Canada Post PostBar

Canada Post PostBar

Canada Post PostBar is the family of 4-state barcodes of Canada Post that is disclosed in US Patent 5,602,382, each with a Data Content Identifier (DCI) giving its structure and Reed-Solomon error correction over GF(64).

Uses:

• Sortation and tracking of mail by Canada Post.

Standards: US Patent 5,602,382 - Mail piece bar code having a data content identifier; Canada Post 4-State Bar Code Handbook (bar dimensions).

Data and Options

• The data field is the DCI followed by the fields of the format, which is selected by the length of the data:
  • PostBar.C10 (11 characters, 56 bars), applied by Canada Post's machines: a DCI from V to Z, the six-character postal code, and the four bars of the machine ID as digits from 0 (full bar) to 3 (tracker).
  • PostBar.G12 (12 characters, 49 bars), for international mail: a DCI from 1 to 9, the three-digit country code, and an eight-character postal code padded with spaces.
  • PostBar.S21 (21 characters, 79 bars), for customer services: a DCI from M to U, the bar code sequencer, 0 for a single symbol or 1 or 2 for the first or second of two, and 19 characters of service information.
  • PostBar.D22 (22 characters, 79 bars), applied by customers to domestic mail: a DCI from A to L, the six-character postal code, a four-character address locator and eleven characters of customer information.
• Postal codes are written without a space, alternating letters and digits. The other fields contain spaces, upper case letters and digits.
• The structures of Canada Post's Postal Encoding Module, such as D52.01 and D82.02, are not available, since their encodation is not published.

Examples

A domestic bar code, PostBar.D22:

Data:    CH0H0H01420NOTEPAPER01
Options:
Encoder: postbar

An international bar code, PostBar.G12:

Data:    9826AB12 3CD
Options:
Encoder: postbar