Printed Ecash decoder now available

[Marc Briceno <marc@digicash.com>]

Ian Goldberg <iang@cs.berkeley.edu> won the second part of the "turn Ecash
into 2-D bar code and back into an Ecash payment" contest. Building on
Jeremey Barrett's Ecash -> PDF417 encoder, Ian wrote an Ecash PDF417
encoder and decoder.

http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/tools/pdf417-1.0.tar.gz

It is now possible to print Ecash on a laser printer and scan it back in on
a standard flat bed scanner. Possible applications include sending Ecash by
fax or mail.

Ian notes the following:
"Also: these are general PDF417 tools; they can be used to encode any
binary data, not just ecash (the decoder will _not_ be able to decode
arbitrary barcodes; it doesn't know about "numeric compaction" mode
and other things in the spec that the encoder doesn't actually use)."

Congratulations to Ian for this accomplishment!



-- Marc Briceno <mailto:marc@digicash.com>
   Ecash(tm) Electronic Cash Evangelist/Developers Support
   <http://www.digicash.com/>