Label field barcode concatenation and prefixing

Prefixing

In order to streamline MSCM handheld applications, certain barcode fields must be concatenated and prefixed with two-character indicators. This enables the handheld to determine application context by simply scanning a barcode.

Unless otherwise specified, the prefix that is encoded into the barcode should not be displayed in readable text to the user. An example of this would be the location barcode which contains the LL: prefix, the company ID, another colon, followed by the location code.

The bar-coded data would be LL:1:1E, but if a label field calls for printing the location code, only 1E should be displayed.

Note: There is an issue with the data of a barcode not being centered. This issue is not significant enough to justify the display of information that would be meaningless to the end user.

Zero padding a field to a fixed length

Zero padding of bar-coded data is applied so that a program can easily parse the data and for label display purposes. The simplest way to make a barcode display as a fixed length is to ensure that the bar-coded data is a fixed length.

Concatenation

There are instances when a simple code is not sufficient to identify data to an application so it is necessary to concatenate two or more fields into the barcode in order to uniquely identify the data. An example of this is the location. Because a location code is not distinct across facilities, we concatenate the two fields, assigning each a fixed length and a unique prefix in order to identify the location to the handheld barcode application.