[whatwg] input type=barcode?

[Glenn Maynard]

On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 5:44 PM, Jonas Sicking <jonas at sicking.cc> wrote:

> I think while in theory we could rely on UAs to enable barcode entry
> anywhere, which definitely would provide the maximum capabilities for
> the user. In practice it seems hard to create UI which enables that
> while at the same time isn't annoyingly shoving a barcode button in
> your face which you generally is not interested in using.
>

It'd be straightforward on Android: long-touch the speech-input button
(microphone icon) on the virtual keyboard to open a key list--a standard UI
idiom on that platform--and put it in there, or in one of the other buttons.

But yeah, until they actually do that in the first place, there's not much
point to specifying a hint that basically says "so you might want to make
the barcode UI more prominent for this input".

(There's lots of barcode reading software on Android, but I don't think
there's an API to hook it up to existing input methods.  I think you'd have
to release a whole standalone input method to implement it.  I could be
wrong, I'm not up to date on newer Android APIs.)

-- 
Glenn Maynard