[Koha-devel] Barcode Printing Problems

[Thomas D]

There are at the very least potential Koha users who want to use barcode
generation.  I have not experimented with actually using the barcode
generation in Koha, myself.


PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

There was a conversation between owen and tim on #koha on 5 August 2005
about trying to use the barcode generator.  tim seemed to have misidentified
the script being called to actually generate the barcodes in referring to
them as code 39, or 3 of 9.  I followed his example later that night without
looking at the code calling the correct script.  There is in fact an old
script in /intranet/scripts/misc/barcodes.pl for generating much simpler
code 39 barcodes.


CODE INTERPRETATION

The script integrated into the Koha intranet is supposed to generate code
128 barcodes.  Vault Information Services. Code 128 symbology.
barcodeisland.com . http://www.barcodeisland.com/code128.phtml  A useful
page for understanding code 128.

You might check as to whether your scanner is reading code 128 barcodes
correctly.  Although, it should really fail absolutely instead of giving an
erroneous string.  One possibility is from an online form.  Carl A Sewell.
Create code 128 bar code.
http://home.hiwaay.net/%7Ecsewell/CreateCode128.shtml.  Otherwise, try using
the module used for Koha barcode generation directly.  There is probably
enough documentation for PDF::API to quickly determine how to generate
barcodes with the module outside of Koha to use for testing.  Alfred
Reibenschuh.  PDF::API2.
http://search.cpan.org/~areibens/PDF-API2-0.45/lib/PDF/API2.pm .


LIKELY PROBLEM

A leading '00' would most likely be from setting the country code to USA in
the template.  A trailing '0' would most likely be the check digit.  It
would seem that something is missing or not being interpreted correctly for
using that code in Koha.  The intended design may be either to have the
scanner not return the check digit after validating the code or some missing
script is supposed to interpret the check digit in addition to the country code.


PEOPLE WHO REALLY KNOW

The email addresses of Veleda Matias and Castañeda Sebastian from Physics
Library UNLP, Argentina, authors of the barcode generation component, are
given at the top of the files such as /intranet/barcodes/barcodes.pl .  A
year after the barcode component was contributed it ought to be working.  I
would suggest contacting them to ask how the component is implemented on
their system and how they actually make use of the country codes.  I expect
that I would use this code if it were working well and could be easily
adapted to my required workflow.


Thomas D

Quoting Joshua Ferraro <jmf at liblime.com> :
> ---------------- Beginning of the original message ------------------
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Is anyone using barcode printing on a production system? I
> recently
> tried to get them working and although I can get it to produce
> barcodes there are two problems:
> 
> 1. The file that's exported has an extension of .pl ... this
> means
> that most OSes can't determine that it's a PDF by default.
> What's
> the best way to export it as a useful filename and extension?
> 
> 2. The barcodes that are generated have leading zeros and one
> zero
> after the barcode. So they're almost right, but in their
> current
> form aren't really useful (don't scan correctly).
> 
> Anyone else experiencing the same problems? Any solutions out
> there?
> 
> Cheers, 
> -- 
> Joshua Ferraro               VENDOR SERVICES FOR OPEN-SOURCE
> SOFTWARE
> President, Technology       migration, training, maintenance,
> support
> LibLime                                Featuring Koha
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> jmf at liblime.com |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha
> |1(888)KohaILS
> 
> 
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> ------------------- End of the original message ---------------------




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