Hi guys,

Just a quick note on using "real" barcode printer's drivers(i.e. Datamax, Zebra, ect...). These windows printer drivers use the built-in printer functions to produce the barcodes, so you are NOT responsible for encoding. Simply load the Zebra drivers on your PC, load the fonts for the barcodes you need, and set label length and type. Now just use this font as you would say "Arial" in a VFP report and the Zebra driver will add any additional encoding you may need to produce a valid barcode. This is great when you need to print a more complex barcodes, like one of the 2-D types. I have written too many native-code printer procedures in the past and believe me these Win drivers are great! Most map Win fonts very well and the drivers print most any graphics a "regular" printer will print.

Couple of other things I have encountered:

Some of these drivers will allow you to choose an out-of-spec font. For instance CODE39 has a 1 x 3 aspect ratio, but Datamax drivers include fonts for 1 x 2 and 1 x 4. These will usually read, but a picky customer or barcode reader could create a problem.

Now the ugly part, with these drivers to work they MUST be installed and configured on the target machines. I eventually had to add code to check for the existence of these drivers before allowing the printing to function. Believe me, the output to a default driver is not pretty.

If you wish to print barcodes to a laser printer from a VFP report, then you will need one of the commercially available fonts. Again, you use it just like any Win font, but here you ARE responsible for creating the complete encoding. Most 1-D codes (CODE39, CODE128, ect...) have relatively light-duty encoding requirements so you shouldn't need the overhead of an ActiveX. Azalea barcode fonts have sample VFP code (written by a VB programmer so you will see some mistakes) that illustrates the coding required. I believe it is www.Azalea.com, memory fades at my age....

Hope this helps, Good Luck!

>>> As far as printing barcodes, only Code 39 doesn't require special encoding. I am using a barcode font package from ID Automation, www.bizfonts.com. They have very generous licensing terms and have fonts for just about everything, all common bar codes plus OCR and MICR. Licensing any of their fonts entitles you to download their utilities, including an ActiveX control that does the encoding. They list VFP as being supported by their ActiveX control. Other utilities include UFLs for Crystal Reports as well as add-ins for Word and Excel.
>>> In my application, I am generating the labels via Crystal Reports since the client will be creating additional labels besides the initial set included in the app, and they already are familiar with creating report in Crystal. But there's no reason why you couldn't use the activex control and native VFP reports.
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>>If I understand you correctly, if I only need to print alphanumeric strings up to 8 characters max - Code 39 font is ok and I thus don't need any active-x controls etc.
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>Exactly; the Zebra drivers and fonts are a real pleasure to work with; I've had outstanding results with both the 4000 and 6000 series printers. We did determine that, for printing in volume, the use of a thin-film ribbon gives a more consistent result than the directr thermal printing, especially in environments which vary widely in humidity and temperature. We use them to produce Code 39, UPC-A and EAN-13B compliant labels with no special effort beyond the definition of some custom paper sizes for our barcoded forms under Windows - not a function of VFP, but of the Windows Printer Setup dialog. The alternative to defining custom paper sizes is to bypass the GDI entirely and assume full responsibility for sending the necessary control codes to the printer, which we've also done, using my DIRPRTCLASS (available for download in the Files section) to write directly to the spooler without engaging the GDI.