HP Indigo Labels and Packaging powered by EskoArtwork. BarX Plug-in. User Guide

Transcription

1 HP Indigo Labels and Packaging powered by EskoArtwork BarX Plug-in User Guide

2 HP Indigo Labels and Packaging powered by EskoArtwork BarX Plug-in User Guide i

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4 Copyright 2008 Copyright Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. Reproduction, adaptation, or translation without prior written permission is prohibited, except as allowed under the copyright laws. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. HP, HP Indigo Press, HP Indigo Press RIP, and HP ElectroInk are trademarks or registered trademarks of HP. All other products or name brands are trademarks of their respective holders. Copyright 2007 Esko nv, Gent, Belgium All rights reserved. Esko nv. does not warrant, guarantee or make any representations regarding the use, or the results of the use of the software or the information contained herein. Esko nv shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, consequential or incidental damages arising out of the use or inability to use the software or the information contained herein. PANTONE Colors displayed here may not match PANTONE-identified standards. Consult current PANTONE Color Publications for accurate color. PANTONE and other Pantone, Inc. trademarks are the property of Pantone, Inc. Pantone, Inc., Pantone, Inc. is the copyright owner of color data and/or software which are licensed to Esko nv to distribute for use only in combination with LW-Brix and CT-Brix based applications. PANTONE Color Data and/or Software shall not be copied onto another disk or into memory unless as part of the execution of the LWBrix and CTBrix based applications.this software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group. This product includes software developed by the Apache Software Foundation ( Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, the Acrobat logo, Adobe Creative Suite, Illustrator, In- Design, PDF, Photoshop, PostScript, XMP and the Powered by XMP logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Microsoft and the Microsoft logo are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. "SolidWorks is a registered trademark of SolidWorks Corporation." Portions of this software are owned by Spatial Corp All Rights Reserved. JDF and the JDF logo are trademarks of the CIP4 Organisation. Copyright 2001 The International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress (CIP4). All rights reserved. The Esko software contains the "RSA Data Security, Inc. MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm". Java and all Java-based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems in the U.S. and other countries. Confidentiality notice This guide and any information contained herein is confidential and should not be disclosed to any third party outside of HP Indigo. Do not copy and/or disseminate any information contained in this guide. This guide should be maintained in a manner which shall ensure compliance with the confidentiality requirements set forth herein. This document contains valuable trade secrets and confidential information of Hewlett-Packard Company. Nothing herein may be copied, reproduced or distributed in any form or medium, or disclosed to any third party in any manner, without prior written authorization of Hewlett-Packard Company. The copyright notice, which appears in this document, is purely precautionary and shall not be deemed to constitute publication or intent to publish, in whole or in part. Part Number: CA First Edition: February 2008 Printed in Israel

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6 Contents 1 Introduction Supported Barcode types Barcode Settings... 4 Code...4 Rotation...4 Bar width reduction...5 Device Compensation...5 Magnification...5 Height...5 Output resolution...5 Box...5 Snap bars to Output Resolution...6 Light margin indicator Extra functionality... 7 Dynamic behaviour...7 Positioning of the barcode object Special Types of barcodes... 8 DATAMATRIX barx Preferences... 9

7 Introduction Barcodes are just the visible part of often quite large systems frequently referred to as automated identification systems, which, increasingly, are proving to be some of the most cost-effective management tools, since they enable organizations to keep track of their goods and stocks in all kinds of situations in a fast, accurate and efficient way. With barx, you can add a dynamic barcode to your Adobe Illustrator document without leaving your application. Dynamic means that your barcode settings can be changed later on, even after you saved, closed and reopened your document. Bar/X is part of the VDP Pack for HP indigo Labels and Packaging Server powered by EskoArtwork. You select a barcode type from the dropdown list, select an orientation and you define the barcode in the dialog which changes according to the kind of barcode that you have chosen. The Bar/X menu is accessed via Window, Esko, Bar/X. Mind that usage of this menu is for non-variable jobs only, where you type in the barcode manually. For variable data jobs, when you want to print every label with a different barcode, barcodes are made within the VDP plugin. Please refer to the VDP manuals: VDP Pack User Guide This manual ia then also useful as a technical reference manual for Barcode properties. 2

8 Supported Barcode types 2 of 5 CLF-8 CODABAR CODE 128 CODE 128 (long) CODE 39 DATAMATRIX EAN 128 EAN 13 EAN 8 HIBC 128 HIBC 39 ITF - 14 ITF - 16 Int. 2 of 5 Laetus Pharma Code M+S 7 MSI Marks & Spencer PZN Paraf Italy UPC-A UPC-E 3

9 Barcode Settings Code To enter the digits of the barcode. Note When entering a wrong number of digits or wrong begin or end digits, the system displays a warning message, informing you of the required number of digits or displaying the correct code. Rotation To rotate your barcode 90 or 180 degrees, you can use the rotation buttons next to the Type dropdown. For any other rotation angle use the Rotation input field. 4

