                            BarGen  V1.18
                            =============

                  Written by Jochen-Matthias Wienke
                 <C> 2004, All rights reserved
                      
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
1. GENERAL INFORMATION
======================

         
         
1.1. DISCLAIMER
===============

This  software comes with no warranty, either expressed or implied. The
author  is  in no way responsible for any damage or loss that may occur
due  to  direct  or  indirect usage of this software. Use this software
entirely at your own risk.



1.2. COPYRIGHT
==============

The usage of this software for  legal purposes is  FREE  and   complete 
distribution of this archive is allowed.  Programm  and   documentation  
are copyright by Jochen-Matthias Wienke.  All  rights  reserved.   That
means especially that  reverse-engineering  or changing the software or
other files of this archive is NOT ALLOWED.



1.3. DISTRIBUTION
=================

Permission is given to include this program in a public archive (such as
a BBS, FTP site or PD library (disk and CD-ROM versions)) providing that
all  parts  of  the  original distribution are kept intact.

The following files are included:

- README.TXT  ( doc-file ; this file )
- BarGen JAR/classes files by Jochen-Matthias Wienke incl. ExampleFileFilter class from the J2SDK demos
- Current Barbecue JAR file and additionally also the complete Barbecue distribution ZIP file
- jdom.jar file taken from the Barbecue distribution file



1.4. CONTACT
============

Contact author, download new versions, etc ...

http://www.worldwidehome.de



1.5. REQUIREMENTS
=================

Any supported OS with at least Java 2 Release 1.4 installed.




2. INSTALLATION
===============

- Copy all files of the archive to a directory of your choice on your harddisk.

- Please go sure that required barbecue.jar file afterwards is in the same directory as BarGen.jar

- In order to export SVG imagefiles also go sure the jdom.jar file is in the same directory as BarGen.jar
  
- Start BarGen by executing the BarGen JAR file (e.g. by typing "java -jar BarGen.jar" 
  within a console wndow from it's directory) or on a standard Windows Java installation 
  also simply by doubleclicking on the BarGen JAR file.



3. INTRODUCTION
===============

BarGen was created in 2004 when I worked on some barcode issues.
I needed just a very simple tool to create flexible and quick Code128-B 
barcodes.
The generated barcodes can be viewed, printed and saved as image files.

BarGen uses external Java classes from Barbecue project. This project 
finally brings barcode components to Java, and that for free. Many 
thanks to all the people involved!
Further information about Barbecue can be found at:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/barbecue/

Currently, not all features of Barbecue are supported. E.g. there is not
yet a support for all barcode type specific settings (e.g. extended Code 
39). And it has to be mentioned that both, BarGen and Barbecue are in a 
beta stadium and may contain some bugs! E.g. PDF417 code may be very 
experimental so far. Maybe additional features will be added depending on 
time issues, feedback and further improvements of Barbecue project.



4. USAGE
========

After starting BarGen, main window appears. Enter the characters here for
which you want to create the barcode (textfield "Code") and change settings
if necessary.

By clicking on the button "Generate", a window including the generated 
barcode will appear. Furthermore, printing and saving the barcode as image 
is possible out of that window.



5. HISTORY
==========

V0.10
-----
first version released

V0.11
-----
- Implemented SVG export
- Implemented Page Format Setup for printing
- Implemented Print Dialog before printing

V0.12
-----
- Implemented Barcode Type selection and support for all types of Barbecue 
  1.0.6b distribution except for UCC-128 (no barcode specific settings like 
  optional checksum supported).

V0.14
-----
- Implemented requesters for barcode types with optional checksum and 
  Application Identifier input for UCC-128. Added UCC-128 support.

V1.16
-----
- Some minor updates.

V1.17
-----
- Updated BarGen to work with Barbecue 1.5 Alpha 2. Since there were 
  foundamental API changes it's not compatible to older Barbecue versions
  anymore.
- Added GIF, PNG and EPS image file output.
  However, GIF export doesn't seem to work at the moment although no error
  is indicated by respective Barbecue Java classes (maybe due to current 
  alpha release?).
  SVG export doesn't work anymore without additionally installed JDOM.jar 
  file.
- New Barbecue 1.5 barcode types: 
  Bookland 
  EAN-13 
  Interleaved 2 of 5 
  PostNet 
  Random Weight UPC-A 
  Standard 2 of 5 
  UPC-A
  
V1.18 (2011-06-04)
------------------
- Changed certain code to make it compatible running from a JAR archive.
- Application files now distributed as JAR archive
- Included current barbecue-1.5-beta1 into distribution


