QR codes in LaTeX

If you are adding QR codes to print media, in order to make them look really sharp, you want the QR codes to be generated in a vector format rather than a bitmap format. It turns out that the pst-barcode package allows you to easily add vectorized QR codes to your LaTeX documents.

Here are some minimal steps to generate a PDF with a QR code in it:

1. Install dependencies:

$ aptitude install texlive-latex-{base,extra}

(This works on Ubuntu 11.04, at least.)

2. Add the following to a .tex file:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pst-barcode}
\usepackage{auto-pst-pdf}
\begin{document}
\begin{pspicture}(1in,1in)
  \psbarcode{PAYLOAD}{eclevel=M width=1.0 height=1.0}{qrcode}
\end{pspicture}
\end{document}

where PAYLOAD gives the data to be encoded. For a business card you might have something like:

MECARD:N:Sung,Phil;TEL:+14085551234;EMAIL:philbert@gmail.com;URL:http://web.psung.name;;

See this page for more MECARD options and for descriptions of the other protocols (URLs, email addresses, etc.) that barcode readers understand.

3. Compile your file as follows:

$ pdflatex --shell-escape yourfile.tex

Some notes:

• eclevel specifies the level of error correction, and is one of L, M, Q, H (low to high)
• width and height specify the dimensions of the barcode.
• pst-barcode knows how to generate barcodes in many other formats; see the documentation for details.

You can also change the color of the barcode by adding something like the following:

\usepackage{color}
[...]
  \psbarcode[linecolor=blue]{PAYLOAD}[...]

Sources: StackExchange, Thomas Widmann, Andrew Brampton (who has a nice template for a business card)