Filter
Top Products
6
Chapter 2
BT-1000 Barcode Font Solutions Manual
1 Code 128
1.1 About Code 128
Introduced in 1981, Code 128 bar codes are used extensively by the shipping
industry, as well as for inventory, ID, and tracking purposes. It is often selected over
Code 39 when space is at a premium and because it offers a much larger selection
of characters. The Code 128 standard is maintained by AIM (Automatic Identification
Manufacturers).
Code 128 provides a very dense numeric-only bar code, and a dense alphanumeric
bar code. This is a continuous code, of variable length, bi-directional and self-
checking. It is designed to encode all 128 ASCII characters, and is optimized to
compress the bar code. It will use the least amount of space for data of 6 characters
or more of any 1-D symbol.
The character set includes the lower 128 ASCII characters with upper and lowercase
letters, numbers, punctuation, and control codes. A check digit, determined by
Modulus 103, is placed at the end of the message before the end character, for data
integrity purposes. The symbol can be as long as necessary to store the encoded
data.
1.2 Choosing the Right Font and Size
BT-1000 includes three different fonts used to create bar code symbols of different
densities. Changing fonts alters the width of a bar code without affecting the
symbol’s height. BT-1000 supports Code set A, Code set B and Code set C.
Like any TrueType or Type 1 font, the bar code fonts can be scaled to any size. Any
of the fonts formatted at 24 or 36 points will create bar codes 1/3 (8.5mm) or ½
(12.7mm) inches tall, respectively. Print samples of your desired string in a
number of the fonts to verify that it can be scanned when printed on your
particular printer.