Datamax-O'Neil PrintPAD AN-09 (Easy Print) - Manual (Page 4)

-TWO DIMENSIONAL BAR CODES - PDF 417 BAR CODE
Printing a bar code using PDF-417 bar code is almost identical to printing any other bar code, except there are a few
additional field parameters and general precautions. As with any bar code that can encode control characters such as
Carriage Return and Line Feed – DO NOT put CR/LF in the data unless you want the CR/LF to be printed in the bar code.
PDF-417 has several field parameters that may be specified:
1. COLUMNS will specify the number of columns of DATA printed in each row of the
bar code. If not specified, the default value of 2 columns is used. Note that
the actual number of columns is 4 greater than the number of data columns (there
are 2 guard columns and 2 row indicator columns).
2. SECURITY specifies the level of error detection and correction codes, from 1
through 8. If not specified, the default value for the number of data
characters to be printed is used:
1-40 characters level 2
40-160 characters level 3
161-320 characters
level 4
321-863 characters level 5
3. YDIM specifies the height of each element, in units of .005 inches. Default is
1
4. XDIM specifies the width of each element, in units of .005 inches. Default is 1
PDF-417 symbols contains:
1. A maximum of 1848 text characters (fewer if mixed with arbitrary bytes)
2. A minimum of 3 rows and a maximum of 30 rows
3. A minimum of 1 column and a maximum of 30 columns
4. Error detection and correction characters vary with different security levels:
Level 1 adds 4 codewords
Level 2 adds 8 codewords
Level 3 adds 16 codewords
Level 4 adds 32 codewords
Level 5 adds 64 codewords
Level 6 adds 128 codewords
Level 7 adds 256 codewords
Level 8 adds 512 codewords
EXAMPLE:
{PRINT:
@75,10:PD417,YDIM 6,XDIM 2,COLUMNS 2, SECURITY 3|ABCDEFGHIJKL|
}
Will print a PDF-417 bar code containing ABCDEFGHIJKL with each element .010” wide and
.030” high, with each row containing 2 data bytes and using a error detection and
correction level of 3, which adds 16 error correction code words to the bar code.
You can print any characters using the O’Neil PDF-417. It is optimized for the most common printing of a mixture of
numbers, text, and control characters.