Code 128
barcode format
Code 128 is a high-density linear barcode symbology defined in ISO/IEC 15417:2007. It is used for alphanumeric or numeric-only barcodes. It can encode all 128 characters of ASCII and, by use of an extension symbol (FNC4), the Latin-1 characters defined in ISO/IEC 8859-1. It generally results in more compact barcodes compared to other methods like Code 39, especially when the texts contain mostly digits. Code 128 was developed by the Computer Identics Corporation in 1981.
GS1-128 (formerly known as UCC/EAN-128) is a subset of Code 128 and is used extensively worldwide in shipping and packaging industries as a product identification code for the container and pallet levels in the supply chain.
Specification
A Code 128 barcode has seven sections:
Quiet zone
Start symbol
Encoded data
Check symbol (mandatory)
Stop symbol
Final bar (often considered part of the stop symbol)
Quiet zone
The check symbol is calculated from a weighted sum (modulo 103) of all the symbols.
Subtypes
Code 128 includes 108 symbols: 103 data symbols, 3 start symbols, and 2 stop symbols. Each symbol consists of three black bars and three white spaces of varying widths. All widths are multiples of a basic "module".
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This entry incorporates text from “Code 128” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.