Barcode Creator

Barcode Creator is specially designed software to create bar code labels. By parting from a numerical or alpha input or import from external code list file, all the user has to do is to choose the format of code. The software will automatically generate the label graph.

The currently version Barcode Creator supported encoding formats:

EAN (13 digits, 8 digits, 13+2 add-on and 13+5 add-on):
UPC (UPC-A, UPC-E, UPC-A with 2 or 5 digit add-on)
ISBN (with or without the 5-digit add-on)
CODE128 (A,B,C,RAW)
CODE39
"interleaved 2 of 5"
Codabar
MSI
Plessey
CODE93

EAN: The EAN frontend is similar to UPC; it accepts strings of digits, 12 or 7 characters long. Strings of 13 or 8 characters are accepted if the provided checksum digit is correct. I expect most users to feed input without a checksum, though. The add-2 and add-5 extension are accepted for both the EAN-13 and the EAN-8 encodings.

UPC: The UPC frontend accepts only strings made up of digits (and, if a supplemental encoding is used, a blank to separate it). It accepts strings of 11 or 12 digits (UPC-A) and 6 or 7 or 8 digits (UPC-E).

ISBN: ISBN numbers are encoded as EAN-13 symbols, with an optional add-5 trailer. The ISBN frontend of the library accepts real ISBN numbers and deals with any hyphen and, if present, the ISBN checksum character before encoding data.

CODE 128: Code 128 uses the full 128 ASCII character set, can encode as many characters as desired, and is designed to be ultra-high density. Code 128 is capable of displaying 2 digits with one set of bars (known as double density, or Subset C).

CODE 128-B: This encoding can represent all of the printing ASCII characters, from the space (32) to DEL (127). The checksum digit is mandatory in this encoding.

CODE 128-C: The "C" variation of Code-128 uses Code-128 symbols to represent two digits at a time (Code-128 is made up of 104 symbols whose interpretation is controlled by the start symbol being used). Code 128-C is thus the most compact way to represent any even number of digits. The encoder refuses to deal with an odd number of digits because the caller is expected to provide proper padding to an even number of digits.

CODE 128 RAW: Code-128 output represented symbol-by-symbol in the input string. To override part of the problems outlined below in specifying code128 symbols, this pseudo-encoding allows the used to specify a list of code128 symbols separated by spaces. Each symbol is represented by a number in the range 0-105. The list should include the leading character. The checksum and the stop character are automatically added by the Barcode Creator.

CODE 39: The code-39 standard can encode uppercase letters, digits, the blank space, plus, minus, dot, star, dollar, slash, percent. Any string that is only composed of such characters is accepted by the code-39 encoder. To avoid loosing information, the encoder refuses to encode mixed-case strings (a lowercase string is nonetheless accepted as a shortcut, but is encoded as uppercase).

INTERLEAVED 2 OF 5: This encoding can only represent an even number of digits (odd digits are represented by bars, and even digits by the interleaving spaces). The name stresses the fact that two of the five items (bars or spaces) allocated to each symbol are wide, while the rest are narrow. The checksum digit is optional (can be disabled via check the "Without checksum" option in "Options" dialog). Since the number of digits, including the checksum, must be even, a leading zero is inserted in the string being encoded if needed (this is specifically stated in the specs Barcode Creator have access to).

CODABAR: Codabar can encode the ten digits and a few special symbols (minus, plus, dollar, colon, bar, dot). The characters "A", "B", "C" and "D" are used to represent four different start/stop characters. The input string to the Barcode Creator can include the start and stop characters or not include them (in which case "A" is used as start and "B" as stop). Start and stop characters in the input string can be either all lowercase or all uppercase and are always printed as uppercase.

PLESSEY: Plessey barcodes can encode all the hexadecimal digits. Alphabetic digits in the input string must either be all lowercase or all uppercase. The output text is always uppercase.

MSI: MSI can only encode the decimal digits. While the standard specifies either one or two check digits, the current implementation in this version only generates one check digit.

CODE 93: Code 93 can represent the full 128 ASCII character set.