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MicroPDF417 Barcode FAQ & Tutorial

• About the Micro PDF417 Barcode

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• Printing and Generating Micro PDF417 Barcodes
• Reading and Decoding
• Hand-Held Symbol Decoders

About the MicroPDF417

MicroPDF417 is two-dimensional (2D), multi-row symbology, derived from PDF417 that encodes up to 150 bytes. All of our MicroPDF417 products were created from ISO/IEC 24728. Micro-PDF417 is designed for applications requiring improved area efficiency, and is used for Composite Codes in GS1 DataBar. IDAutomation provides Micro-PDF417 capability in all products that support DataBar, including the Barcode Label Software, Image Generator, .NET Windows Forms Control, Streaming Barcode Server for IIS and the Java Barcode Packages.

Specifics about the symbology are as follows:

X and Y Dimension:
The X dimension is the width of the narrowest bar in the symbol. The Y dimension is the height of each row within the symbol. The ratio of X to Y is usually in the range from 1:2 to 1:5, where 1:3 is the most commonly used ratio.

Compaction Modes:

• Text Compaction permits all printable ASCII characters 32 - 126 and ASCII 9, 10 and 13.
• Binary Compaction permits all 256 ASCII values.
• Numeric Compaction permits efficient encoding of numeric data.

Maximum Data:

• Text - 250 characters if all characters are uppercase. In text compaction mode, the amount of data that may be encoded varies due to mode switching between numbers, upper case, lower case, punctuation and other types of characters.
• Binary - 150 characters
• Numeric - 366 digits (when the data is numbers only).

Number of data columns: 1 - 4.

Number of rows: 4 - 44 in defined combinations with the number of columns.

Printing & Generating MicroPDF417 Barcodes

Several methods are available that enable generation and printing of MicroPDF417 barcode symbols:

• MicroPDF417 may be generated as a font. The .NET DataBar Windows Forms Control includes an encoder function and fonts that allow printing of MicroPDF417 as a font. The IDAutomation Universal 2D Font may also be used with this function. Using this technique, the data must first be sent to the encoder, which runs in Microsoft® Windows. The encoder returns a character string, that when combined with the IDAutomation PDF417 barcode font, will create a correct Micro-PDF417 barcode. Printing with other operating systems may be accomplished by using the encoder .NET DLL from a Windows® system to populate a database with the returned character string before it is printed from the other operating system with the PDF417 barcode font.
• ASP.NET Web Server Control
• Streaming Barcode Server for IIS
• Barcode Label Software Pro
• DataBar Image Generator
• Java Barcode Packages
• IDAutomation also offers barcode label printers, many of which support MicroPDF417.

Reading MicroPDF Barcodes

The most common method of decoding symbols is with a hand-held Micro PDF Capable Barcode Scanner. Because MicroPDF417 is not a common symbology, most barcode scanners must be configured from the manual before they will read and decode the symbols.

In some cases, it may be desired to have the scanner trigger a form or action in an application. IDAutomation has documented easy methods of accomplishing this in the USB Barcode Scanner Application Integration Guide.

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