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I'm building a custom shipping solution using ASP.NET and C# and need to generate bar-codes in EAN 128 format. I was wondering if anybody knew where to find a compatible EAN Code 128 bar-code font?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Terry Burton
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Carl Weis
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2 Answers2

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I'd use a library rather than a font, for two reasons:

  • No dependency on whether or not the font is installed on the system your code runs on. (Will you have access to install fonts on production servers?)
  • The library takes care of checksum calculation for you.

Here's a free one that does Code128. You give it the data to encode, and it gives you an Image you could serve to a client.

You'll have to do a little extra work to implement EAN 128 (GS1-128), but that's just a matter of what data you're sending to the Code128 generator.

josh3736
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    Agreed; use an image, not a font. We had an application that would make adhesive labels for warehouses and the first version used a barcode font. It downloaded the font for each label, and each spool file was over 5 MB. This took minutes over a serial connection. Changing the app to generate barcode images reduced each spool file to a few kB, and seconds to send. – Dour High Arch Oct 14 '11 at 23:42
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Just to wave my own flag, here's my own library to create barcode images, including EAN 128. http://code.google.com/p/netbarcodewriter

Simon Halsey
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  • Simon, I have downloaded this library and it is very good. The thing is though, the Code128 I generate is not readable by barcode readers. Only one smartphone app can read them. Is there somewhere I can get more information on this? Thanks – reckface Nov 14 '13 at 09:32
  • Interesting. I generally googled around for information on CODE 128. I don't have any barcode readers to test the output, but it did work with Barcode Scanner on Android. When you say didn't work, is that because it didn't scan, or was the data corrupt? – Simon Halsey Nov 14 '13 at 18:28
  • Thanks for the reply. I encode "502337700000000198" as Code128 and only 1 (ios) smartphone app - Zbarcode can scan the barcode generated by netbarcodewriter, others (attscanner) can't. None of the usb scanners or ruggedised windows ce terminals scan it either. When generated on sites like http://www.racoindustries.com/barcodegenerator/1d/code-128.aspx, all the scanners work. There is a barely perceptible difference on the left area. I don't know where to look. Also what do those #MARKER grey rectangles do? – reckface Nov 15 '13 at 10:21
  • I've moved this to a new question. Thanks again. – reckface Nov 18 '13 at 10:33