Generate Scalable PDF Barcodes Purely with Calculations

Have you ever dreamed of being able to generate high quality scalable barcodes in FileMaker solely using calculations, with no plug-ins, fast enough, in a way compatible with server-side scripts, FileMaker Go and FileMaker WebDirect, and completely free of charge? Your dream has just come true...

There are various solutions for barcodes already available, from special barcode fonts, through Brian Dunning’s custom functions using rotated underscore as a symbol primitive, various web services such as those mentioned in Anders Monsen’s article, to the award-winning Barcode Creator, and now even JavaScript based Barcode Generator add-on built into FileMaker Pro 19. But each of the existing solutions actually had some limitation I did not feel comfortable about, whether it was cost, dependency on internet connection, generation performance, poor quality of the result, or inability to generate barcodes in server-side scripts. Just as an example, how quickly can you find a way to generate QR code, which looks good at any scale, with no tiny white lines between individual pixels?

Like this one: 

QRcode.pdf

As a tech-nerd who loves to achieve the impossible, I really could not resist the opportunity to find out whether I could build a https://24usw.com/pdfbarwfnew solution, not having a single one of these limitations. So I created this example, generating barcodes solely with custom functions:

It works off-line, in server-side scripts, with WebDirect, and does not need to use Web Viewer, plug-in or external service.

If you want to try it out, watch my video on how to use it, and read the whole story of how I created it, click here to check my original article.