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Level 4
Hi,<br /><br />I am trying to decode barcodes that have text with special character in it, like à, é, ö,... . But the decoder does not decode them correctly, the same problem when I use a hand held scanner. <br />Hand-scanner and Barcoded Forms decoder are set with Belgian keyboard settings language="nl" country="be".<br />So I figger the problem is that the data is being encoded differently in to the barcode. So I looked up the barcode in the 'XML Form Object Model Reference'. There it says that there is a setting named 'charEncoding' and there cna be different values set.<br />I tryd the default (UTF-8) and ISO-8859-1. I changed this in de xml source from the document as below:<br /><br /><field access="readOnly" h="44.45mm" name="PaperFormsBarcode1" w="82.55mm" x="28.575mm" y="95.25mm"><br /> <ui><br /> <barcode charEncoding="ISO-8859-1" errorCorrectionLevel="5" moduleHeight="0.02661in" moduleWidth="0.0133in" type="pdf417"/><br /> </ui><br /><br />But this also did not give the right result.<br /><br />Does anybody have an idea of what I am doing wrong??<br /><br />Thanks in advance,<br /><br />RonnyR
10 Replies

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Former Community Member
You need to be sure that your hand scanner supports UTF-8 encoding. If it does not then special characters encoded in the barcode may display "garbage" instead of the right characters.



Try using this sample http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/barcodedformssampleharacterencodingpdf417/ to determine which encoding method will work best for you.



Keep in mind that the character encoding is supported with Reader 7.0.5 and higher.

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Level 4
Thanks for your awnser,



I am going to contact the supplier of the handscanner for further details about configuring the handscanner.

But there still is the problem that the Barcoded Forms Decoder 7.0 software does not decode my forms properly. It has the same problem with special characters.

I have tried the following:

* barcoded form: default locale: Englisch/US ; decoder: locale language=en country=us ; the barcode itself: charEncoding: default (UTF-8)



* barcoded form: default locale: Englisch/US ; decoder: locale language=en country=us ; the barcode itself: charEncoding: ISO-8859-1



* barcoded form: default locale: nl/be ; decoder: locale language=nl country=be) the barcode itself: charEncoding: ISO-8859-1



* barcoded form: default locale: nl/be ; decoder: locale language=nl country=be) the barcode itself: charEncoding: default (UTF-8)



None of the obove combinations works with special characters.



Is it possible to decode the barcode using ISO-8859-15, because it is better compatible with the -sign, so I have read.



Thanks in advance,



RonnyR

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Former Community Member
Hi Lee,



If I scan your barcodes from your testform, which you posted here above, I still receive strange characters.



In my forms I need é,à,è and Ö all ISO-8859-1 characters.



I use a MS1690 from Metrologic. I know that you have refered to this model. Do you use this scanner? So yes which barcode settings did you use.



Thanks for the help. This is really important for us as the goverment for which I work wants to implement a whole stack of LiveCycle products.



Bjorn

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Former Community Member
Some extra information.



We use Adobe Designer 7.1

Adobe Reader 8.1

LiveCycle ReaderExtensions 7.0



Thanks for the swift feedback



Bjorn

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Former Community Member
Bjorn, are you scanning using the keyboard-wedge emulation or is the data going directly to disk through a 3rd party provider?

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Former Community Member
Hi Lee,



I am using the Metrologic MS1690 with low speed USB connection. I configure the scanner with barcodes. I do know that it is possible to use software from Metrologic but then I do need an adapter and if i am not mistake that would create a keyboarwedge.

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Former Community Member
So are you using the keyboard wedge interface or the direct to disk through the COM port?

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Level 4
Hi, I am using Metrologic MS1690 and similary the barcode scanner does not decode correctly.
<br />I tried the sample form:
<br />http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/barcodedformssampleharacterencodingpdf417/ to determine which encoding method is supported by my scanner.
<br />When I give <?xml version="1.0"?>
string asn encoded text I get the text
<br />Ö:xml versıon-İ1ç0İÇ dumped into notepad. And is all the same with all the encoding types.
<br />Is there a problem with my scanner? Do you know any information about the encodings supported by Metrologic MS1690?
<br />
<br />Which encoding should I try for correct decoding?
<br />
<br />I am using Adobe Acrobat 8.1. And it is the same in the form I designed in which the barcode field settings are:
<br />-compression turned off
<br />-xml type
<br />
<br />Any comments would be helpful. Thanks.

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Former Community Member
Let me check in with Metrologic's support group and I'll post a follow-up message shortly. I use the MS 1690 also but this unit can scan either directly to the keyboard buffer or can be used to push the data directly to the COM port to another application. I believe going through the keyboard buffer you will have problems unless your configuration is perfect.



In the mean time, if you are using the MetroLogic Softwedge Utility then go into the configuration and turn on the ALT Mode 4-digit mode. This will be slower but the scanner will enter characters into the keyboard buffer using the ALT-#### method and this may resolve your issue.



Lee.

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Former Community Member
Just some updated information on the 1690. The Focus has a serial interface, therefore the data is transmitted as ASCII data. The right translation depends from the Windows settings. The suggested settings for German characters are Code page 1252 (MS-Windows) and Code page 437 (MS-DOS).