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Bookland
- JNRowe 5y agoI implemented ISBN-13 support in þe Olden Days, and Bookland always struck me as a neat solution to an annoying problem. The whole evolution is quite elegant from SBNs right through to ISBN-13. SBNs are upgradable to ISBN-10(even maintaining their check digit), and those SBNs were then upgradeable to ISBN-13 via Bookland(this time with a check digit change). However, I also remember being annoyed at the transition. Prior to ISBN-13 checksums were a little more robust at simple transposition erorrs, which from my experience is by far the most common error on manual input. Presumably the rationale is that people wouldn't manually input EANs, and re-thinking it now I agree. In 2007 I had to rely on a hand to hold the book and hand to whack at the numpad, whereas now I use my phone and zbar¹ to scan a barcode. I suspect I even spent some time muttering about the cost of barcode readers, or trying to figure out which bin might contain a :CueCat². How times have changed. [JNRowe proceeds to the village pond to feed the ducks] ¹ https://github.com/mchehab/zbar https://github.com/mchehab/zbar ² https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat