Interleaved 2 of 5 barcode issue

[Menzies]

Hello everyone,
I am having a little bit of a problem with barcodes and information on
the web seems to be fairly sparse. using XMPie uDirect I am pulling
information in from a .csv file, the barcodes are basic 1234567890
setups, 12 digits long. I am using the 2 of 5 barcode and set it
properly in the rules to XMPInt2Of5 and applying it to the String. I
then apply the font to it required to display the barcode.

the prolblem arises with the start and end lines which should be ASCII
0203 and 0204 respectively, however the XMPie seems to be converting
it to a different ASCII code because I am getting the font boxes at
the start and end showing that there is no character for those values.

am I forced to use the fonts provided by XMPie (which I no longer
have) or is there something else going on that I am unaware of?

Thanks,
- Jesse

[Bill]

Hello,

I would say that you are not obliged to use the XMPie barcode fonts,
but at least fonts whose encoding is fully compliant with the
character strings which the XMPie barcode functions produce (not sure
that such a configuration - using barcode fonts not provided by XMPie
- would be officially supported, but it might work).
To check which characters are produced by the XMPie barcode functions,
you could duplicate your ADOR object, change it from "Text with Style"
to "Text Only", then insert it into an InDesign text block with a
"standard" font (such as Arial, etc.).

But according to the User Manual, the Barcode font kit (which contains
20 TTF files) is expected to be found on the uDirect CDROM.
If you can no longer find you CD, you could ask a copy to your Xerox/
XMPie representative.

The only barcode-related issues I ever ran into were related in
InDesign changing some characters produced by the XMPie functions
(quotes, apostrophes, etc.) to other typographical characters. There
are workarounds for these cases as well.

Bill

[couch]

As Bill says, turning "use typographers quotes" off is a must with
some barcode types (I think 2of5 is one where this causes the 06 or 12
to be reversed).

Also, you mention using a CSV file for the data. I would also
recommend that you quote the barcode field, eg:

ID, Barcode, Name
1, "00123456789","John"
2, "198765432100","Mary"

The reason for this is that the Microsoft Jet engine (which is used in
the background in XMPie (on Windows) can handle only numbers with less
than 11 or 12 digits (sorry, I can't find the exact number at the
moment). By putting quotes around the number, it will be treated as a
string (where longer lengths are OK), and process fine. Also, another
reason to do this, is that in record 1 above, MS Jet would remove the
leading zeros which could cause you some problems...

I would recommned using the XMP barcode functions only with the XMP
barcode fonts. Different barcode fonts will require different encoding
functions. Of course if you have uPlan, you can create your own
encoding functions to use with your own fonts.

Steve