John, I do indeed have the font(s) installed in Word. And yes, I can type certain characters and it will display in somewhat of a barcode font.
However, I do know, from however much research I have done this far, is that a series of binary strings are necessary to display the barcode correctly. I know this because I download the evaluation versions of some of the software that does the 2D barcode conversion. Those are all blackbox implementations though. I need something that I can invoke via CF via a webapp, and then embed in my documents. You cannot just type "Hello world" in word and apply the font and get the correct barcode. You will get something in the barcode font, but not the desired result. "Hello world" has to go through a conversion into a binary string based on a specific formula. That string has to be entered into word or ActivePDF or Adobe Acrobat or Notepad, and then the font can be applied to it to get the proper bar code. The reason I know this is because there are websites out there which do an on-the-fly conversion to the 2-D barcode and show you what the result is supposed to look like. Cheers, Ali -----Original Message----- From: Burns, John D [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 10:04 AM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: Generating BarCodes in CF If you can install the font on your PC and open word and write some text in that font to get the result you want, then you can do it on the server. Perhaps the reason you were seeing wingdings when you viewed their formula output is because you don't have the required fonts installed? If there is indeed a font that you can type and the font outputs the barcode (like in Word) then you can just use CF to call ActivePDF and send over the characters necessary to create the output and tell ActivePDf to use that font (which must be installed on the server to work correctly). John Burns Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX Developer Wyle Laboratories, Inc. | Web Developer -----Original Message----- From: Ali Awan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 12:08 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: Generating BarCodes in CF John, Yes, it is available in a font. The font is called PDF417, I believe. This sounds like the direction I may want to go in. Can you elaborate on how I could do that? We have ActivePDF installed on our server, could I do it using that? However, we can't just take plain text and apply the font to it. The plain text gets encoded into a series of binary "words" I believe. (I think it's the right terminology.... a binary string of 16 bits). Some guy came up with a formula that does the encoding. The formula itself is open source, and there's a SourceForge project out there, that claims to convert a text string to the 2D barcode. I downloaded it and ran their sample app, and all it does is convert the text into WingDings. That was one dead-end. Next, I found the website of some French dude that posted the entire formula for creating 2D barcodes. But since I'm not a PhD in Discrete Math, nor in Computer Science, it was way above my understanding/abilities/comprehension. Otherwise, I believe we may be able to use Coldfusion to generate the barcode if we can decipher the formula. Here's the guy's website: http://grandzebu.net/informatique/codbar-en/pdf417.htm He too claims to have a tool to encode plain text into a barcode. I downloaded it and ran it and all it did was convert my text into WingDings. So I don't know how much we can trust the formula he posts. However it looks confusing enough to be trusted :S Thanks, Ali ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Find out how CFTicket can increase your company's customer support efficiency by 100% http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=49 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:4:201530 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
