Barcode Plugin Question

[IplayWoW]

Does anyone know if there is a decent Barcode Plugin that works well with Filemaker? I know there are some out there but I'm not familiar with them.

I have a LARGE inventory of parts, consumables, and machines that need to be tracked and inventoried and I would like to implement some barcoding system with my existing Filemaker Database.

Thanks

[fishtech]

Bump...

I also would like a recommendation best practice in printing barcodes from UPC numbers in a FileMaker database.

Thanks,

ft.

[Bozkid]

Either Barcodet and Texcodet from Life $uccess Institute at http://www.lifesuccess.org may be just what you're looking for. BTW, all files are completely unlocked!

Hope this helps!

[IplayWoW]

Either Barcodet and Texcodet from Life $uccess Institute at http://www.lifesuccess.org may be just what you're looking for. BTW, all files are completely unlocked!

Hope this helps!

I'm rather confused as to what this is... it is some .pdf order form that seems sketchy

I'm kinda looking for a more software based (as well as font) that incorporates use of scanning for tracking

[Bozkid]

Apparently you looked only at the order form. There are pages at the given link for both Barcodet and Texcodet.

Barcodet consists of native FileMaker Pro files, which are completely unlocked, and, of course, barcode fonts for display and printing. Texcodet also consists of native FileMaker Pro files, which are completely unlocked, too. But there are no barcode fonts because Texcodet generates its bar codes without them. It should be noted that both programs produce bar codes from data stored in your FileMaker Pro databases.

Now, if you only need to scan an existing bar code, then all you need is a scanner. In that case, you won't need either one of these programs. But if you also need to generate the bar codes, then one of these programs may be perfect for the job.

[fishtech]

IplayWow,

Bozkid is right... you don't need any special software to do scanning. The scanner would usually parse numbers from the barcode characters, then push them into the currently-selected field.

Printing barcodes from FileMaker is a little more complex. There are a lot of $$$'s to be spent in this space, possibly uneccessarily.

As mentioned above, I needed to print UPC-a barcodes for retail items. My products all have 10-digit UPC numbers, and I need them to be 12 character UPC barcodes.

Here's how I did it...

I downloaded upc-a.zip from http://www.barcode-1.net/pub/russadam/fonts.html

It consists of a font, called UPCA, and a readme and is $10 shareware.

All the info you need to build a printable barcode using the UPCA font is in the readme, but the info is not presented quite as clearly as it could be

The basic process is:

1. define your number system number - use it as your left hand start character

2. define the first 5 UPC numbers as 'left' characters

3. add the centre guard character

4. define the last 5 UPC numbers as 'right' characters

6. calculate and concatenate your check digit as the right hand stop/check character

I initially found it confusing to map the font glyphs to keys so here is the (logical) mapping info in case anyone needs it (NB... these values are case sensitive):

START/NUMBER SYSTEM

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

P Q R S T U V W X Y

LEFT

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

CENTREGUARD

p

RIGHT

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

@ A B C D E F G H I

STOP/CHECK

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

` a b c d e f g h i

hth,

ft.

[fishtech]

Also, fwiw, drivers for Zebra printers are now included in OSX 10.5 as follows:

Zebra CPCL Label Printer

Zebra EPL1 Label Printer

Zebra EPL2 Label Printer

Zebra ZPL Label Printer

See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1370 for more details.

Zebra printers are expensive but are great for barcode printing.

ft.

[Maciej]

iWinSoft Barcode Generator is a good choice. It can easily generate, export and print barcodes.

[hasru]

hi

is it work with filemaker 9. can u show me how it's work

hasru

[Mhorton]

IDAutomation offers a few different options for FileMaker barcode integration.

There is a Native generator that generates barcodes without using any external barcode fonts. This is good for when you are distributing files to multiple users.

There is also the option to use an encoder plug-in that will encode your data to be used with the appropriate barcode font, code 128, interleaved 2 of 5, etc.

They also have a universal font, that is one font that allows you to create several different types of barcodes.

http://www.idautomation.com/filemaker/