Plessey/MSI

The Plessey barcode was developed in 1971 by the Plessey Company. This is a classic one-dimensional linear barcode, which was mainly used for labeling goods on store shelves and in warehouse control. The main advantage of this code at the time of its creation was the ease of printing on a dot matrix printer. It is currently considered obsolete and hardly ever found.

Plessey allows you to encode hexadecimal digits (0-F). Each digit is represented by four bits, bars. "Zero" is a thin bar, "one" is a thick one. In addition to numbers, letters A-F can also be encoded. The barcode has a start code, encoded data, a checksum code, a finish mark and a reverse reading code (the code can be read in any direction).

MSI has become one of the variations of Plessey. Unlike regular Plessey, it allows you to encode only numbers, and there is no code for reverse reading. MSI supports several kinds of checksum code, for example: Mod-10, Mod-11, Mod-1010, Mod-1110.

Both MSI and regular Plessey do not limit the length of the code, but a too long code may simply not fit the package and the reading scanner is not designed for long length, too. This is what such a long code would look like:

To add the Plessey or MSI barcode to the report page, use the Barcode object on the components sidebar in the report designer and select the code:

After choosing the type of a barcode, you can place the object on the report page. To edit the barcode, double-click on the object, or call the context menu and select the "Edit ..." item.