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Fonts And Barcodes
The purpose of Fraser's column is to educate the high volume transaction industry on the value of automatic identification on their documents. Specifically, the column will focus on current barcoding techniques, whether linear on 2D, as well as emerging developments in the Automatic ID industry.
Why 2-D symbols over normal barcodes?
By Fraser Ross
The main reason why a company would choose 2-Dimensional barcodes is the size. Much more data can be placed into a 2-D symbol than a normal (or Linear) barcode. An example would be a Code 39 Barcode. Coding 15-20 characters using a fairly standard Code 39 would have dimensions of approx 1/2 inch by three to four inches. The same amount of data in a 2-D barcode such as 'DataMatrix' would be approx 1/3 inch square. It would be difficult to find 1/2 x 4 inches on a customer document, but relatively easy to find 1/3 inch somewhere in the document. This is why many finishing equipment vendors have adopted 2-D as the symbology of choice for their equipment.
A second important reason why a user would choose 2D is recoverability. Because the input data is encoded, the output used to print a 2D symbol has a certain amount of redundancy built into it, allowing the symbol to recover from physical damage such as a tear in the paper, or a mark across the symbol itself.
It is possible to recover up to approx. 40% damage in many cases using this. You may find references to Error Correcting Codeword (or ECC), which is the term used to describe this capability.
2D symbols are here to stay, and the tremendous benefits of using them allow me to recommend them highly over traditional linear barcodes.
For background information about 2D symbologies and COPI's CodeZ products, please click here.
You can read more about 2D symbologies by reading my archives by pressing here. For more information on the exciting technology, feel free to email me at fr@888999copi.com or me at 888-999-copi ext. fr.
