Lasagne is a fairly simple app which ties together a barcode scanner with a small spreadsheet. The expected use is to take the phone to where items are located, collect their associated barcodes, and then download those barcodes into a standard spreadsheet program on another computer.
The majority of the main Lasagne screen is a view onto the spreadsheet. Below this is a row of controls, consisting of an icon that looks like a plus sign (used to add new rows), a space for a cell label, an editor (to modify the content of cells), and an icon that looks like a minus sign (used to access a variety of miscellaneous actions).
When you first start Lasagne, the spreadsheet will be empty. It will need to be populated by scanning items in via the Add New Row button (which is described below). However, when Lasagne is closed, it will remember the spreadsheet file currently in use, and reload that file the next time it is launched.
The spreadsheet functionality is limited. It contains five columns (Barcode, Name, Description, Quantity, and Location) which, at the moment, cannot be modified. Individual cells can be selected and edited; all cells are treated as string data, so no mathematical functions can be applied.
New rows are added to the spreadsheet via the Add New Row button (which looks like a plus sign). Clicking on this button will bring up the barcode scanner window. Please see "Barcode Scanning" below for more information.
At the center bottom of the main screen is the cell editor. When you click on an individual cell, the contents of that cell are displayed in the editor. If you modify the contents of that editor and then press return (the key that looks like a bent arrow), the cell will be updated to contain those new contents.
The Actions button (which looks like a minus sign) contains a selection of commonly-used actions. The first two actions are "Clear Cell" and "Remove Row"; both of these actions require that you first select a cell. The "Clear Cell" action will remove the contents of the chosen cell; the "Remove Row" action will remove the entire row containing the selected cell. Please note that these actions cannot be un-done!
The file manipulation actions are "Load Spreadsheet", "Save Spreadsheet", and "Save Spreadsheet As". By default, all spreadsheets are stored in the user's "Documents" directory (which is "/home/user/MyDocs/.documents"), but Lasagne should be able to store and retrieve files from any directory you would like to use. The "Save Spreadsheet" command will simply save the current spreadsheet data to the current file; the "Load" and "Save As" actions will first ask you to select the name of a file before loading or saving, respectively.
Lasagne saves its data in Comma Separated Values (CSV) format. This should make it fairly easy to import Lasagne files into more full-featured spreadsheet applications.
Lasagne uses a separate window for scanning barcodes, which is activated by pressing the "Add New Row" button on the main screen. This window consists of a video display from the phone's main camera (on the left side), and an array of buttons on the right side.
The intended use here is that you place the camera at an appropriate distance from an item's barcode, allow Lasagne to scan the barcode, fill in the rest of the details for the item (on a dialog box that appears), and then move on to the next item. When you have finished collecting barcodes, simply hit the "close" button (or the blue "return" arrow at the top right of the screen).
There are a handful of controls on the right of the screen to control the video input:
This button will toggle the camera's LED. This is useful for scanning barcodes in dark conditions.
These buttons will change the focus distance of the camera. However, please note that modifying the focus manually can take a great deal of time; simply moving the camera itself to an appropriate distance from the barcode is much faster. (This is also much faster than using the autofocus mechanism; and since there are several other downsides with using autofocus, it is not currently supported in Lasagne.)
These controls manage the camera's "Exposure" value. This control can be particularly handy in situations where the ambient light is especially bright or dim, or when the barcode is placed on a reflective surface.
Each time a barcode is detected, a dialog box will pop up; this dialog allows you to enter additonal information about the item. You are free to edit some, all, or none of these fields. When you press "Done", the item will be added to the spreadsheet. You can also click off the top of the dialog box to cancel adding this item to the spreadsheet.