Getting started
UNLESS YOU READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS YOU WILL NOT PRODUCE BARCODES THAT SCAN CORRECTLY.
Once your fonts are installed you may like to try to print a barcode. Before you can print a barcode that has a significant chance of being scanned successfully you will probably need to read the part of this document which refers to the barcode type you need. However, for the moment lets just print a single barcode.
Start a suitable Windows application; anything capable of printing and displaying WYSIWYG will do, if in doubt try the Write or WordPad word processor that comes with Windows.
Into a new (or spare) document type 1234 then press return.
Select the text you have typed, and then change its font to the dLSoft barcode font listed in your fonts list, and its size to something like 36 point.
You should see a barcode image, and you should be able to print it.
Unfortunately you will not be able to scan the printed barcode at this stage because it does not contain the relevant start and stop characters, and in some cases you will also require a check digit. The characters required for these may be determined by running the dFont Helper program. The source code for this program is included for users who wish to use sections of the code to automate this procedure in programmable applications, such as Microsoft Office, Visual FoxPro, Borland Paradox, etc. A number of supporting tools are also provided for automating the process.
For some of our fonts the ` (grave symbol - top left on most UK keyboards) will work as the start character and the ¬ (shifted grave) will work as the stop character. For others the open bracket ( will act as the start character and ) will act as the stop character. For all of our fonts (except EAN/UPC) the section symbol § (Chr$(167)) will act as the start character and ¬ (Chr$(172)) will act as the stop character [For fonts which encode all the characters on the keyboard (e.g. Code 93 and the 128s) the special characters such as start and stop may be entered by holding down the <Alt> key and type 0xyz using the numeric keypad, where xyz is the value of the character. When these special characters are being created by programming, then use Chr$(xyz) in Basic or the equivalent in other languages.]
Position the cursor before the beginning of the barcode image on screen and type the start character. DO NOT press the enter key. Then position the cursor just after the end of the barcode and type the stop character.
You barcode will be a little longer now, but when its printed this time it should scan - even if the scanner complains that the check digit is wrong. To get that right you will need to start reading the section on your barcode type.
Note that there are some characters that cannot be printed by Windows. For example ASCII 128 and 129 do not print in all versions of Windows. Barcode fonts which would otherwise use such characters have second copies of the characters at alternative ASCII values. See the section dealing with individual barcode types for details.
Note also that a number of Windows programs do not actually use the space character, ASCII 32, for spaces typed at the keyboard. Some word-processors micro space characters by specifying the position of the start of the next word instead of sending the printer a space character. When a barcode font is used spaces will show up as spaces in such cases, and not as the barcode symbol representing ASCII 32. To overcome this problem the space character is reproduced at an alternative ASCII value. See the section dealing with individual barcode types for details.
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