bin2print

Back up your important binary data in QR code matrix with printed paper.

Convert binary to full vector image PDF file or print directly without temporary files.

** THIS PROJECT IS STILL IN A VERY VARY EARLY STAGE, SO DON'T USE IT FOR CRITICAL USE AND PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENTS. **

Dependencies

• Bash
• Gawk
• Coreutils
• QREncode
• Ghostscript

Usage

Encode

The script will place a blank page as a separator for you to find a place in the multiple prints, you will need to manually design an actual cover later.
If you see a blank page in your pdf result, just scroll down to the second page.
If you want to use a special TTF font file as the title typeface, you need to manually modify the script.
Defines the value of /F2 as an alias defined in cidfmap.
Ghostscript needs to know the font definitions in '${GS_PATH}/lib/cidfmap'.

## create a test file in any writable path
dd if=/dev/random of=test_data_block_64k bs=64k count=1
## run the shell script, the only parameter is filename to encode
where/I/put/b2p.sh test_data_block_64k
## then the script will generate $1.pdf to the writable path
## here $1 is test_data_block_64k
## BE WARY OF OVERWRITING YOUR IMPORTANT FILES NAMED $1.PDF

Decode

Change dir into your HD scan picture path, then use this Bash One-Liner to call zabrimg to restore your data.
Here I assume that your scanned file name is scan-1 scan-2 ...
Copy these two lines but without newline character, paste them into terminal and execute.
If your scanned pictures are of good quality, the data can be easily recovered.

for f in scan*; do where/bin2print/is/bin/zbarimg.exe --raw -q $f; done |
  sort | sed 's/^[<][[:digit:]]\+[>]//g' | base64 -d > original_file

However, the zbar recognition is not stable, and I'm still thinking about a solution. But I don't want to sacrifice encoding density.

GNU/Linux Installation

Install qrencode and zbar using your package manager.

MS Windows Installation

Download dependencies

• MSYS2

  Or

• Git-for-Windows

• QREncode for Windows

• ZBar

• Ghostscript AGPL Release

ZBar in Windows

The official zbar lacks dlls and cannot be used directly, so we need to add the missing library files.

(Option1) MSYS2 Environment

Install zbar with pacman is very easy.

pacman -Syy
pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-zbar

If you want to build it yourself, following instructions in mchehab/zbar - README-windows.md

(Option2) Git for Windows Environment

1. Make a Zbar standalone installation for other MS Windows

If you want to create a zbar installation package for another computer, you need a MSYS2 ucrt64 enviroment firstly.
Then execute the following command. My released package was made like this.
Otherwise, you can also download MSYS2 pkg.tar.zst packages manually from any mirror. You can search and get information from MSYS2 Packages.

pacman -Syy
## install zbar and its dependencies for preparing dlls
pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-zbar
## create temporary directory
mkdir -pv ~/b2p_tmp && cd ~/b2p_tmp && pwd
## download msys2 package
pacman -Sw --noconfirm mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-{imagemagick,zbar}
cp -v /var/cache/pacman/pkg/mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-{imagemagick,zbar}-*.zst ~/b2p_tmp
## untar what we need
tar xvf mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-imagemagick-*.zst --wildcards ucrt64/lib ucrt64/share/licenses ucrt64/bin/*.dll
tar xvf mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-zbar-*.zst ucrt64/bin ucrt64/share/licenses
## do some tailoring
find ucrt64 '(' -name '*.a' -o -name 'libMagick++*' -o -name 'zbarcam.exe' \
  -o -iname 'pkgconfig' -o -iname 'config-Q16HDRI' ')' -exec rm -rvf {} \;
## find and copy DLLs we need
cd ~/b2p_tmp/ucrt64/bin
for f in *; do echo "----- $f -----"; ldd $f | egrep -iv system32 | awk '{print $3}' | xargs -I{} cp -v "{}" .; done
cd ~/b2p_tmp

2. Generate a testing QR Code PNG image by qrencode

you can download QREncode for Windows and unzip it manually or install it in MSYS2 Environment with pacman.

## create temporary directory
cd ~/b2p_tmp && pwd
## generate qr code
#qrencode -otest.png -s1 -m2 -lL -v1 --strict-version -tPNG "Hello World!"
## here I copied qrencode.exe into ~/b2p_tmp/ucrt64/bin
ucrt64/bin/qrencode -otest.png -s1 -m2 -lL -v1 --strict-version -tPNG "Hello World!"

3. open Windows CMD.EXE to test

cd %YOUR_MSYS_HOME%\b2p_tmp\
REM if your zbar is working properly, you will get output as "Hello World!"
ucrt64\bin\zbarimg.exe -q --raw test.png

4. Now we have a standalone zbar installation. You can archive and distribute it as you like.

cd ~/b2p_tmp && pwd
mv -v ucrt64 zbar-0.23.91-win_x86_64-standalone
7z a -mm=Deflate -mfb=258 -mpass=15 -r zbar-0.23.91-win_x86_64-standalone{.zip,}

TODO

• add parameter parsing function.
  • specify the output filename.
  • multiple input and multiple output.
  • call the specified printer to print directly (Win gs / CUPS gs).
• error Handling, existence Checks.
• automatically calculate centering and scaling based on qr code matrix layout.
• test on more operating systems.