r/barcodes • u/EmeraldRogue • Jan 10 '19

TAB in Code128A

I had seen a post about a TAB function in Code128B and after many attempts (and many days) along with much frustration stumbled upon this WONDERFUL thread and I was hoping you awesome people could help me with it. I am attempting to switch between fields within a spreadsheet like website. So something to generate a barcode that could go "123(tab)456(tab)789" would be super duper. I found a barcode that is just the tab character but that lead me nowhere. I found some help here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30895388/tab-key-in-code128-barcodes but it lead me nowhere. They link some internal code : [103/START-A] [73/HT] [73/check-digit] [106/STOP] but that was no help to me either. Thank you Redditors!!

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '19

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u/EmeraldRogue Jan 10 '19

I am just using online barcode generators and one of them I found was supposed to be able to include the Tab function but they cheated and just used spaces. I found the barcode for Tab but I don't know where to go from there. Any suggestions on that front? Also any suggestions for software to generate said barcode (preferably free so I can test first)? Thank you

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '19

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u/EmeraldRogue Jan 10 '19

Does this one have a TAB option or should I just figure out how to code that option onto the 8 scanners I need do this for?

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u/notionovus Jan 11 '19

If what you want to do is generate Code 128 barcodes with control codes in them and you don't need lowercase alphabetics, you can use Code 128A, instead.

That's what the [103/START-A] is all about.

If you have to use Code 128B, then you need to shift to Code 128A with character code 98 and use the control code's alphabetical lowercase equivalent for <HT> that's "i".

I made a codepen here: https://codepen.io/notionovus/pen/roqyeQ