- <item>
- <title>UsingQR - "Electronic" paper invoices using JSON and QR codes</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/UsingQR____Electronic__paper_invoices_using_JSON_and_QR_codes.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/UsingQR____Electronic__paper_invoices_using_JSON_and_QR_codes.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 19 Mar 2016 09:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>Back in 2013 I proposed
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">a
-way to make paper and PDF invoices easier to process electronically by
-adding a QR code with the key information about the invoice</a>. I
-suggested using vCard field definition, to get some standard format
-for name and address, but any format would work. I did not do
-anything about the proposal, but hoped someone one day would make
-something like it. It would make it possible to efficiently send
-machine readable invoices directly between seller and buyer.</p>
-
-<p>This was the background when I came across a proposal and
-specification from the web based accounting and invoicing supplier
-<a href="http://www.visma.com/">Visma</a> in Sweden called
-<a href="http://usingqr.com/">UsingQR</a>. Their PDF invoices contain
-a QR code with the key information of the invoice in JSON format.
-This is the typical content of a QR code following the UsingQR
-specification (based on a real world example, some numbers replaced to
-get a more bogus entry). I've reformatted the JSON to make it easier
-to read. Normally this is all on one long line:</p>
-
-<p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-19-qr-invoice.png" align="right"><pre>
-{
- "vh":500.00,
- "vm":0,
- "vl":0,
- "uqr":1,
- "tp":1,
- "nme":"Din Leverandør",
- "cc":"NO",
- "cid":"997912345 MVA",
- "iref":"12300001",
- "idt":"20151022",
- "ddt":"20151105",
- "due":2500.0000,
- "cur":"NOK",
- "pt":"BBAN",
- "acc":"17202612345",
- "bc":"BIENNOK1",
- "adr":"0313 OSLO"
-}
-</pre></p>
-
-</p>The interpretation of the fields can be found in the
-<a href="http://usingqr.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/UsingQR_specification1.pdf">format
-specification</a> (revision 2 from june 2014). The format seem to
-have most of the information needed to handle accounting and payment
-of invoices, at least the fields I have needed so far here in
-Norway.</p>
-
-<p>Unfortunately, the site and document do not mention anything about
-the patent, trademark and copyright status of the format and the
-specification. Because of this, I asked the people behind it back in
-November to clarify. Ann-Christine Savlid (ann-christine.savlid (at)
-visma.com) replied that Visma had not applied for patent or trademark
-protection for this format, and that there were no copyright based
-usage limitations for the format. I urged her to make sure this was
-explicitly written on the web pages and in the specification, but
-unfortunately this has not happened yet. So I guess if there is
-submarine patents, hidden trademarks or a will to sue for copyright
-infringements, those starting to use the UsingQR format might be at
-risk, but if this happen there is some legal defense in the fact that
-the people behind the format claimed it was safe to do so. At least
-with patents, there is always
-<a href="http://www.paperspecs.com/paper-news/beware-the-qr-code-patent-trap/">a
-chance of getting sued...</a></p>
-
-<p>I also asked if they planned to maintain the format in an
-independent standard organization to give others more confidence that
-they would participate in the standardization process on equal terms
-with Visma, but they had no immediate plans for this. Their plan was
-to work with banks to try to get more users of the format, and
-evaluate the way forward if the format proved to be popular. I hope
-they conclude that using an open standard organisation like
-<a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> is the correct place to
-maintain such specification.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Update 2016-03-20</strong>: Via Twitter I became aware of
-<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11319492">some comments
-about this blog post</a> that had several useful links and references to
-similar systems. In the Czech republic, the Czech Banking Association
-standard #26, with short name SPAYD, uses QR codes with payment
-information. More information is available from the Wikipedia page on
-<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Payment_Descriptor">Short
-Payment Descriptor</a>. And in Germany, there is a system named
-<a href="http://www.bezahlcode.de/">BezahlCode</a>,
-(<a href="http://www.bezahlcode.de/wp-content/uploads/BezahlCode_TechDok.pdf">specification
-v1.8 2013-12-05 available as PDF</a>), which uses QR codes with
-URL-like formatting using "bank:" as the URI schema/protocol to
-provide the payment information. There is also the
-<a href="http://www.ferd-net.de/front_content.php?idcat=231">ZUGFeRD</a>
-file format that perhaps could be transfered using QR codes, but I am
-not sure if it is done already. Last, in Bolivia there are reports
-that tax information since november 2014 need to be printed in QR
-format on invoices. I have not been able to track down a
-specification for this format, because of my limited language skill
-sets.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 15 Mar 2016 15:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>Back in September, I blogged about
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
-system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
-how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced). I
-created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
-but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
-<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
-package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
-a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
-fixed instead. I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
-hoped someone would step in and fix it. But no-one did.</p>
-
-<p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
-hands. The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
-battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
-battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
-able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
-information provided by the Linux kernel. If you install the
-battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
-graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
-status of the battery. The source package build and work just fine in
-Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
-tested). The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
-
-<p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
-
-<p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
-battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
-about the battery. The scripts are merged into the upstream
-battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
-yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way. Will have to test a
-bit more before I make a new release.</p>
-
-<p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
-suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
-impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
-and graphing.</p>
-
-<p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
-battery, check out the battery-stats package in
-<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
-on
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
-I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
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