Symbologies for Barcodes

Specify Symbologies for Barcodes

What is Barcode

Barcode is a system for the automatic identification of items, such as books in a library, using printed bars of different widths that represent numbers. Barcodes are used for many reasons among them are, to speed up check out, to track sales and to help with inventory. The first set of numbers in a barcode is the manufacturer code, the second set of numbers in the barcode is the product code. The barcode was introduced in the early 80s and is often printed on the record sleeve only, sometimes also on the center record paper label.

What is Barcode Symbology

Barcode Symbology is the protocol that defines a standard for arranging the bars and spaces (between the bars) that comprise a particular type of barcode, such as UPCA, EAN, Code128 etc.

Aspose.BarCode and Barcode Symbologies

Aspose.BarCode supports nearly all popular barcode symbologies. All barcode generating classes like LinearBarCode, BarCodeControl and BarCodeWebControl have a common property named as SymbologyType that is used to set the symbology of a barcode. Developers can assign any symbology to SymbologyType property from the pre-defined symbologies supported by BarcodeGenerator. A list of all pre-defined symbologies is listed below.

Symbologies	Description
Codabar	Specifies that the data should be encoded with Codabar barcode specification
Code11	Specifies that the data should be encoded with Code11 barcode specification
Code128	Specifies that the data should be encoded with Code128 barcode specification
Code39Standard	Specifies that the data should be encoded with Standard Code39 barcode specification
Code39Extended	Specifies that the data should be encoded with Extended Code39 barcode specification
Code93Standard	Specifies that the data should be encoded with Standard Code93 barcode specification
Code93Extended	Specifies that the data should be encoded with Extended Code93 barcode specification
EAN13	Specifies that the data should be encoded with EAN-13 barcode specification
EAN8	Specifies that the data should be encoded with EAN-8 barcode specification
BooklandEAN	Specifies that the data should be encoded with BooklandEAN barcode specification
Interleaved2of5	Specifies that the data should be encoded with Interleaved 2 of 5 barcode specification
MSI	Specifies that the data should be encoded with MSI Plessey barcode specification
Standard2of5	Specifies that the data should be encoded with Standard 2 of 5 barcode specification
UPCA	Specifies that the data should be encoded with UPC-A barcode specification
UPCE	Specifies that the data should be encoded with UPC-E barcode specification
Postnet	Specifies that the data should be encoded with Postnet barcode specification
Planet	Specifies that the data should be encoded with Planet barcode specification
PDF417	Specifies that the data should be encoded with PDF417 barcode specification
Datamatrix	Specifies that the data should be encoded with Datamatrix barcode specification
QR	Specifies that the data should be encoded with QR barcode specification
Aztec	Specifies that the data should be encoded with Aztec barcode specification

Set Code text

A barcode is the representation of characters in the form of bars and spaces between them. So, it is a simple fact that we would also have to assign some characters to Aspose.BarCode so that the input characters could be converted to a barcode. We know that Aspose.BarCode has three different classes (BarcodeGenerator, BarCodeControl and BarCodeWebControl) to create barcodes for different kinds of applications. All these classes have a common property, CodeText. All characters to be encoded to barcode are assigned to CodeText property of any barcode class.

Code text versus Symbology

Developers can assign any set of characters to CodeText property but only according to its symbology type. For example, If the EncodeType property of a barcode control is Symbology.EAN13, the valid character set of EAN13 specification is limited to numeric values and contains 13 digits only. If you attempt to shorter CodeText to it, zero will be added, if longer CodeText, the outbound part will be truncated.

When CodeText is too long or too short
Some symbologies of barcode accept longer CodeText. If CodeText is longer than the image width, it will be wrapped to the next line.

CodeText wrapping
Human readable CodeText is for human reading only, it will not affect the machine scanning process. Some 2D barcodes can contain a huge chunk of data, up to thousands of characters, you might choose not to show the code text.