[reportlab-users] Re: Anyone have access to bar code readers?

[Jeff Kowalczyk]

Andy Robinson wrote:
> We have a customer requirement to add some support for a couple of new 
> barcodes (EAN 8 and 13) to our framework.  Some of you may recall that 
> Ty Sarna contributed a barcode module some years ago but I have no idea 
> how widely used these are.
> Is anyone in the user group actually using these?  If so
> - which codes are you using?
> - any problems, or does it all work?
> - if we published some PDFs on our site with easy-to-scan test cases for 
>   bar codes, would anyone be able to do some quick tests and report 
> success or failure back via email or a form?

I used was using it, the results were excellent. I used Symbol
Technologies CS-1504 scanners to read EAN-128 (code 128). The project
was a demo of a delivery manifest. The barcodes were printed at a rather
small size and still scanned accurately.

I would highly recommend arranging with Ty to have it included in
reportlab proper, along with any test data. The barcode module does its
job well, in my experience.

The thing that would really be a marketing bulletpoint for reportlab
would be to add 2-D PDF417 support to the barcode module.
pdf417_encode could be used as a reference implementation. PDF417 is
widely used, but only sparsely supported in free libraries to date.

http://freshmeat.net/projects/pdf417_encode/

gnu barcode supports the following symbologies:

    "ean", "ean13", "ean-13", "ean8", "ean-8"
    "upc", "upc-a", "upc-e"
    "isbn"
    "39", "code39"
    "128c", "code128c"
    "128b", "code128b"
    "128", "code128"
    "128raw"
    "i25", "interleaved 2 of 5"
    "cbr", "codabar"
    "msi"
    "pls", "plessey"
    "code93", "93"