The AZTDF DLL

To convert a string of characters into the bars and spaces required for the barcode requires converting the character string into another string – made up of only the 0 - z characters present in the Aztec font.

The AZTDF.DLL will perform this conversion, and provides three function calls which can either return the required string, copy it to the clipboard, or save it to a named disk file. These functions may be called from Visual Basic (including Visual Basic for Applications in Microsoft Office), Visual C++, Visual Foxpro, Delphi, C++ Builder, and in fact virtually every language that can make DLL calls.

The functions are called with parameters that specify the options available for the barcode:

szIn – is a pointer to a string containing the bytes used as data to create the barcode. While passed as a text string, the string can contain non-text bytes (including ASCII 0) provided that the length parameter (n) is used to specify the length of the data. If n is 0, then the string is assumed to be a null-terminated ASCII string.

n – a pointer to an integer which is either 0 or specified the length of the data in szIn.

flags – a pointer to an integer which should be 0 in the present release.

level – a pointer to an integer specifying the security level of the barcode generated. Allowed values for Aztec codes depend on the mode, and are 0-99 for Normal mode, 1-4 for Compact mode, and 1-32 for Full range mode (the value is ignored for Runes). Note that for Compact and Full range the security level is actually the required number of Aztec layers in the symbol.

mode – a pointer to an integer specifying the type of Aztec barcode created. The allowed values are shown below.

mode parameter	Barcode type
0	Normal
1	Compact
2	Full range
3	Rune

For most applications a mode of 0 is recommended, along with a level of 0 which provides the default value of 23% + 3 codewords.

Aztdf Function calls