Great news: Barry for Android *will* do comics!

In last week’s Barry for Android update we told you that,
because of the less than perfect Android edition of the Red Laser engine,
CLZ Barry for Android would not support UPC+5 barcodes and thus could not be used for comic books.

But today I have great news:

CLZ Barry for Android *will* support comic book barcodes!

Here’s what happened: When we contacted Red Laser to inquire about it,
they told us that the inability to scan UPC+5 barcodes “is unlikely to be solved quickly”.

That didn’t give us any hope of a solution, so we decided to drop the Red Laser library and use the open source “zxing” library instead. Zxing is a very capable barcode scanning engine, and more importantly, it already includes UPC+5 support.

This week, Pim has implemented the zxing library into Barry for Android’s scan screen, and it’s working great. It scans UPC+5 comic book barcodes very well. Pim even modified the zxing code himself to add support for UPC+2 barcodes (seen on newsstand editions).

The move to zxing also means that we *will* be able to customize the scanning screen the way we want, a nice side-effect of the switch.
However, CLZ Barry for Android will still require a high quality camera with auto-focus!

The proof: screens of Barry for Android scanning comic books: