I needed a QR Code generator for a document. After long wandering on the web without finding a QR Code generator that doesn’t use a proprietary URL shortener, I discovered that you can easily do it inside LibreOffice.
Inkscape also has a QR Code function! Here’s a video if you’re into that kind of thing.
And here’s the documentation for those who prefer:
https://inkscape-manuals.readthedocs.io/en/1.3/extensions.html#barcode
In case you want an alternative:
https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/#recipe=Generate_QR_Code('PNG'%2C5%2C4%2C'Medium')&input=VGVzdA
The qchq in the url isn’t a coincidence, this was created by the British spy agency. It is used fairly commonly amongst cyber security folk, so its been fairly well vetted that its not uploading stuff to their cloud, but you can always load the page, disconnect your network and do what you want with it if you want to be paranoid.
or just type “qr code …” into duck duck go and it will generate one that contains the text …
don’t paste anything private on there though (like “anyone with the link” share/invites)
the search gets sent to the server, and you immediately can’t be sure of its privacy once it’s out of your control
Good point yeah. Use for rickrolls not for cryptpad links.
The pair of Zint and Zbar does everything Qr codes (and endless other codes)
https://sourceforge.net/projects/zbar/
Added the urls, because it was a little non trivial to find them. Zbar was showing steel rebar as the first hits…
Cool. I usually just use DuckDuckGo but it’s nice to know there’s a fully offline alternative.
That’s cool but I kinda also just use duckduckgo
You can type qr code <text/link> and it will make a qr code for that
I like Binary Eye on f-droid
It’s a really great app, good UI and options too.
I used qrencode to create a few hundred QR codes for tickets for a band event, and BinaryEye to scan them at the entrance. Worked like a charm.
Online generators let you avoid the shortener if you tell them to encode “text”.
Link QRs are just text QRs, but it’s a link. In a pinch you can use the “text” mode to encode whatever you need.
I wrote one of my own from scratch, back in the day. More to practice my algorithm coding skills than anything else, make sure that I could. Not very difficult - easier than barcodes, in a way.
The thing that I found most interesting was that it uses the same Reed-Solomon error correcting code as CDs and DVDs, and for the same reason. Those codes guarantee that you don’t get too many 1s or 0s in a row. That would cause difficulties with laser tracking in a disc player, or big confusing areas of white or black in a QR code.
The on-off-on-off pattern that joins the inside edge of the three squares isn’t usually that obvious either, but when reading it, makes it quite easy to decide how ‘big the boxes’ are. You can store a very long piece of text in a QR code, although the pattern gets very finely detailed after a while.
I have a keyboard hotkey to take the copy/paste buffer and display a QR code on screen. Straightforward to implement on macOS, and presumably Linux too.
macOS:
pbpaste | qrencode -t ANSIokay that’s a great idea and now i really want a dashboard widget on my phone that does that
That’s good to know, actually. Thank you.
Now it will take much less effort to make quick prank QR codes.
