Code 128

Code 128 is a very high-density barcode symbology. It is used for alphanumeric or numeric-only barcodes. It can encode all 128 characters of ASCII and, by use of an extension symbol (FNC4), the Latin-1 characters defined in ISO/IEC 8859-1.

GS1-128 (formerly known as UCC/EAN-128) is a subset of Code 128 and is used extensively worldwide in shipping and packaging industries as a product identification code for the container and pallet levels in the supply chain. The symbology was formerly defined as ISO/IEC 15417:2007.

A Code 128 barcode has six sections:

The check symbol is calculated from a weighted sum (modulo 103) of all the symbols.

Code 128 includes 108 symbols: 103 data symbols, 3 start symbols, and 2 stop symbols. Each symbol consist of three black bars and three white spaces of varying widths. All widths are multiples of a basic "module". Each bar and space is 1 to 4 modules wide, and are fixed width: the sum of the widths of the three black bars and three white bars is 11 modules.

The stop pattern is composed of two overlapped symbols and has four bars. The stop pattern permits bidirectional scanning. When the stop pattern is read left-to-right (the usual case), the stop symbol (followed by a 2-module bar) is recognized. When the stop pattern is read right-to-left, the reverse stop symbol (followed by a 2-module bar) is recognized. A scanner seeing the reverse stop symbol then knows it must skip the 2-module bar and read the rest of the barcode in reverse.

Despite its name, Code 128 does not have 128 distinct symbols, so it cannot represent 128 code points directly. To represent all 128 ASCII values, it shifts among three code sets (A, B, C). Together, code sets A and B cover all 128 ASCII characters. Code set C is used to efficiently encode digit strings. The initial subset is selected by using the appropriate start symbol. Within each code set, some of the 103 data code points are reserved for shifting to one of the other two code sets. The shifts are done using code points 98 and 99 in code sets A and B, 100 in code sets A and C and 101 in code sets B and C to switch between them):

The minimum width of the Quiet Zone to the left and right of the 128 Bar Code is 10x, where x is the minimum width of a module. It is mandatory at the left and right side of the barcode. The quiet zone must not be less than 4 mm × 1.65 mm depending on the type of bar code. Source: Figure 5.2.1.4.4 – 1 of GS1 General Specifications

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