Which barcode formats do you need to support? While I have no expertise in this area, I do find barcodes to be very interesting. I also know that there are many more
barcode formats in use than most people realize, so it's really important to understand which formats you need to support.
To read or generate a barcode, you'll probably need some kind of specialized software. There may be a workaround, though, for reading some types: Most barcodes encode an alphanumeric (often strictly numeric) string of characters. In UPC and other common barcodes, that character string is printed in human-readable form at the bottom of the barcode graphics. If all you have is an image of that barcode with its human-readable text, you may be able to use Surface Automation with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to get that text value.
Just using OCR won't guarantee you reliable results: You must make sure that the image is at the right scale and orientation, and is free from stray marks. In particular, the adjacent barcode graphics may confuse the OCR software if you don't have enough empty space between the graphics and the text.
Good luck with this.
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Mark Stallard
Software Developer
Raytheon Company
America/New_York
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