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SPHH
SPHH
Known Participant
July 12, 2022
Answered

inDesign | «é» glyph turns weird in QR-Code

  • July 12, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 2315 views

Hi,

When I output a QR-Code (Business-Card) in InDesign, users scanning the Code get a weird combination of characters instead of an «é». It looks like an ascii-issue or similar. How can I fix it ?

Cheers

🙂

G

Correct answer James Gifford—NitroPress

Hi Brad,


Updating the QR-mechanism would actually indeed fix a major part of the issue.
Or they might integrate a selector drop-down to choose the desired vCard version.
…would help a lot, I guess.

Regarding your suggestion : «use the plain text option and input your card in vCard 3 syntax», could you give any further hint where to find any examples of code / code-samples that suit those 3.0 requirements ? And where exactly the code should be inserted :

Edit QR-Code / Type / Plain Text … there ?

🙂


Here's one link you might find useful. I think what Brad is suggesting is that you write this code as "plain text=" and it should encode as a vCard 3 format, and parse correctly by compliant readers.

 

I'd still suggest the real solution is just to use a nice, free, readily-available, version-selectable QRcode generator instead of a handy but crippled ID menu option. But that's just me.

 

—

3 replies

M
matmosci
Participant
November 19, 2024

Give this tool a try, it exports qr codes with data merge source file for vcards and other types:
https://qr.lovepoly.online/

Brad @ Roaring Mouse
Community Expert
Brad @ Roaring MouseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 13, 2022

Yes, it's an encoding issue. and it's the QR reader's fault.

InDesign is correctly writing the code for vCard 2.1 format, yet characters like your accented characters are supposed to be read as UTF-8, but for some reason iPhones and others aren't doing that. iPhones, it seems, only read v3.0 vCards properly (It screws up on vCard 4.0 as well).

Instead of using ID's built in Business Card template (which writes vCard 2.1), use the plain text option and input your card in vCard 3 syntax and it will work. Alternatively, in vCard 2.1, you can force the reader to decode the characters as UTF-8 by adding CHARSET=UTF-8 before the name fields. e.g. .....

 

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:2.1
N;CHARSET=UTF-8:Lästname;René
FN;CHARSET=UTF-8:René Lästname
END:VCARD

 

    SPHH
    SPHHAuthor
    Known Participant
    July 28, 2022

    Hi Brad, and thank also you for your feedback !

    I had a talk this morning with someone at APPLE-Support, claiming that things are safe on the side of iOS. He also made a test with an Android-device, which apparently also returns the same issue … leading to the conclusion there might be some bug within the QR-Code-writing-process. It’s hard to define who’s right or not. At this point, the feedback of ADOBE’s_dev-team would be great. Anyone around, perhaps ?

    Regarding your suggestion : «use the plain text option and input your card in vCard 3 syntax», could you give any further hint where to find any examples of code / code-samples that suit those 3.0 requirements ? Not sure how to proceed on that point.

    Cheers 🙂

     

    G

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Legend
    July 28, 2022

    An Apple support tech says it's not Apple's fault. Stop the presses. 🙂

     

    This problem crops up regularly, and while I'm sure there are many readers on all platforms that have their implementation glitches, every complaint such as yours I've seen here has traced to an iPhone being unable to parse the code.

     

    Not conclusive, no. But... suggestive.

     

    —

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Legend
    July 12, 2022

    There was a long discusson of this a few months ago. I don't remember the resolution but it seems to be peculiar to ID's QR code generator. If you can't use another generator and import the QR block as a graphics, see that topic — I believe there was a workaround for handling accented characters.

     

    Here's one discussion, I think there were others.

     

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      SPHH
      SPHHAuthor
      Known Participant
      July 28, 2022

      Thanks for your feedback, James !
      I wonder that this QR-Code-output-topic is still an issue today.
      🙂

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