Posted: November 02 2007 at 5:48pm | IP Logged

I'm demoing the Active X control for a tag printing application that is being built. I am able to successfully generate the DataMatrix barcode, but its far too large. The ActiveX control tells me that it has to be at least 40x40, but its only 10 alphanumeric characters long. I've run through a couple of other tag printers and they all print it at 14x14. Is there something I'm not setting properly?

Thanks!

Posted: November 05 2007 at 3:46pm | IP Logged

Hmm...not sure what happened over the weekend, but when I try it now, it tells me the minimum size is 16X16, which would make sense as the original matrix is 14X14 and I'm sure whatever DEMO message is attached pushes up to 16X16. I'll keep an eye on it and repost if it acts up again.

Thanks.

Posted: November 05 2007 at 4:25pm | IP Logged

If you are using DataMatrix Fontware Trial Version(http://www.morovia.com/font/datamatrix.asp), "DEMO " text goes into the barcode, which will increase the overall size.

Posted: November 20 2007 at 4:14pm | IP Logged

And lo, it has returned. I ended up picking up a retail copy for developers because Morovia's software was probably the most robust for the price. When I went back into my demo app, I got the message saying the size had to be 40X40, even though I was passing it the same 10 character string as before. It seems to want to make the barcode into a 4 quadrant barcode instead of the single quadrant one I need. I don't know if this is a setting I need to change or what, since last time it kind of fixed itself. If needed, I can try and post some pictures if that will help.

Thanks

Posted: November 20 2007 at 5:16pm | IP Logged

Fixed it. Apparently, order matters.

I was setting the message, comment, and size parameters before I set the symbology. When I set the symbology, the message and comment reset to the "Morovia Corporation" default message.

When I set the symbology first, I get the barcode I was expecting.

Not sure if this is a bug or if this is the way its supposed to work, but at least its working now.

Posted: November 20 2007 at 8:51pm | IP Logged

I am glad that it worked out for you.

http://mdn.morovia.com/manuals/bax3/Property.Message.php

This behavior is by design.

Because each symbology has its own character set, it is impossible to switch symbology while keeping the data intact. For example, UPC-A only encodes 11 or 12 digits. Switching from DataMatrix to UPC-A will without changing the message property cause an error. To avoid this problem, we decided that the Message property is reset to default value every time that Symbology is changed.