ab> the scanners i have seen are tapped into the keyboard so entered
 ab> characters from the keyboard and from the scanner look alike
 BS> Sounds like a good idea.  That way, if you get a barcode that will not
 BS> scan, you can just type in the code and the program will not know the
 BS> difference. With a serial port reader, you would probably need extra
 BS> code to cover scan failures.
   Yes, but it's no big deal to do so - just a matter of having a main
line loop which polls the serial port for the barcode input as it also
looks for Keypressed.
... Law of Gardening: Fancy gizmos don't work.
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