Abstract: A configurable operating system allows small, inexpensive, and less powerful computers to run a wide variety of applications. The operating system provides for the capability to accept input from a number of input devices, and transfer the data to the appropriate application without using an application to perform the routing tasks, thus freeing up more processor time and memory space for the applications. Data format translator applications may be called by the operating system in order to convert the data to the proper format. The decision as to which application should be called may be made by using information on the input device which the data came from, as well as additional information, to determine if a conversion application or other application is required.

Abstract: A method for decoding an analog waveform corresponding to a symbol comprises detecting the extrema locations of the waveform, and creating a feature vector from these extrema locations. The feature vector is compared to stored reference arrays corresponding to each symbol from an alphabet of possible symbols using statistical pattern recognition techniques to decode the waveform. The invention also features an analog waveform decoder that has reference storage for holding reference arrays, and a processor that creates and decodes a feature vector for the analog waveform.

Abstract: A method for decoding information contained in an analog waveform representative of a bar code symbol comprising the steps of identifying a decodable portion of an analog waveform; processing said decodable portion to obtain a plurality of waveform descriptors; and performing a high and low density decoding process to one or more of said plurality of waveform descriptors for decoding information contained in either a high or low density symbol respectively, is disclosed. The high density decoder used for decoding high density symbols utilizes extrema extents, i.e., areas of the peaks and valleys of the analog waveform which directly correlate to the size of the bars/spaces of a high density bar code. After locating the seed point of the waveform, each extrema extent is generated and thresholded at each peak/valley location to decide its size. The high density decoder is adaptive in that the thresholding extent value is updated as the solution grows away from the seed point.