Bar coding - European Article Number (EAN)

Composition of EAN (European Article Number) barcode symbol

where || represent guard bars.

The guard bars alert the moving light beam of the scanner that information is about to be passed to the scanner.
For NZPN-13 the first character is generated from the left hand number characters .

Formation of pictorial number characters

Each character consists of 7 vertical strips (or "modules") of equal size.
Dark modules (1) light modules(0)
Each may be dark or light. The main constraint in the formation of characters is that each must consist of 2 dark bars and 2 light bars.
These rules allow for only 40 seven bit combinations, of which three number sets of 10 digits are formed "A, B and C".
If you want to add a EAN bar code to your web page, just at the following HTML tag: "IMG SRC= "http://www.charline.be/barcode/bcimg.htm?val=1234567890123&h=65" where val is the 13-digit number to be encoded and h is the height.

Digit	Number-set A (odd parity)	Number-set B (even parity)	Number-set C (even parity)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9	0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1	0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1	1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0

Country code

The left-hand number-characters mix sets A and B while the right hand always uses C.
Intermixing A and B in the left-hand number characters enables encoding of 7 number characters.
The following table shows how number-sets are mixed to give the additional digit.

Number set used in Left-hand Number Characters	Value of First Digit		Notes
A A A A A A A A B A B B A A B B A B A A B B B A A B A A B B A B B A A B A B B B A A A B A B A B A B A B B A A B B A B A	0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9		i) UPC-A the Left hand data set always uses set A (i.e. value 0). ii) EAN-8 the left hand four data set always uses A and Right hand four C. iii) UPC-E (short product code) has 6 number characters representing 7 digits. A check digit is generated using A and B.

Human readable characters

Part of the Standard specification is that the product number be printed underneath in human readable form. This is to allow for alternative entry of the product into a machine, for example if the symbol is damaged or unreadable by the scanner. For uniformity the OCR-B font is used.