Code 128 and retail barcodes
A page of barcodes, drawn as bars: Code 128 and the retail family, EAN-13, UPC-A, EAN-8.
Data Matrix codes
A page of Data Matrix codes, drawn as squares.
A page of Data Matrix codes drawn as squares. Data Matrix is what industry marks small parts with: it stays readable at sizes where a QR code would not, and its rectangular sizes fit onto components and labels that have no room for a square.
As with every code on this site, whether it works is answered by a scanner and not by an eye. Each code carries what it says printed under it, and a code reader is run over the finished page and its reading compared with what went in.
What this example shows
- Data Matrix codes drawn line by line, square by square.
- Sizes chosen for the data rather than fixed in advance.
- Each code captioned with its own contents.
The code, in full
The same document is written twice, once in each language. Both files are shown in full, with the code coloured on the server, and can be copied in one click.
The document itself
The same document is written in each of these languages. Open the one you want to look at.
What this document weighs
This document weighs 43,329 bytes.
The team has since put a heading and two lines at the top of this page saying what the codes are for, so the earlier figure was taken on a document this one is no longer. See every document measured.
Examples near this one
QR codes
A page of QR codes, drawn as squares.
PDF417 codes
A page of PDF417 codes, drawn as stacked bars.
Aztec codes
A page of Aztec codes, drawn as squares.
A picture fitted into a box
One picture fitted into a box of one size eight ways: brought to four different sizes, stood against an edge, turned by a quarter and by an angle of its own, and mirrored — every panel drawn from the placement the rule worked out.
Internal and external links
Pages that link out of themselves and to each other.
Glossary
- QR Code
- The square of black and white dots you point a telephone at: on a poster, on a restaurant table, at the foot of a bill. It carries a web address, or the exact details of a payment, so nobody has to type anything in. On an invoice it turns paying into one tap.
- DataMatrix
- A tiny square code, sometimes smaller than a grain of rice, for things with no room for anything bigger: a box of medicine, an electronic part, a parcel. It is still read when a corner of it is scratched or smudged, which is why factories and pharmacies print it.