Special character in QR CODE BUSINESS CARD - INDESIGN

[laurap41811189]

Hi all, i need to figure out how can I solve the problem of special characters in name and surname of a business card qr code generated with Insedign.

When I text in the QR Code for business card frame the special characters: à è é they're not correctly displayed on iphone (see the attached file) -> Lurà is displayed with differen signs.

Please let me know if there's something I can do to fix this.

[Colin Flashman]

This appears to be a bug in InDesign's QR Code mechanism. I was able to replicate this fault by using InDesign's Edit QR Code feature to create a business card with diacritical letters and experienced the same outcome as the original poster when attempting to view the result with the camera function of the iphone.

Similarly, if making a QR Code using data merge using letters with diacritical characters, the same errors occur.

I suggest filing this as a bug with indesign.uservoice.com

[Jens Trost]

I'm working currently on the same issue, my two cents:

Creating a vCard from scratch (meaning the actual text-code of a vCard QR code // see adobe's help pages on data merge and QR codes) and changing the syntax from vCard v2.1 to 3.0 fixes the issue on iPhones. I noticed that v3 works better on iPhones while Android has no issues with either one.

Sidenote:

if you have special characters like with czech names and create QR codes on the fly via data merge – you're screwed. There is definitely a bug with the QR code generation via data merge. There are various bug reports on uservoice but...
If you copy&paste the exact same vCard code into the "Generate QR code" textbox it creates a different QR code which is working fine.
You could script that, to get it working with data merge but that's a whole other topic

[Ten A]

You can use QR CodeMakerPro in CC Market Place.

[laurap41811189]

I added the plug in but still, I don't know how to add special characters correctly. I also tried in illustrator with the xml code on QR CodeMaker but still, I don't know how to add à, é, è etc. I think i should add something like "encoding" but I'm not an xml expert.. ps. version 3.0 don't change anything.

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:2.1
N:Lurà;Name
FN:Name Lurà
ORG:Name of the company
TITLE:Role
TEL;WORK;VOICE:12345678
ADR;WORK:;;NomeVia;Città;CH;6901;Svizzera
EMAIL;WORK;INTERNET:nome.lura@nomeazienda.ch
URL:https://www.nomeazienda.ch
END:VCARD

[Ten A]

You can copy and paste like below.

[laurap41811189]

I already did that but the "à" is a different sign when you scan the code with the iphone. So I guess I should add some action to the code. 

[Ten A]

Please retry another decoder application. iPhone's decoder is buggy and can't deocde some characters correctly.

[Colin Flashman]

it is true that other QR code decoder apps might be better in an iPhone... but the iPhone ships with a QR reader inbuilt with the camera that is convenient. It's also a case of when the QR code is in "the wild" and a user scans it, you can't force a user to use a different decoder at that point - they will use whichever QR code reader they want to use, and if they are using the iPhone one which works on other products with the exception of InDesign generated QR codes, then the QR code will be faulty.

[laurap41811189]

The issue is than my client wants to have for all of his employees a business card with a qr code and he doesn't want to "warn" the future people network to use a specific decoder app since the majority used to scan all qr code with iphone camera.  I really don't understand why all the free online app can create a QR code with special characters and I can't handle it on InDesign or Illustrator. I guess it's better for me to use an online app for the names than required special characters instead of using InDesign and insert the online generated qr code in it (luckly I don't have so many names with special character) but I hope this bug will be fixed soon.

[Colin Flashman · Accepted solution]

I see it is already filed as a bug report... but needs more traction. To vote to get the attention of the Adobe Engineers to look at this fault, vote here: https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/33286600-qr...

[StenlyTryskacz]

Hello,

tl;dr:
1) use vcard v3.0 
2) switch ADR and TEL rows

longversion:

I am probably late to the party, but I had exactly same problem and I think I managed to fix it.

same problem - áíéý and other letters are displayed wrongly on iPhone (same as in screen from laurap41811189), but Android is OK, tried diff vcard version 2.1 -> 3.0, tried some encoding tweaks, all with no success... BUT!...

i tried some online QR VCARD generator and noticed they have version 3.0 and mainly ADR row in front of TEL row so i switched their positions (you have also ADR after TEL) ... and voilà, scan on iPhone is now OK

i hope this helps someone, because I spend like 3 days with this 😄

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

According to the vCard standard, the order of data elements is not critical. However, any given QR reader/vCard interpreter may have other/"better" ideas and no one's better at the latter than Apple. 🙂

[StenlyTryskacz]

Thats why i spent 3 days with it, didn't think about row order at all, but it was the only difference between my vcardQR and vcardQR that was scanned properly 🙂 and somehow it fixed iPhone scans

to clarify, i am not using InDesign, i have my javascript project where i was solving this, and this was only thread with same problem i found 😉

have a great day y'all

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

For the record, I don't recall having heard that ID's (forms-based) vCard encoding is in any way faulty, on iPhone or other, except for the accented character issues.

I don't have an iOS deivice around to test (it moved out), but while this discovery is significant, I'd have to wonder about other encoders having other faults — there's a lotta lotta garbage in this sector — and experiment with some strict field-order encoding to call it universal.

[StenlyTryskacz]

if you wanna know, there was also problem with encoding on Android, when first latin character in vcards string was "Ú" - that (and all other latin characters after that) was scanned as some chinese characters, i "hacked" that with "ADR;LABEL=é:" - Label was not showing after scan, so i put some latin character there, before occurrence of "Ú" and that fixed all latin in Android 😄 not optimal, but it works 🙂

i really depends on possibilites of every scanner i guess

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

It depends on every step of the process — the encoding format, line by line; possibly the order of fields, as you've found; the actual encoding to QR code (including details like error correction level and net resolution); the QR code scanning and decoding app; and — quite often — how the OS and downstream app (such as Contacts) handles the data.

In that last case, I've seen many instances where Contacts simply ignores things like a photo or a second URL field. Nothing that can be done about it in any prior step; there's nothing wrong with the QR code, just that app won't use the data.

Add in the tremendous amount of BS from the services selling QR conversion (and/or adding redirection for tracking or revenue purposes, or flat-out malware).... and QR codes are a bigger PITA than they should be, for any purpose including vCArd.

[Tedvat]

Hi.

Try to put ";VERSION:3.0" behind one of the text boxes.

See screenshot : )

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

This is clever, but however well it may work under limited circumstances, it's not a hack that should be used.

I created several QR codes with the added version string in various fields and following various text. What I got, from a ZXing decode, was... a raw data decode still flagged VERSION:2.1, with the VERSION:3.0 string more or less wherever I put it. This may fool or override some devices, but given all the other problems with getting QR/vCard to read properly on any majority of devices, I don't think this works as well as you think it might.

Using Plain Text and a clean vCard/MeCard data structure is the proper method.

[Tedvat]

Of course James, Plain Text is the way to go. But this fixed the problem for a customer of mine, who unfortunately had no knowledge of vCard data. And this fixed the iPhone problem temporarily. I would definitely use vCard myself.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

It's a hack that depends entirely on how the data app at the far end chooses to read the information. If it's so simple (or sophisticated) as to read the second string as an overwrite of the first, fine. But this is nothing I would print on 1,000 business cards or rely on to work across the vast spectrum of readers and contact/data apps. The whole chain is (quite obviously) already so delicate that even doing things "right" often does not work on some devices, sometimes all Android or all iOS devices.

Clever, but I think it's a hack that should be avoided. And there is a simple way to avoid it.