Re: printing an op-scan sheet...

["James W. Kilgore" <qappdsn@xxxxxxx>]

Gary L Peskin wrote:

> We always used to used a dollar sign ($).  It used to cover the oval
> well and we had no problems scanning.
>

You're right. The name of the game is to black out enough area to get a positive
read.  The difference is in the sensitivity of the reader. This may require a 
change
in the reader.  Turn xx% grey to black.

We used two prints. We printed a upper case O (oh) with zero skip then printed a
"#".

This gave us the right number of black/white pixel resolution to obtain a read.

An upper case oh or zero overstrike by a "X" or "@"  or "&" or "%" might also 
work.

Although we could create special printer pin patterns, that required printer
specific code.  Not a good thing IMO.

 Without overstrike we got too many failed reads.  Don't know why, some readers 
do
averaging on center, some over the whole image.  Sort of like auto adjusting 
cameras
I guess.  Put a person in front of a window with background light coming 
through and
all you get is a shadow for overall averageing, but a center focus would cut 
down on
the background light and adjust for the center of focus.  (Best analogy I could 
come
up with at this late hour :-))

 We also had to replace ribbons more often to get a good deep black image that 
the
reader would pick up.  We've had similar problems with bar code scanners and 
learned
that 9 pin actually worked better than 24 pin print. Bigger and bolder.

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