PosiCode - terryburton/postscriptbarcode GitHub Wiki

PosiCode is a continuous, variable length, non-self-checking, bidirectional barcode symbology that is designed for use within printing processes where it is difficult to precisely control the width of a bar.

Standards: ITS PosiCode.

• The data field can hold the following:
  • For standard symbols: Any extended ASCII data. The default interpretation of data by readers is in accordance with ISO/IEC 8859-1.
    • FNC4 function characters will be inserted automatically to allow the encoding of extended ASCII characters.
  • For limited symbols: letters A-Z, digits 0-9, symbols - and .
• The version option is used to specify the variant of the symbol, either:
  • version=a (default)
  • version=b
  • version=limiteda
  • version=limitedb
• When the parse option is specified, any instances of ^NNN in the data field are replaced with their equivalent ASCII value, useful for specifying unprintable characters, e.g. ^029 for GS, etc.
• When the parsefnc option is specified, non-data function characters can be specified by escape sequences:
  • ^FNC1: FNC1
  • ^FNC2: FNC2
  • ^FNC3: FNC3
• The inkspread option can be used to adjust the width of the bars.

Equivalent ways to generate a PosiCode A symbol:

Data:    Abc123
Options: 
Encoder: posicode

Data:    Abc123
Options: version=a
Encoder: posicode

PosiCode A including a GS (ASCII 29) character:

Data:    AB^029CD
Options: parse
Encoder: posicode

PosiCode A including an FNC2 special character:

Data:    AB^FNC2CD
Options: parsefnc
Encoder: posicode

PosiCode B symbol with widened bars:

Data:    Abc123
Options: version=b inkspread=-1
Encoder: posicode

Limited PosiCode A with narrowed bars:

Data:    ABC-12.3
Options: version=limiteda
Encoder: posicode

Limited PosiCode B:

Data:    ABC-12.3
Options: version=limitedb
Encoder: posicode