I have used bar code scanners and VFP on regular windows boxes for years. I have never used any fancy API's. For me the trick has been a RS232 decoded scanner and the RS232 activeX control distributed with VFP. Plug in the scanner, setup baud, etc., open the correct COM port via the ActiveX control, scan the bar code and grab the data from the ActiveX control. Since the ActiveX control will capture data in an interrupt driven way, you have to be careful to buffer and concatenate the input until you have received all of the data. Most bar code scanners will allow you to automatically add one or two bytes to the end of the scanned data. Given that you are not likely to be scanning any carriage returns, this character works well. When you see the carriage return, you know the scan is completely captured and its time to process the data you have buffered.

Stewart Crisler