blog/archive/2016/03/03.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from March 2016</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from March 2016</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
   7
   8
   9         <item>
  10                 <title>UsingQR - &quot;Electronic&quot; paper invoices using JSON and QR codes</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/UsingQR____Electronic__paper_invoices_using_JSON_and_QR_codes.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/UsingQR____Electronic__paper_invoices_using_JSON_and_QR_codes.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Sat, 19 Mar 2016 09:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Back in 2013 I proposed
  15 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html&quot;&gt;a
  16 way to make paper and PDF invoices easier to process electronically by
  17 adding a QR code with the key information about the invoice&lt;/a&gt;.  I
  18 suggested using vCard field definition, to get some standard format
  19 for name and address, but any format would work.  I did not do
  20 anything about the proposal, but hoped someone one day would make
  21 something like it.  It would make it possible to efficiently send
  22 machine readable invoices directly between seller and buyer.&lt;/p&gt;
  23
  24 &lt;p&gt;This was the background when I came across a proposal and
  25 specification from the web based accounting and invoicing supplier
  26 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.visma.com/&quot;&gt;Visma&lt;/a&gt; in Sweden called
  27 &lt;a href=&quot;http://usingqr.com/&quot;&gt;UsingQR&lt;/a&gt;.  Their PDF invoices contain
  28 a QR code with the key information of the invoice in JSON format.
  29 This is the typical content of a QR code following the UsingQR
  30 specification (based on a real world example, some numbers replaced to
  31 get a more bogus entry).  I&#39;ve reformatted the JSON to make it easier
  32 to read.  Normally this is all on one long line:&lt;/p&gt;
  33
  34 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-19-qr-invoice.png&quot; align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  35 {
  36  &quot;vh&quot;:500.00,
  37  &quot;vm&quot;:0,
  38  &quot;vl&quot;:0,
  39  &quot;uqr&quot;:1,
  40  &quot;tp&quot;:1,
  41  &quot;nme&quot;:&quot;Din Leverandør&quot;,
  42  &quot;cc&quot;:&quot;NO&quot;,
  43  &quot;cid&quot;:&quot;997912345 MVA&quot;,
  44  &quot;iref&quot;:&quot;12300001&quot;,
  45  &quot;idt&quot;:&quot;20151022&quot;,
  46  &quot;ddt&quot;:&quot;20151105&quot;,
  47  &quot;due&quot;:2500.0000,
  48  &quot;cur&quot;:&quot;NOK&quot;,
  49  &quot;pt&quot;:&quot;BBAN&quot;,
  50  &quot;acc&quot;:&quot;17202612345&quot;,
  51  &quot;bc&quot;:&quot;BIENNOK1&quot;,
  52  &quot;adr&quot;:&quot;0313 OSLO&quot;
  53 }
  54 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  55
  56 &lt;/p&gt;The interpretation of the fields can be found in the
  57 &lt;a href=&quot;http://usingqr.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/UsingQR_specification1.pdf&quot;&gt;format
  58 specification&lt;/a&gt; (revision 2 from june 2014).  The format seem to
  59 have most of the information needed to handle accounting and payment
  60 of invoices, at least the fields I have needed so far here in
  61 Norway.&lt;/p&gt;
  62
  63 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the site and document do not mention anything about
  64 the patent, trademark and copyright status of the format and the
  65 specification.  Because of this, I asked the people behind it back in
  66 November to clarify.  Ann-Christine Savlid (ann-christine.savlid (at)
  67 visma.com) replied that Visma had not applied for patent or trademark
  68 protection for this format, and that there were no copyright based
  69 usage limitations for the format.  I urged her to make sure this was
  70 explicitly written on the web pages and in the specification, but
  71 unfortunately this has not happened yet.  So I guess if there is
  72 submarine patents, hidden trademarks or a will to sue for copyright
  73 infringements, those starting to use the UsingQR format might be at
  74 risk, but if this happen there is some legal defense in the fact that
  75 the people behind the format claimed it was safe to do so.  At least
  76 with patents, there is always
  77 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paperspecs.com/paper-news/beware-the-qr-code-patent-trap/&quot;&gt;a
  78 chance of getting sued...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  79
  80 &lt;p&gt;I also asked if they planned to maintain the format in an
  81 independent standard organization to give others more confidence that
  82 they would participate in the standardization process on equal terms
  83 with Visma, but they had no immediate plans for this.  Their plan was
  84 to work with banks to try to get more users of the format, and
  85 evaluate the way forward if the format proved to be popular.  I hope
  86 they conclude that using an open standard organisation like
  87 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/&quot;&gt;IETF&lt;/a&gt; is the correct place to
  88 maintain such specification.&lt;/p&gt;
  89
  90 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2016-03-20&lt;/strong&gt;: Via Twitter I became aware of
  91 &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11319492&quot;&gt;some comments
  92 about this blog post&lt;/a&gt; that had several useful links and references to
  93 similar systems.  In the Czech republic, the Czech Banking Association
  94 standard #26, with short name SPAYD, uses QR codes with payment
  95 information.  More information is available from the Wikipedia page on
  96 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Payment_Descriptor&quot;&gt;Short
  97 Payment Descriptor&lt;/a&gt;.  And in Germany, there is a system named
  98 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bezahlcode.de/&quot;&gt;BezahlCode&lt;/a&gt;,
  99 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bezahlcode.de/wp-content/uploads/BezahlCode_TechDok.pdf&quot;&gt;specification
 100 v1.8 2013-12-05 available as PDF&lt;/a&gt;), which uses QR codes with
 101 URL-like formatting using &quot;bank:&quot; as the URI schema/protocol to
 102 provide the payment information.  There is also the
 103 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ferd-net.de/front_content.php?idcat=231&quot;&gt;ZUGFeRD&lt;/a&gt;
 104 file format that perhaps could be transfered using QR codes, but I am
 105 not sure if it is done already.  Last, in Bolivia there are reports
 106 that tax information since november 2014 need to be printed in QR
 107 format on invoices.  I have not been able to track down a
 108 specification for this format, because of my limited language skill
 109 sets.&lt;/p&gt;
 110 </description>
 111         </item>
 112
 113         <item>
 114                 <title>Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</title>
 115                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html</link>
 116                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html</guid>
 117                 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Mar 2016 15:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
 118                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Back in September, I blogged about
 119 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html&quot;&gt;the
 120 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery&lt;/a&gt;, and
 121 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
 122 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
 123 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
 124 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats&quot;&gt;a battery-stats
 125 package in Debian&lt;/a&gt; that should do the same thing, and I did not see
 126 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
 127 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
 128 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.&lt;/p&gt;
 129
 130 &lt;p&gt;I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
 131 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
 132 battery stats (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats&quot;&gt;available from github&lt;/a&gt;) and part of the team maintaining
 133 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
 134 able to collect battery status using the &lt;tt&gt;/sys/class/power_supply/&lt;/tt&gt;
 135 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
 136 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
 137 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
 138 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
 139 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
 140 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 141
 142 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png&quot; width=&quot;70%&quot; align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 143
 144 &lt;p&gt;My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
 145 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
 146 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
 147 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
 148 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
 149 bit more before I make a new release.&lt;/p&gt;
 150
 151 &lt;p&gt;I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
 152 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
 153 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
 154 and graphing.&lt;/p&gt;
 155
 156 &lt;p&gt;If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
 157 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
 158 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; and
 159 on
 160 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.
 161 I would love some help to improve the system further.&lt;/p&gt;
 162 </description>
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