build your own barcode?

[jasonwood]

I know how to construct a valid UPC bar code with various proportionate widths of bars and spaces... so I am looking for a simple font with 6 characters (3 widths of bars and 3 widths of spaces) so that I can make my own UPC's.

Or perhaps another way to generate the bars given the proportionate widths?

If neither of the above is feasable... is there a plugin for UPC?

[LiveOak]

You don't need to cobble it together by hand from the individual elements. You just purchase a font package, install it on your machine and place a field on a layout formatted as the barcode font. In some cases check digits or a prefix or suffix must be appended (for instance "*" before and after text formatted as Code 39 for some font packages). It is probably much harder (or impossible) to find the individual elements than the complete font packages.

-bd

[jasonwood]

UPC is a little more complicated than fonts like Code 39 and the like. For one, the bars/spaces are reversed halfway through (the middle of the bar code always has bar-space-bar-space-bar (so characters after the middle begin with a space whereas characters before the middle begin with a bar.

Then the last character is a check figure based on a calculation on all the other digits.

Really what I'm trying to do is avoid paying $139 (US!!!) for the IDAutomation bar code package (which is the only one I have found that contains UPC).

[LiveOak]

As barcode fonts go, $139 is on the cheap end of the spectrum.

-bd

[CJWeigand]

Check out Barcodet at http://www.lifesuccess.org/ UPC in multiple sizes is just one of the many bar codes for FileMaker Pro included in the package.

[jasonwood]

Thanks but I've figured it out. I might develop my own in the future. See...

http://www.fmforums.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB37&Number=59508&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1