Printing Extended Characters with Barcode Fonts

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Printing Extended Characters with Barcode Fonts

Solution(s):

This solution may be used if the target font has extended ASCII characters, such as Interleaved 2of5, OCR-A or Code 128. To print extended ASCII characters that are not defined on the keyboard, try one of these methods:

  1. When barcode fonts are being used, implement one of IDAutomation’s barcode font encoders designed to automatically format the data to the font.
  2. Print from the keyboard using the ALT+<xxxx> key combination where xxxx equals the ASCII character’s location in 4 digits. For example, to type ASCII character 194 into Microsoft Word, select the font in Word and hols the ALT key while typing 0194 on the keypad. The number keypad must be used to do this, and 4 digits must be entered.
  3. Copy the characters into the Windows clipboard using the Microsoft Character Map font viewer application, and paste them into the application. Character Map is a free font application that is integrated into Windows. If this application isn’t installed on the Windows PC, go to Control Panel – Add Remove Programs, select Windows Components and choose Add.

Instructions:
1. Open Character Map.
2. In Font, choose the font to copy characters from.
3. Select the characters, one at a time, so that they all appear in the “characters to copy” box. To copy the characters to use to the Clipboard, click Select, and then click Copy.
4. In the application, on the Format menu, click Font, and then select the font.
5. On the Edit menu of the application, click Paste to paste the extended characters from the Clipboard into the document.

It may also be possible to print ASCII directly from the application. This is accomplished in Visual Basic using the CHR(xxx) command as in the following example:
Printer.Font = “IDAutomationI25S”
Printer.Print Chr(194)

NOTE: If an operating system other than Windows is being used, consult the OS vendor for methods of printing extended ACSII characters.