On Sat, Mar 15, 2008 at 9:25 PM, jmklr <jm
...@accelplus.net> wrote:
> "The acceptable contents of the data field varies from symbology to
> symbology as defined in the symbologies reference.", quoted from Quick
> Guide page, seems to point to a reference I can't find. In particular,
> I want to understand what the zeros and ones mean in the date field of
> the example PostScript for the Aztec barcode type. There are 54 zeros
> and ones in that example. If this is binary, I understand the basics.
> But where can I find details about how to interpret this binary code,
> which I assume means some kind of text or digits.
<...snip...>
You are not the first to have this problem and unfortunately there is
no simple solution:
http://groups.google.com/group/postscriptbarcode/msg/35c9cd6d7e7dac0d
The position hasn't changed since I wrote this as I am still unable to
locate a publicly-available, thorough explanation of the high-level
encoding process for Aztec Code. I suspect that someone will put
something fairly decent up on their website before too long - there
are plenty of barcode "enthusiasts"!
Unless you know a software developer that can write the interface code
required to encode your input data into the format required by BWIPP
(as described in the ISO/IEC 24778:2008 specification [1]) then there
is little you can do other than to wait for me to add the high-level
encoding functionality to this project.
Adding this code will take quite some time as there are other
symbologies for which a similar process takes higher priority and I
plan to take a bit of a break from actively developing the project
once I have a working QR Code symbology. But if you do choose to wait
then you can track progress on this issue by monitoring this entry in
the issue tracker:
http://code.google.com/p/postscriptbarcode/issues/detail?id=11
> Just so you'll know, my ultimate goal is to replace a convoluted
> manual method using expensive software and multiple steps to generate
> Aztec symbols for bindery readers (to ensure pages are bound in proper
> sequence). I should be able to replace all those steps with an EPS
> mark in our imposition that looks up the needed data for the Aztec
> mark, convert that text data to the appropriate binary data, then
> executes your standard procedures.
Sounds like an interesting use for 2D barcodes and Aztec Code is an
interesting choice for this application - perhaps it is due to the
fact that Aztec Code symbols do not require a quite zone around the
printing area of its symbols?
> I have one more detail I need to find out. Within the barcode mark
> options in the software we are using, it allows us to specify a mark
> width and symbol type (example is ECC 200, ECC 000, ECC 010 etc.). Are
> these options available in your PostScript?
The Aztec Code encoder in BWIPP generates only the latest type ECC 200
symbols and is unlikely to ever support the deprecated types ECC
000-140.
Hope this helps,
Tez
[1] http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.ht...
