The Euphoria barcode generation program "ebarcode.ex"

Overview

The ebarcode program generates Type 39 barcodes in the form of small monochrome bitmap images. The barcodes can contain between one and eight characters. The supported characters are the digits 0 through 9 and the uppercase letters A through Z. The special Type 39 '*' delimiting character is automatically placed at the beginning and the end of each barcode.

Supported platforms

The ebarcode program was developed using the DOS version of Euphoria but as it does not perform any platform specific operations it should work unmodified on the Windows and Linux platforms. However this has not been thoroughly tested.

Running ebarcode

To create a barcode containing the following characters:

    EUPHORIA

Type:

    ex ebarcode.ex euphoria

This should produce a file called:

    EUPHORIA.BMP

Note that any lowercase characters on the command line are automatically converted to uppercase when necessary.

More than one barcode bitmap file can be generated. For example typing:

    ex ebarcode.ex tape01 tape02 tape03 tape04

will create the following bitmap files:

    TAPE01.BMP
    TAPE02.BMP
    TAPE03.BMP
    TAPE04.BMP

Uses for ebarcode

The ebarcode program was written to make Type 39 barcodes which could be used for labelling DLT (digital linear tape) cartridges so they can be used in a robotic tape library. It is also handy for making replacement barcodes for these types of tape when existing ones become damaged and hence unreadable.

Rapid prototyping at it's best!

The core of the ebarcode program was put together inside a day. It is an excellent example of how good Euphoria is as a rapid prototyping language.

The Author

The ebarcode.ex Euphoria program (and the cmap.e include file) were written by Andy Cranston.

>>>>>>>> Last updated 02 April 2002 <<<<<<<<