• Tyfud@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      It’s required for contrast detection.

      Also, if it was placed on something with a black background, the borders would bleed into the background and be unrecognizable when scanning.

      This is why graphic artists don’t get to determine functional standards.

      • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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        3 months ago

        The error correction isn’t enough to overcome a bad background?

        My memories of the early days of designing these things for ad clients (we’re talking 2010-11) were that like 20% “damage” was allowed before scanning became difficult. So of course my art director wanted to put cutesy shit all over them to be “unique”.

        I just didn’t want the client to ask when it didn’t work because their phones didn’t like them.

        • zerofk@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          People like your art director are the reason people like my product manager want us to write code to verify QR codes, so that our clients can tell their clients that they forgot the quiet zone and their client’s clients may have trouble reading the code.

          Damn that’s a lot of levels of clients.

        • Eiim@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          3 months ago

          Error correction helps a scanner account for portions of the code being obscured/unreadable, whereas a bad background can make a code not even recognizable as a code in the first place. (depending on the algorithm used, how bad it is, yadda yadda)

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      3 months ago

      I helped my wife make a qr code quilt (it says “quilt”). There wasn’t quite enough border around it, and you can get it to scan, but it’s not super reliable.

    • quilan@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      It is - without the quiet zone, it makes detecting the locator pattern really difficult, especially in one’s looking for the 1:1:3:1:1 ratio.