Evaluate addition of gtin12

[danbri]

From https://plus.google.com/u/0/108052676511190204011/posts/e1MTjatEP7s
"With over 300,000 companies using GTIN12 (Known by most across North America as the U.P.C.), it's important to add this property ASAP! "

[danbri]

I note "Former 12-digit UPC codes can be converted into a GTIN-13 code by simply adding a preceeding zero." in http://schema.org/gtin13

[danbri]

Notes from Mark Harrison,

"""According to http://www.gs1.org/barcodes/technical/idkeys/gtin there are four GTIN formats currently in use with linear bar codes, namely GTIN-8, GTIN-12, GTIN-13 and GTIN-14. GTIN-12 is synonymous with the 12-digit UPC barcode (UPC-12) in use in the USA. I think Canada might also use the GTIN-12 - not 100% sure. GTIN-13 is synonymous with the 13-digit EAN-13 barcode in use in Europe and most of the rest of the world.

Any GTIN-8, GTIN-12, GTIN-13 can be represented as a consistent 14-digit GTIN-14 by left-padding with leading zeros, e.g. '000000' concatenated with a GTIN-8, '00' concatenated with a GTIN-12, '0' concatenated with a GTIN-13.

gtin12 is no less important than gtin13, so if you already have schema.org properties for gtin8, gtin13 and gtin14, then I see no valid reason not to define a gtin12 property directly, for completeness, rather than coerce people to use a schema:gtin13 property.

Internally within consumers of schema.org the application logic should probably consider the GTIN-14 to be the canonical format. This means that the following RDF triples should be considered identical and refer to the same GTIN:

X schema:gtin12 "614141123452" .
X schema:gtin13 "0614141123452" .
X schema:gtin14 "00614141123452" .

However, note that the GTIN-14 has as its initial digit an Indicator Digit, which is not always zero. This means that there can be GTIN-14 identifiers for which there is no direct GTIN-13 or GTIN-12 equivalent, especially when the indicator digit is non-zero."""

[gkellogg]

The range of GTIN is sufficiently narrow that creating a Datatype for each would seem like a good idea. At least this would allow validators to determine if the values are reasonable, without needing to special code each property. These datatypes could have a description including a regular expression that can be used to match, if not an xsd:pattern.

Given that, it might be useful to have a gtin property which is the super-property of each of gitn8, gitn13, ... Range could then include any of the GITN datatypes.

[danbri]

I've sketched a bland definition and mailed GS1 + W3C schema.org CG folk for advice -> https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-schemaorg/2015Apr/0038.html

[danbri]

FYI this launched last week

http://schema.org/docs/releases.html#v2.0 http://schema.org/gtin12

Thanks all! /cc @ekgs1