Introduction to bar codes

There are many types of bar codes; EAN, Code 128 and codabar are some of them. EAN is the code you find on every product in a store. It is very limited and only intended for this use. Code 128 support almost any characters while Codabar only support decaimal numbers and six special characters.
I have chosen to only use the 2 of 5 (interleaved), 3 of 9 and Code 128 since they are common and very useful. 2 of 5 only support decimal numbers while 3 of 9 also may contain uppercase letter and some special characters. Code 128 support the first 128 characters in the ascii table (0 to 127).

How to use the program

First you will have to decide which type of code that best suits your (or your customers) needs. Also check with your bar code scanner since they usually only support one or a few bar code types.

The bar codes support diffrent characters, here is a list:

3 of 9	A - Z, 0 - 9, / + - % . and whitespace.
2 of 9	0 - 9
Code 128	Ascii 0 - 127 (almost any character on the keyboard plus some more). To use a non-printable character (ascii 0 - 31) you must type the code within <> brackets. Example: "Tex<116>" will be interpreted as "Text". If you wants to use a '<' in the bar code you will have to type the bracket twice ('<<' will be interpretd as '<').

Next choice is the width of the bars (not Code 128). I recommend wide bars since the bar code might be easier to read. Narrow bars will although produce a smaller bar code.

Now you can enter a code and press the Preview button. While using 3 of 9 code remember that you must use uppercase letters.

Save bar codes

PG BarCode is made to be fast to use. To make that possible you will only have to select a directory where the files shall be saved. The bar codes are named 'code'.bmp. If the file already exists it will be automatically replaced.

Press the Browse button to choose a directory. A "Save as" dialog will appear that allows you to browse to a directory. Any file you select will be ignored, only the directory will be used.

After you have entered a code you can press the Save button. This is the default button; you only have to press the Enter key right after you have entered a code. This is why the program is so fast.

The images will be saved as a BMP (Windows bitmap picture). The height is always 10 pixels and the number of colors is two.

Copy to the clipboard

Simply press the Copy button. You do not need to press Preview. The bar code can be pasted into almost every desktop publishing program, wordprocessor, coverdesigner or whatever you are using.

The bar code will be available in the clipboard as a bitmap picture. The height is always 10 pixels but in most programs it is very simple to resize pictures.

Back