2:0

postnet: USPS POSTNET Barcode Encoding🔗ℹ

Neil Van Dyke

License: LGPLv3 Web: http://www.neilvandyke.org/racket/postnet/

package: postnet

1 Introduction🔗ℹ

This postnet Racket package can be used to generate the United States Postal Service POSTNET barcode binary pattern, as described in Chapter 4 of USPS Publication 25, “Designing Letter and Reply Mail,” dated 2003-06. This package supports ZIP, ZIP+4, and DBPC codes.

The generated binary representation is a Racket list of boolean values. Separate code must be written to render this representation to a particular printing devices.

2 Encoding🔗ℹ

There are several procedures for encoding POSTNET from various input representations. It is suspected that most applications will encode from a string representation, using string->postnet.

procedure
(digit-list->postnet digits) → (listof boolean?)
digits : (listof exact-positive-integer?)

Yields a POSTNET encoding of a list of digit numbers. For example:

> (digit-list->postnet '(1 2 3 4 5))

(#t #f #f #f #t #t #f #f #t #f #t #f #f #t #t #f

#f #t #f #f #t #f #t #f #t #f #f #t #f #t #f #t)

procedure
(char-list->postnet chars) → (listof boolean?)
chars : (listof char?)

Yields a POSTNET encoding of a list of characters. For example:

> (char-list->postnet '(#\1 #\2 #\3 #\4 #\5))

(#t #f #f #f #t #t #f #f #t #f #t #f #f #t #t #f

#f #t #f #f #t #f #t #f #t #f #f #t #f #t #f #t)

procedure
(string->postnet str) → (listof boolean?)
str : string?

Yields a POSTNET encoding of a string. For example:

> (string->postnet "12345-6789 01")

(#t #f #f #f #t #t #f #f #t #f #t #f #f #t #t #f

#f #t #f #f #t #f #t #f #t #f #f #t #t #f #f #t

#f #f #f #t #t #f #f #t #f #t #f #t #f #f #t #t

#f #f #f #f #f #f #t #t #f #t #f #f #t #t)

3 Debugging🔗ℹ

Although this package does not render POSTNET for OCR use, for debugging purposes, the postnet->debug-string procedure can be used to approximate the barcode visually, using ASCII characters.

procedure
(postnet->debug-string postnet) → string?
postnet : (listof boolean?)

Yields a string visual approximation of a POSTNET encoding. For example:

> (postnet->debug-string (string->postnet "12345"))
"|...||..|.|..||..|..|.|.|..|.|.|"

4 History🔗ℹ

Version 2:0 — 2016-02-28
- Moving from PLaneT to new package system.
Version 1:1 — 2011-08-22
- Changed references to Scheme to Racket.
- Changed URL.
Version 1:0 — 2009-03-03
- Licensed changed to LGPL 3.
- Converted to author’s new Scheme administration system.
- Previous version was erroneously in planet as package "postnet-planet.plt".
Version 0.2 — 2005-07-12
- Added Testeez tests.
- Minor documentation changes.
Version 0.1 — 2004-04-14
- Wrote as a diversion over dinner.

5 Legal🔗ℹ

Copyright 2004, 2005, 2009, 2011, 2016 Neil Van Dyke. This program is Free Software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ for details. For other licenses and consulting, please contact the author.