Page 73 - ZPL II Programming Guide

ZPL Commands 53
^BC

The UCC/EAN-128 Symbology

The symbology specified for the representation of Application Identifier data is UCC/EAN-
128, a variant of Code 128, exclusively reserved to EAN International and the Uniform Code
Council (UCC).

Note • It is not intended to be used for data to be scanned at the point of sales in retail outlets.

UCC/EAN-128 offers several advantages. It is one of the most complete, alphanumeric, one-
dimensional symbologies available today. The use of three different character sets (A, B and
C), facilitates the encoding of the full 128 ASCII character set. Code 128 is one of the most
compact linear bar code symbologies. Character set C enables numeric data to be represented
in a double density mode. In this mode, two digits are represented by only one symbol
character saving valuable space. The code is concatenated. That means that multiple AIs and
their fields may be combined into a single bar code. The code is also very reliable. Code 128
symbols use two independent self-checking features which improves printing and scanning
reliability.

UCC/EAN-128 bar codes always contain a special non-data character known as function 1
(FNC 1), which follows the start character of the bar code. It enables scanners and processing
software to auto-discriminate between UCC/EAN-128 and other bar code symbologies, and
subsequently only process relevant data.

The UCC/EAN-128 bar code is made up of a leading quiet zone, a Code 128 start character A,
B, or C, a FNC 1 character, Data (Application Identifier plus data field), a symbol check
character, a stop character, and a trailing quiet zone.

UCC/EAN, UCC/128 are a couple of ways you'll hear someone refer to the code. This just
indicates that the code is structured as dictated by the application identifiers that are used.
SSCC (Serial Shipping Container Code) formatted following the data structure layout for
Application Identifier 00. See Table 8, UCC Application Identifier Table on page 57. It could
be 00 which is the SSCC code. The customer needs to let us know what application identifiers
are used for their bar code so we can help them.

There are several ways of writing the code to print the code to Application Identifier '00'
structure.

9/15/06 ZPL II Programming Guide 45541L-004 Rev. A