[barcode] Re: a little help with EAN 128 for US Postal Service Tracking labels

[Steven R Blood]

Leo-

Thanks for your reply.


> It may be easier to use 128raw.

Indeed it is, though I didn't know where to start with 128raw. To save any 
others a bit of time in the future, I'll explain what I did.

In trying to encode the following USPS Delivery Confirmation number: 
420074509101805213907968005044, I used the following command:


$ barcode -n -b '105 102 42 00 74 50 102 91 01 80 52 13 90 79 68 00 
50 44' -e 128raw -u in -g 3.027x0.855


That command is pretty straighforward once it makes sense. Broken down 
it's simply the Start-C character, 105, the FNC1 character 102, and then 
the actual USPS number chunk split into 2 digits, with another FNC1 before 
the 91, or:

number to encode:    420074509101805213907968005044
raw code128: 105 102 42 00 74 50 102 91 01 80 52 13 90 79 68 00 50 44

The '-u in -g 3.027x0.855' are the units and dimensions to make the 
barcode the same size as the one the USPS uses for their labels.


For reference here's a chart of the code 128 characters:

     http://www.barcodeisland.com/code128.phtml



Thanks, again.


-steve