Now there are a few special codes (like QR code) that have extra options because their non-linear structure, but most linear types like the Code 128 or Ean\/Upc codes have their data displayed just below them. With 12.1 there\u2019s a small update that allows you to hide that along with a CTP imaging library to make you \u2018bar-coding\u2019 life easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Human-Readable Text<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
That part is called very appropriately the human-readable text as the barcode is machine-readable and some standards provides us with friendly image that still carries meaning without a barcode reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While this is all very nice, there might be cases where you need just the barcode, cases where it is not required or reasonable to have that text. A new property was recently added to the controls that have such in order to be able to control if the data should be visible or waste your ink. A simple \u2018ShowText\u2019 property is now available for the following codes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a small change, but it may very well prove impactful, so let\u2019s see how to use it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Start by adding the required references \u2013 (naming is identical across the platforms) Infragistics<platform>.v12.1.dll, Infragistics<platform>.DataVisualization.v12.1.dll, Infragistics<platform>.Controls.Barcodes.v12.1.dll. Setting up the XamBarcode controls, providing data and controlling the human-readable text can be easily done solely in XAML via binding. For example let\u2019s have our user input the data in a field and give him some sort of a switch (toggle button, radio buttons, checkbox, etc.) to bind the \u201cShowText\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then add some Xam<code>Barcode controls to your page:<\/p>\n\n\n\n After some arrangement and styling the demo can looks like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are some additional buttons I\u2019ve added and will comment on them below, but for now we are interested in the \u2018show\u2019hide\u2019 toggle button that when unchecked will cause all barcodes to loose their text:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Besides letting the user control what happens with the text, you could set that in code as well and there are some interesting applications for that as well. What you can do is display barcodes to the user with their readable data and then hide it just before printing or the other way around! Here\u2019s how that would look in a WPF application (note we have a whole bunch of barcodes so we just switch the toggle button to affect all of them, but the barcode controls can be used instead):<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also the CTP feature I mentioned that is meant to help Silverlight applications encode images \u2013 you can use that too! Let the user save an image of the barcodes in the application with or without the text and you could also control the quality of the image:<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s no doubt barcodes are useful \u2013 they can be data-packed, they can streamline and organize processes and they are everywhere. Using the XAML Barcode controls you can integrate such popular functionality in your application with great ease. Now you have even more control to the visuals of the linear barcodes with human-readable text \u2013 you can show or hide it to properly present it to the user or for printing or saving to an image!<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can download the Demos<\/strong> shown above for <\/em>Silverlight<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>WPF<\/em><\/a>! Also you can see all the different types of codes in action visiting our <\/em>Silverlight Online Samples<\/em><\/a>! And you can download the WPF ones from the link above and find the Windows Phone samples in the Market.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Follow us on Twitter <\/em>@Infragistics<\/em><\/a> and join the competition on <\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a> and don\u2019t forget to vote for us in the Code Project\u2019s Reader\u2019s Choice Awards<\/a>!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Parallel lines with varying width and spacing \u2013 they are virtually everywhere. Barcodes have a rather long history of becoming a standard for assigning data to an optical representation and it allowed for identifying a broad range of goods in stores, shipping containers and countless other items, which in turn streamlined multiple industry processes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":2370,"comment_status":"publish","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-how-to"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2185,"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions\/2185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infragistics.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/media.infragistics.com\/community\/Release\/12.1\/XAML\/XamBarcode\/human-readable_text.png\" "\\"The")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n
Adding Barcodes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<TextBox x:Name=\"userInput\"\/>\n<ToggleButton x:Name=\"textToggle\" IsChecked=\"True\">show\/hide text<\/ToggleButton><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
xmlns:ig=\"http:\/\/schemas.infragistics.com\/xaml\"\n\n<ig:XamCode39Barcode Data=\"{Binding Text, ElementName=userInput}\" ShowText=\"{Binding IsChecked, ElementName=textToggle}\" \/>\n<ig:XamCode128Barcode Data=\"{Binding Text, ElementName=userInput}\" ShowText=\"{Binding IsChecked, ElementName=textToggle}\" Grid.Column=\"1\"\/>\n<ig:XamEanUpcBarcode Data=\"{Binding Text, ElementName=userInput}\" ShowText=\"{Binding IsChecked, ElementName=textToggle}\" Grid.Column=\"2\"\/>\n<ig:XamInterleaved2Of5Barcode Data=\"{Binding Text, ElementName=userInput}\" ShowText=\"{Binding IsChecked, ElementName=textToggle}\" Grid.Row=\"1\" \/>\n<ig:XamGs1DataBarBarcode Data=\"{Binding Text, ElementName=userInput}\" ShowText=\"{Binding IsChecked, ElementName=textToggle}\" Grid.Row=\"1\" Grid.Column=\"1\"\/>\n<ig:XamRoyalMailBarcode Data=\"{Binding Text, ElementName=userInput}\" ShowText=\"{Binding IsChecked, ElementName=textToggle}\" Grid.Row=\"1\" Grid.Column=\"2\"\/><\/pre>\n\n\n\n![\"Demo](\"https:\/\/media.infragistics.com\/community\/Release\/12.1\/XAML\/XamBarcode\/Barcodes_with_human-readble_text.png\" "\\"Demo")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Demo](\"https:\/\/media.infragistics.com\/community\/Release\/12.1\/XAML\/XamBarcode\/Barcodes_without_human-readble_text.png\" "\\"Demo")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nMaking the Most of It<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
private void PrintButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)\n {\n \/\/print document\n PrintDialog printDialog = new PrintDialog();\n if (printDialog.ShowDialog() == true)\n {\n \/\/turn text off if it's visible\n if (this.textToggle.IsChecked == true)\n {\n this.textToggle.IsChecked = false;\n _changed = true;\n }\n \/\/print\n printGrid.Measure(new Size(printDialog.PrintableAreaWidth, printDialog.PrintableAreaHeight));\n printGrid.Arrange(new Rect(10,10,printDialog.PrintableAreaWidth, printDialog.PrintableAreaHeight));\n printDialog.PrintVisual(printGrid, \"Barcodes Docs\");\n \n \/\/ set text back on if it was removed for printing\n if (_changed)\n {\n this.textToggle.IsChecked = true;\n _changed = false;\n }\n }\n }<\/pre>\n\n\n\nusing (Stream stream = saveDialog.OpenFile())\n {\n Infragistics.Imaging.JpegImageEncoder jpgEncoder = new Infragistics.Imaging.JpegImageEncoder();\n List<EncodingProperty> qualityList = new List<EncodingProperty>();\n qualityList.Add(new JpegQualityProperty() { Quality = 100 });\n jpgEncoder.Encode(bitmap, qualityList, stream);\n }<\/pre>\n\n\n\nConclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n