RE: Printing Bar Codes Using Fonts

Bar codes need precise, nearly-graphical printing; fonts might be useful for
printing OCR stuff.  Slow, cheap impact printers are generally too sloppy
for either OCR or bar codes, and they're too slow anyway: a bar code is a
lot of impact printing.

The higher-speed impact printers (Genicom, etc.) have bar-coding
capabilities built in; all you have to do is find the printer functions
reference manual.  Usually it involves sending hex sequence prefixed by an
escape code (like x'02'), a series of hex commands defining the bar code
format (from the functions reference manual), the data to be translated, and
a terminating escape sequence.  I've done this on a couple of printers and
it's slick.  The dot-matrix stuff prints quickly and the bar code part works
fine.

There are 3rd party outfits providing "bar-code enabling" devices as well,
but they're usually expensive (like "rip-off" expensive).

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-admin@midrange.com [mailto:rpg400-l-admin@midrange.com]On
Behalf Of Mike Naughton
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2002 3:23 PM
To: rpg400-l@midrange.com
Subject: Printing Bar Codes Using Fonts

Hi everyone,

I am trying to print bar codes on a printer that doesn't support IPDS
(long story ;-). I found a reference in IBM's "AS/400 Guide to AFP and
PSF" to printing bar codes using fonts (chapter 8). Basically, all it says
is you can do it, but you need the proper fonts.

Does anyone know how to find out what the proper fonts are? I want to use
bar code type 3 of 9. Also (since I'm asking questions), has anyone had
experience doing this? Are there other places to look for more information?

Thanks!

Mike Naughton
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Judd Wire, Inc.
124 Turnpike Road
Turners Falls, MA  01376
413-863-4357 x444
mnaughton@juddwire.com

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