Using barcodes

Businesses use barcodes extensively, particularly for inventory control. Barcodes can be used to identify forms, but they are often printed on adhesive paper to create labels for inventory purposes.

Designer supports two types of barcodes:

Hardware barcodes
Only use when the form is being printed directly to the printer from the server. Because a printer is required to print them, Designer uses a placeholder to represent hardware barcodes in the form.

Software barcodes
Can be drawn by Designer and are visible in Acrobat and Adobe Reader. They can be printed on any general-purpose printer.

Some types of barcodes can hold arbitrary binary data. Others are limited to a particular set of characters or codes. It is the responsibility of the form author to ensure that the data is appropriate for the barcode, for example, by imposing a validation on the field.

Barcode formats

Designer provides a variety of barcode formats that you can work with. The supported barcode formats are listed in the Barcodes category of the Object Library palette. If you use a barcode that requires a specific type of printer, Designer represents the barcode as a shaded rectangle in the form.

Note: Interactive barcodes that can accept user input are only supported for PDF forms that are filled in Acrobat 7.0.5 or Adobe Reader 7.0.5 or later.

Designer also supports the two-dimensional paper forms barcode. For more information, see About paper forms barcodes.

Barcode position and appearance

The function of a barcode is to be read by a specialized piece of hardware called a barcode reader. Since the barcode is intended to be read by a machine, its appearance is usually strictly constrained. For example, for a particular type of barcode, the bars may have to be a particular height and distance apart. In addition it is common for a barcode to require a minimum amount of white space around it (the quiet zone) and a particular range of distances from a designated edge of the page.

Designer does nothing to express or enforce positioning or quiet zone requirements. It is up to the form creator to ensure that these requirements are met.

Barcode properties

After you add a barcode to the form design, you can manipulate the object’s properties in the Field, Value, and Binding tabs of the Object palette. You can define these properties:

  • Text position

  • Length of the data

  • Any additional properties supported by the barcode (for example, optional checksum capabilities, and text positioning and embedding)

  • Presence of the barcode as visible, invisible, or hidden

  • Binding method for storing and retrieving bound data

To define barcode field properties

To define the properties of a barcode, you must first select the barcode and set basic characteristics in the Field tab of the Object palette. The number and type of barcode properties vary from one barcode to another.

  1. Select the barcode.

  2. In the Object palette, click the Value tab and then type the barcode text in the Default box.

  3. Click the Field tab and, in the Location box, select the placement of the text.

    The PDF 417 format does not support text positioning, and the EAN8, EAN13, and UPC-A formats support the Below Embedded option only.

  4. In the Value column, do one or more of the following actions:

    • In the Data Length box, type the length of the data. If you are defining an MSI barcode, the data length must be a value between 1 and 14. The MSI, UPC-E, UPC EAN2, UPC EAN5, US Postal Zip-5, US Postal DPBC, and US Postal Standard barcode formats have fixed data lengths that cannot be changed.

    • If a Checksum box is displayed, enable or disable the checksum.To enable the default checksum, select Auto.To disable the checksum, select None. If you are defining an MSI barcode, select one of the available checksum methods.

    • If an End Char or Start Char box is displayed, type the end character, start character, or both. If you are defining a Codabar barcode, the valid end and start characters are A, B, C, D, a, b, c, d, *, N, T, E, n, t, and e. If you are defining a Code 49 barcode, the valid start characters are A, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

    • If a Wide/Narrow Ratio box is displayed, type a wide-narrow-ratio value. For Codabar, Code 2 of 5 (Industrial, Interleaved, and Matrix), and Code 3 of 9, the wide-narrow-ratio value must be a value from 2.2 to 3.0. For Code 11, Logmars, MSI, and Plessey barcodes, the value must be a value from 2.0 to 3.0.

To set the default value for the barcode

 In the Object palette, click the Value tab and then type a default value in the Default box.

To control how a barcode obtains data

To define the properties of a barcode, you must first select the barcode. Set properties that control how the barcode obtains data in the Value tab of the Object palette.

You can dynamically populate a validation pattern or script message with a value from a data source. This allows you to ensure users enter the correct value in the field.

  1. In the Object palette, click the Value tab and then select one of these options from the Type list:

    • To allow users to choose to enter data or not, select User Entered - Optional.

    • To prompt users to enter data and make the field recommended, select User Entered - Recommended and type a custom message in the Empty Message box.

    • To prompt users to enter data and make the field required, select User Entered - Required and type a custom message in the Empty Message box.

    • To make the field read only and display a data value that is calculated and displayed through an attached script, select Calculated - Read Only. Users cannot edit the calculated value.

    • To make the field editable and display a data value that is calculated and displayed through an attached script, select Calculated - User Can Override. Users can edit the value if the calculation script has been written to accept the input. If a user does edit the calculated value, the custom message you specify in the Override Message box appears.

    • To make the field read only and display a data value that is merged or calculated and displayed at run time, select Read Only. Users cannot edit the value.

  2. If the value is recommended or required, type a prompt in the Empty Message box.

  3. If the value will be calculated, attach the calculation script to the object by using the Script Editor.

  4. (Optional) If a calculated value can be overridden, type a message into the Override Message box.

To define custom data-binding properties for a barcode

Binding options enable you to build a form that captures data for enterprise infrastructures and/or use an external data source to populate a form at run time. Set data-binding properties in the Binding tab of the Object palette.

  1. Select the barcode.

  2. Enable the form to connect to the data source when the form is opened.

  3. Bind the barcode to its corresponding data node. For information about how to bind objects to a data source, see Binding fields to a data source.

Encoding non-printing characters in barcode data

You can encode hidden, non-printing characters between the data in Code 128 barcodes. For example, you can encode the characters that represent the prefix and the delimiter as part of the Code 128 barcode standard. The application that reads the barcode then decodes the meaning of these characters.

Some characters are reserved for use as non-printing characters in Code 128 barcodes. To encode these characters in a barcode, use the following mechanism in Designer.

Code 128 non-printing characters

Use these values in Designer

FNC1

[F1]

FNC2

[F2]

FNC3

[F3]

SHIFT

[SH]

Change to Subset A

[CA]

Change to Subset B

[CB]

Change to Subset C

[CC]

Start in Subset A

[SA]

Start in Subset B

[SB]

Start in Subset C

[SC]

For example, to encode FNC1 in a Code 128 barcode, insert [F1] as follows: 00[F1]12345[F1]67890.

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