[Koha] Barcode scanner - keyboard wedge or not

[paul POULAIN]

Waylon Robertson wrote:

>Okay.. the easy solution is to use two computers.. one client, one server. server has linux and koha.. client has win98. Use the accessability control panel.. and enable serial keys.
>the hard solution is try to get linux to accept serial ports as keyboards.
>
>the easy solution for a linux system is indeed a keyboard wedge.
>
Yep.
I just want to add some explanations :
a barcode on keyboard wedge has the following "feature" : all what is 
scanned with the barcode is sent to the computer EXACTLY as if it was 
entered on keyboard. Thus, you don't need any driver, and it works on 
any platform/OS : just connect the barcode, and that's all : no CDROM to 
install, no parameter to set : very, very nice feature indeed.
It's only weakness is that the "keyboard rate" is quite slow. So, when 
you want to scan barcode in an industrial structure (500 barcodes a 
minut), you need a faster interface (USB for example). But for a 
library, who cares :-)

-- 
Paul POULAIN
Consultant indépendant en logiciels libres
responsable francophone de koha (SIGB libre http://www.koha-fr.org)