages;
• for complete coverage of all 40 versions and 4 EC levels;
• for avoidance of magic constants;
• for flexible (MIT) license selection; and
• for sensible choices about what portions of encoding are included in your library (ie, 3-11 of your "generation procedure" [1]) and what are left up to implementation by library user.

In short, thanks for what you've shared with the O/S community here.

All that being said, I hope to motivate you to please consider expanding your project to include decoding of QR-Codes. If anything, there's an even more limited ecosystem of open-source QR-code decoders, compared to that of QR-Code encoders. In the python world, at least, there's pretty much only ZBar (or a multitude of projects which depend upon it); and ZBar's last stable release was in 2009, with no code checkins since 2012 (and it doesn't support modern Python). Of course, there's also a Python port of ZXing (from native Java), but ZXing is a large (~70k LOC!), all-encompassing framework. While there are obviously additional decoders in your other target languages (JS, Java, C++), I believe there are similarly fewer choices there, compared to the situation with encoders.

Given what I can sense of your philosophy with this project, I assume you'd consider any type of QR-code image manipulation (necessary for "full-stack" decoding from the analog world) to be well outside of scope, and I'm not suggesting otherwise as part of this feature request: scope would still exclude image capture, deskewing / perspective-correction / contrast-tuning, and (finally) conversion of pixels into a vector QR-code (ie, SVG). For example, just as you provide the 'to_svg_str()' function in your QRCode class as the final output stage (after which user-code takes over to otherwise manipulate QR codes), perhaps the appropriate scope to accept input for decoding would be a similar 'from_svg_str()' function, or just a logical 2D numeric array (representing input to be decoded). This would leave all bitmap->vector image manipulation external to your library, and instead in user-supplied code (through custom libraries, PIL/imagemagick, opencv3, etc).

I look forward to your consideration of this feature request, though it significantly expands the scope of your library. If it's beyond the itch you're proverbially scratching here, I'll continue to enjoy using your library for encoding only.

Thanks, and best wishes for continued success with this (and other) projects!

[1] https://www.nayuki.io/page/qr-code-generator-library

From what I could find online, it seems like the official QR code standard still specifies ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) as the default text encoding for byte segments.
However, if I understand the code correctly, this library chose to encode text (that is not alphanumeric or numeric) in a byte segment using UTF-8 encoding without preceding it with a corresponding ECI segment that indicates that an encoding other than ISO-8859-1 was used.

From QrSegment.java:135:
result.add(makeBytes(text.toString().getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8)));

What's the reasoning behind this?
I understand that a lot of readers nowadays use heuristics (which can fail) to guess the used encoding in the byte segment anyway but doesn't this behaviour make the produced QR codes technically non-compliant?

Thanks in advance.

I have seem some QR codes that for each black square, the squares edges are rounded. This makes for a different and more aesthetic look. Attaching a picture to show what I mean.

To allow different designs of the squares would be really nice

1 PR to rule them all 😉 cc @nayuki @AronRubin @abenevaut @zamicol @maltsev https://github.com/nayuki/QR-Code-generator/pull/25 https://github.com/nayuki/QR-Code-generator/pull/102 https://github.com/nayuki/QR-Code-generator/pull/159

https://github.com/wqweto/VbQRCodegen

I suppose these ports are pouring here already :-))

Can you put links in README to all other language ports being mentioned in the repo's issues so that people don't waste time duplicating effort?

Without this patch we get these compilation errors when running cargo test

$ cargo test
   Compiling qrcodegen v1.8.0 (/home/capitol/project/QR-Code-generator/rust)
warning: unnecessary parentheses around block return value
   --> src/lib.rs:842:3
    |
842 |         ( i32::from(core && rh[0] >= n * 4 && rh[6] >= n)
    |         ^^
843 |         + i32::from(core && rh[6] >= n * 4 && rh[0] >= n))
    |                                                          ^
    |
    = note: `#[warn(unused_parens)]` on by default
help: remove these parentheses
    |
842 ~         i32::from(core && rh[0] >= n * 4 && rh[6] >= n)
843 ~         + i32::from(core && rh[6] >= n * 4 && rh[0] >= n)
    |

warning: `qrcodegen` (lib) generated 1 warning
warning: `qrcodegen` (lib test) generated 1 warning (1 duplicate)
    Finished test [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.26s
     Running unittests src/lib.rs (target/debug/deps/qrcodegen-c7dbb02aad6a773c)

running 0 tests

test result: ok. 0 passed; 0 failed; 0 ignored; 0 measured; 0 filtered out; finished in 0.00s

   Doc-tests qrcodegen
warning: unnecessary parentheses around block return value
   --> /home/capitol/project/QR-Code-generator/rust/src/lib.rs:842:3
    |
842 |         ( i32::from(core && rh[0] >= n * 4 && rh[6] >= n)
    |         ^^
843 |         + i32::from(core && rh[6] >= n * 4 && rh[0] >= n))
    |                                                          ^
    |
    = note: `#[warn(unused_parens)]` on by default
help: remove these parentheses
    |
842 ~         i32::from(core && rh[0] >= n * 4 && rh[6] >= n)
843 ~         + i32::from(core && rh[6] >= n * 4 && rh[0] >= n)
    |

warning: 1 warning emitted


running 3 tests
test src/lib.rs - (line 67) ... FAILED
test src/lib.rs - (line 75) ... FAILED
test src/lib.rs - (line 56) ... ok

failures:

---- src/lib.rs - (line 67) stdout ----
error[E0433]: failed to resolve: use of undeclared type `QrCodeEcc`
 --> src/lib.rs:69:5
  |
5 |     QrCodeEcc::Medium).unwrap();
  |     ^^^^^^^^^ use of undeclared type `QrCodeEcc`

error[E0433]: failed to resolve: use of undeclared type `QrCode`
 --> src/lib.rs:68:10
  |
4 | let qr = QrCode::encode_text("Hello, world!",
  |          ^^^^^^ not found in this scope
  |
help: consider importing this struct
  |
2 | use qrcodegen::QrCode;
  |

error[E0425]: cannot find function `to_svg_string` in this scope
 --> src/lib.rs:70:11
  |
6 | let svg = to_svg_string(&qr, 4);  // See qrcodegen-demo
  |           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ not found in this scope

error: aborting due to 3 previous errors

Some errors have detailed explanations: E0425, E0433.
For more information about an error, try `rustc --explain E0425`.
Couldn't compile the test.
---- src/lib.rs - (line 75) stdout ----
error: unexpected token: `...`
 --> src/lib.rs:82:10
  |
9 |         (... paint qr.get_module(x, y) ...)
  |          ^^^
  |
help: use `..` for an exclusive range
  |
9 |         (.. paint qr.get_module(x, y) ...)
  |          ~~
help: or `..=` for an inclusive range
  |
9 |         (..= paint qr.get_module(x, y) ...)
  |          ~~~

error: unexpected token: `...`
 --> src/lib.rs:82:40
  |
9 |         (... paint qr.get_module(x, y) ...)
  |                                        ^^^
  |
help: use `..` for an exclusive range
  |
9 |         (... paint qr.get_module(x, y) ..)
  |                                        ~~
help: or `..=` for an inclusive range
  |
9 |         (... paint qr.get_module(x, y) ..=)
  |                                        ~~~

error[E0586]: inclusive range with no end
 --> src/lib.rs:82:40
  |
9 |         (... paint qr.get_module(x, y) ...)
  |                                        ^^^ help: use `..` instead
  |
  = note: inclusive ranges must be bounded at the end (`..=b` or `a..=b`)

error: expected one of `!`, `)`, `,`, `.`, `::`, `?`, `{`, or an operator, found `qr`
 --> src/lib.rs:82:20
  |
9 |         (... paint qr.get_module(x, y) ...)
  |                   -^^ expected one of 8 possible tokens
  |                   |
  |                   help: missing `,`

error[E0433]: failed to resolve: use of undeclared type `QrSegment`
 --> src/lib.rs:77:12
  |
4 | let segs = QrSegment::make_segments(text);
  |            ^^^^^^^^^ use of undeclared type `QrSegment`

error[E0433]: failed to resolve: use of undeclared type `QrCode`
 --> src/lib.rs:78:10
  |
5 | let qr = QrCode::encode_segments_advanced(&segs, QrCodeEcc::High,
  |          ^^^^^^ use of undeclared type `QrCode`

error[E0433]: failed to resolve: use of undeclared type `QrCodeEcc`
 --> src/lib.rs:78:50
  |
5 | let qr = QrCode::encode_segments_advanced(&segs, QrCodeEcc::High,
  |                                                  ^^^^^^^^^ use of undeclared type `QrCodeEcc`

error[E0433]: failed to resolve: use of undeclared type `Version`
 --> src/lib.rs:79:5
  |
6 |     Version::new(5), Version::new(5), Some(Mask::new(2)), false).unwrap();
  |     ^^^^^^^ use of undeclared type `Version`

error[E0433]: failed to resolve: use of undeclared type `Version`
 --> src/lib.rs:79:22
  |
6 |     Version::new(5), Version::new(5), Some(Mask::new(2)), false).unwrap();
  |                      ^^^^^^^ use of undeclared type `Version`

error[E0433]: failed to resolve: use of undeclared type `Mask`
 --> src/lib.rs:79:44
  |
6 |     Version::new(5), Version::new(5), Some(Mask::new(2)), false).unwrap();
  |                                            ^^^^ not found in this scope
  |
help: consider importing this struct
  |
2 | use std::simd::Mask;
  |

error[E0425]: cannot find value `paint` in this scope
 --> src/lib.rs:82:14
  |
9 |         (... paint qr.get_module(x, y) ...)
  |              ^^^^^ not found in this scope

error: aborting due to 11 previous errors

Some errors have detailed explanations: E0425, E0433, E0586.
For more information about an error, try `rustc --explain E0425`.
Couldn't compile the test.

failures:
    src/lib.rs - (line 67)
    src/lib.rs - (line 75)

test result: FAILED. 1 passed; 2 failed; 0 ignored; 0 measured; 0 filtered out; finished in 0.11s

error: test failed, to rerun pass '--doc'

Hello, first of all thanks for this wonderful library!

At line 210 of https://github.com/nayuki/QR-Code-generator/blob/master/c/qrcodegen.c there is a small script that in my opinion should be turned into a public function that would take the text, minVersion, and maxVersion then return the minimum possible qr code version that could be used for that text. This would be useful when setting the size of uint8_t qrcode[]; and uint8_t tempBuffer[];.

Thanks in advance, Developer-39

Changes:

• Implemented full CMake support, based on our work:
  • builds, runs unit tests and installs project;
  • generates and exports CMake targets for external projects;
  • generates and exports pkg-config files for external projects;
• Enabled GitHub actions and enabled CI for testing builds and running unit tests.
• Removed no longer needed makefiles. CMake will automatically generate them for all supported platforms.

Build instructions:

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS:BOOL=ON -DBUILD_EXAMPLES:BOOL=ON -DBUILD_TESTS:BOOL=ON
cmake --build build

Installation instructions:

sudo cmake --install build

Closes #61.