Abbreviation for AIM International, a world-wide trade organization for manufacturers and providers of bar code products, services and supplies.

The character set and code described in American National Standard Code for Information Interchange, ANSI X3.4-1977. Each ASCII character is encoded with seven bits.

BMP is a raster graphics format developed by Microsoft. BMP is the native grahpics format for Windows users. A BMP image data can be uncompressed, or compressed using RLE scheme. The file size is generally much bigger than other types since the compression scheme is not very effective.

Synonymous to “Check digit”.

A character whose value is calculated based on certain algorithm and used for the purpose of performing a mathematical check to ensure the accuracy of the data. In many symbologies this character has a numeric value hence the name.

Code 39 (also known as USS Code 39, Code 3 of 9) is the first alpha-numeric symbology developed to be used in non-retail environment. It is widely used to code alphanumeric information, such as the model number etc. It is designed to encode 26 upper case letters, 10 digits and 7 special characters.

Code 93 is a discrete, variable length, self-checking symbology. It is derived from Code 39 with major enhancements. Code93 encodes all 127 ASCII characters and does not require special scanner configuration.

EAN is designed by the International Article Numbering Association (EAN) in Europe. It is an extension to UPC-A to include the country information. EAN-13 encodes 12 digits of numeric data along with a trailing check digit, for a total of 13 digits of barcode data.

EAN-8 is the short version of EAN-13, the same as UPC-E vs. UPC-A. An EAN-8 number contains 7 digits of message plus 1 check digit. Different from UPC-E, an EAN-8 number is allocated separately and can not be derived from an EAN-13 number.

Acronym for Enhanced MetaFile. A newer 32-bit version of Windows MetaFile. EMF contains frame information and contain more drawing commands then its predecessor, WMF.

A character other than a 7-bit ASCII character. An extended character is a 1-byte code point with the eighth bit set (ordinal 128 through 255).

Acronym for Graphics Interchange Format. GIF is a bitmap image format encoding up to 256 distinct color in a 24-bit RGB color space. GIF employs LZW data compression, which does not lose image data during the compression process.

Organization that oversees the allocation of U.P.C. and EAN numbers. Formerly known as Uniform Code Council (UCC).

Acronym for Global Trade Item Number. A 14-digit number that uniquely identifies a trade item.

Acronym for Health Industry Bar Code. A bar code format based on code 3 of 9 adopted by health industry.

JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. It is commonly referred as an image format.

Acronym for Portable Network Graphics. PNG is a bitmap image format that employs lossless data compression.

POSTNET (Postal Numeric Encoding Technique) encodes a US numeric address code (also called Zip code) which may contain 5, 9 or 11 digits - often called Zip, Zip+4 and Zip+6.

A special bar/space pattern that provides the scanner with start and stop reading instructions as well as scanning direction indicator. Most linear symbologies require start/stop characters included in the barcode.

Acronym for Tagged Image File Format. Also abbreviated as TIFF. TIF is a bitmap image format capable of storing multiple images. It is widely used in scanning, faxing and word processing.

UCC/EAN-128 was developed to provide a worldwide standard for exchanging data between different companies. UCC/EAN-128 provides a method of defining the meaning of the data through a list of "Application Identifiers" a.k.a. AIs.

The UPC-A barcode is the most common and well-known symbology in North America. UPC-A encodes 11 digits of numeric data along with a trailing check digit, for a total of 12 digits of barcode data.

The UPC-E barcode is the short form representation of a UPC-A number. It reduces the data length from 12 digits to 6 digits by compressing extra zeros.

Abbreviation for U.S. Postal Service.

Acronym for Windows Metafile. WMF is a graphics file format on Microsoft Windows. WMF is a vector graphics format which stores drawing commands instead of color information of pixels.