10 Barcode Settings Bar width reduction To adapt the bar width of the barcode. This is necessary to adapt the barcode to printing processes where the ink tends to 'bleed'. To compensate for this ink bleeding, the bars have to be a little thinner. The exact value will be provided by your printer or customer. If the printer specifies for example that the line width will increase with 0.01mm, then specify a bar width reduction of 0.01 mm. By default, the value 0 is entered for all barcodes. This means that the bar width is not adapted. A negative value in this input box results in thicker bars, a positive value in thinner bars. See also Device Compensation below. Device Compensation This does the same as the Bar Width Reduction option. But some customers give a separate value for the device bleed compensation. Whereas the bleed tackled by the Bar Width Reduction is caused by the substrate your artwork is printed on, the device bleed is caused by the plate or film making process. If you only have one compensation value, use the Bar Width Reduction field, and leave this field on a value of 0. If you use both fields, the sum of their respective values will be used to compensate the thickness of the barcode lines. A negative value results in thicker bars, a positive value in thinner bars. Magnification Represents a reduction or enlargement percentage for proportional reduction or enlargement of the barcode. The value is an absolute factor which is automatically rounded depending on the type of barcode. As barcodes are magnified or reduced in size, the relationship between the bars remains constant The widths of individual bars and spaces however, are increased or reduced. Note Since all the values in this dialog box are related proportionally, specifying a number in the Magnification input box will influence the other values in the dialog box. Height The height of the barcode. The height covers the height of the bars and the digits (if any). Although the height does not contain information, it has to be sufficient to allow for efficient reading of the code. Warning Do not change the height of the barcode before entering a Magnification value. The height will change again according to the Magnification factor that you define. Output resolution Defines the resolution for the exposure of the barcode. The unit is ppi. Box To automatically create a box behind the barcode. You can use the link button to link the 4 box margin values and get the same distance around the barcode. 5

11 Barcode Settings Snap bars to Output Resolution When entering a value of a parameter that have influence on the bar sizes like 'Magnification', 'Bar Width Reduction' or 'Device Compensation' input fields, barx will automatically correct the input value in accordance with the selected output resolution. This correction is performed to ensure the 'elementary cell size' of the selected barcode type maps to an integral number of output pixels in the selected output resolution. The correction is necessary to prevent (unevenly distributed) errors equal to one device pixel on the widths of (some of) the bars. For example: The EAN-13 specification imposes an elementary cell width of 0.33 mm. If the user enters a magnifaction value, it will be corrected so that the corrected value multiplied by 0.33 will result in an integral number of output pixels. Light margin indicator Enabling this option will create a bigger-than sign at the end of the barcode, indicating the minimal width of the barcode box for optimal reading. Note When entering a value in the Magnification, Bar Width Reduction or Device Compensation input fields, barx will automatically correct the input value in accordance with the selected output resolution. This correction is performed to ensure the elementary cell size of the selected barcode type maps to an integral number of output pixels in the selected output resolution. The correction is necessary to prevent (unevenly distributed) errors equal to one device pixel on the widths of (some of) the bars. For example: The EAN-13 specification imposes an elementary cell width of 0.33 mm. If the user enters a magnifaction value, it will be corrected so that the corrected value multiplied by 0.33 will result in an integral number of output pixels. 6

12 Extra functionality Dynamic behaviour barx barcodes are dynamic in the sense that they can always be changed afterwards without having to create a new barcode. The barx palette will show the parameters of a barx barcode when you select it in your document. The button in the barx palette to create a barcode will change in an Apply button, pressing this button will update the selected barcode. Tip If your graphical respresentation of your barx barcode has been changed e.g. by moving some anchor points of the barcode lines manually with the Adobe Illustrator select tools, you can repair the barcode by selecting it, and clicking the Apply button of the barx palette. The barcode object thus will be recreated using the same properties at the same position. Positioning of the barcode object If you have boostx installed on your Adobe Illustrator application, creating a barcode will center the barcode object on the current boostx crosshair position. If no boostx crosshair is found in the document, the barcode will be centered on the current viewport of your active document window. 7

13 Special Types of barcodes Special Types of barcodes DATAMATRIX Datamatrix code is a so-called two-dimensional barcode and allows encoding large amounts of data. Datamatrix codes are being used more and more in packaging/label applications. Code: The string to be encoded. The maximum length of the string to be encoded depends on symbol type (rows/columns) and the nature of the data (different encodings are possible, our implemention follows the guidelines to get the most compact encoding). The encoding of control characters or binary data currently is not supported. Symbol Type: Indicates the number of columns/rows in the matrix. Datamatrix codes exist in different sizes. And the larger the size, the more data can be embedded. The Best Fit selection will select the smallest symbol type that can contain the specified code string. Cell size: This is the dimension of the basic (square) cell. Height and Width: The height and width of the total barcode. Mark that the symbol type, cell size and height/width are related. Changing any of these settings will automatically change the related fields. When Best Fit is selected, the height and width are calculated by doing a preflight on the specified code string. 8

14 barx Preferences The barx preferences (Adobe Illustrator Preferences > Esko-Graphics > barx Preferences...) allows you to define what kind of font the default font is: OCR-B Standard: typically used in the Western market, rounder font OCR-B Bitstream: typically used in the Asian market Example OCR-B Standard OCR-B Bitstream 9

15 Copyright 2008 Hewlett-Packard Company This is an HP Indigo digital print. Printed in Israel. reorder: P/N CA