Wednesday, January 09, 2008

How to generate BarCode on physical forms ?

Query : How to generate Bar code on physical forms?
Solution : Barcode functionality on physical forms can be implemented using two types of technologies :

1).Using a barcode font (IDAutomation 3 of 9 Type) which is freely available from internet : the document was rendered in PDF from XML through Thunderhead Doc. Generation Software
2).Using Barcode4J barcode functionality integrated with Apache FOP for PDF document rendering (visit http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/resources.html)

Option-1 is useful if you are rendering the physical form through thunderhead document generation software; Option-2 is preferred if you want to implement bar-code independent of thunderhead;Option-2 can be easily implemented using XSL alongwith Apache FOP open source JAVA API