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Text case changes the size of QR codes

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2025/10/31/smaller-qr-codes/
47•ibobev•5d ago

Comments

mrasong•2h ago
First time learning about this detail.
future10se•1h ago
A similar article was posted earlier this year, discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43149077
zygentoma•56m ago
Wouldn't it have been much more sensible to have a lowercase version of alphanumerics in the QR code standard? Almost all URLs are lowercase, and even if the have capitalised parts, in most cases they're case-insensitive.
Etheryte•15m ago
Urls can include parameters and for those capitalization can definitely matter.
orangewindies•10m ago
QR codes were created for labelling automotive parts, not for URLs. Part numbers are usually uppercase alphanumeric, with a few punctuation characters.
mmulqueen•8m ago
QR codes existed for over a decade before smartphones brought them into the mainstream. They're high density replacements for barcodes, which are uppercase by convention (or in some cases like Code 39, only support uppercase). URLs in QR codes are a later innovation.
FinnKuhn•52m ago
This also seems to work for URLs so next time I will create a QR code I will keep this in mind. Really useful!

I tested this with the following example: https://imgur.com/a/hTsvV3Z

chrismorgan•1m ago
> Alphanumeric data, in the context of QR codes, comes from the following alphabet of 44 characters:

> 0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ $%*+-.:

This is wrong: alphanumeric has 45 characters, not 44. It’s missing the second last character, /.

(The slash is important because it makes alphanumeric-mode URLs possible: you can write HTTPS://EXAMPLE.COM/PATH which will be parsed to https://example.com/PATH. No query string due to no ?&=, and your server must accept the uppercase path.)

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Text case changes the size of QR codes

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2025/10/31/smaller-qr-codes/
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