Net.Codecrete.QrCodeGenerator generates ISO qr codes

[nadinasiddiqui]

Hi

We are getting reports that not all devices can scan the qr codes.
It looks like the major upgrade of Net.Codecrete.QrCodeGenerator in your latest nuget version introduced the problem.

Can you have a look?

Thanks,
Nadina

[manuelbl]

Hi Nadia

Thanks for reporting this.

The issue is most likely related to the use of the character set and the use the ECI header used to indicate the character set. In this area, a lot of QR code scanner do not stick to the standard, and the Swiss QR Bill specification also makes strange recommendations in this area.

I would like to fix these compatibility issues. But without further information, it is very difficult. Do you know what apps reject the QR codes (assuming that users use a banking app or an app of an accounting software to scan it)? Do the apps display an error message that could indicate what the cause is? Are they unable to scan the QR code at all, or do they reject it because they think it does not contain valid Swiss QR Bill data?

The more information you can provide, the more likely I will be able to resolve this.

Regards
Manuel

[nadinasiddiqui]

Hi Manuel

Thanks for the quick reply.

We got reports that scanners at the post offices were not working properly. In addition, for some banking apps, scanning works, but upload, whether a PDF or an image, does not. Identified and reproduced apps are ZKB and UBS. Unfortunately, the apps fail without an error message.

I also checked with https://www.swiss-qr-invoice.org/validator/?lang=de; an older one had no errors, but the new ones report:
Zeile 1
FeldEncoding
Der QR-Code muss mit dem UTF-8 Zeichensatz kodiert sein aber es wurde folgender Zeichensatz entdeckt: ISO-8859-1

I hope this helps
Nadina

[manuelbl]

I've tested QR bills with the UBS banking app but was unable to reproduce a problem, neither by scanning nor by uploading a QR bill image. My tests weren't exhaustive. UBS likely uses different software for app and web, for scanning with the camera and for extracting the QR code from different image formats. So one of them might have a problem with this library.

Nevertheless, I've made a change to the settings used for the QR code generation that should make it more compatible (at the expense of a higher QR code version with more and smaller "pixels").

The improved library has been released as version 3.5.1.