Talk:Universal Product Code

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Does anybody understands this page?

Yes -- it's fine. Joe Cetina 03:52, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I missunderstod the following

  1. Add the odd-numbered digits (first, third, fifth, etc.) together and multiply by three.
  2. Add the even-numbered digits (second, fourth, sixth, etc.) to the result.

Read it as "Add the odd digits" and "Add the even digits", maybe some other wording would be helpfull?

ex:

  1. Add the digits on odd positions (first, third, fifth, etc.) together and multiply by three.
  2. Add the digits on even positions (second, fourth, sixth, etc.) to the result.

ok--Gbleem 17:06, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] broken link

"Details on the checksum algorithm" is broken. Maybe for the author it will be easier to find it again?

I thought the standard for the barcode is different than the Universal Product Code. --Gbleem 17:06, 14 December 2005 (UTC)


The algorithm for checksum shown only works if the first digit is 0. It should read add the odd digits 3rd+5th+7th etc...it should not include the 1st digit (the identifier)

[edit] And EAN?

"In addition, this also expands the numbers available for the U.S. and Canada by 50%, adding 10 to 14 to the 00 to 09 (0 to 9 in UPC) already in use." If they reserved 0 for upc then why 11, 12 and 13? Am I misreading this?? --Gbleem 17:15, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

See the Country Codes section below. --[REL] 2007 July 2

[edit] what about scaling, cropping height and 8 digit versions?

--Gbleem 17:15, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Universal or Uniform??

"Universal" per the excerpt of some book I have but can't find the title. Someone else, hopefully, will list a reference. --[REL] 2007 July 2

--Gbleem 18:45, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Email from George

--Gbleem 05:51, 16 December 2005 (UTC) I sent an email to George J. Laurer asking him to look our article and this is his reply:

Dear Mr. Martin,

I hate to bust your bubble, but I believe you have numerous errors in your articles and the structure of the articles certainly misleads readers.

For the most part this comes from the references you cite which in themselves are not correct.


Article “Universal Product Code” As an example: You state “Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver patented a bullseye[sic] style code in 1952 and the first commercial [sic] use of barcodes was in 1966.” Their patent was filed in 1949. You infer that it was used in 1966 which it was not. You say “In 1970 Logicon Inc. created the Universal Grocery Products Identification Code (UGPIC). In 1970 it was used by Monarch Marking in the United States and Plessey Telecommunications in the United Kingdom.[3] (a consulting firm) in conjunction with UGPCC”. Again not true at all. Read Revolution at the Checkout Counter by Stephen A. Brown. He was the council for UGPIC.

Your section “Current Code” makes statements which are then contradicted in the section “Representation”. An example is: “Company prefixes are assigned by EAN-UCC, which is now using longer company codes (with shorter item codes) for smaller companies.”

The section “Expansion” is entirely incorrect.

Further, UPC should not be used. The correct abbreviation is U.P.C. with periods.

Article “Barcode” There are many errors and omissions. I suggest checking the book Punched Cards to Bar Codes by Benjamin Nelson.

Jeff, this reminds me of the game we played in grade school. One person would tell the person next to him a short story. That person told the next person and so on around the room. When it got back to the originator, it bore no relation to the original story. I believe that is how the inaccuracies crept into your article. Many of your references contain the same inaccuracies.

I think your articles are important and needed and I commend you for your effort. However in their present form they to more harm than good. More research is needed. I wish I had the time to rewrite your copy.

[edit] Bad example?

For example, let's say the the first digit in a barcode, after the 1-1-1 start code, is one

what 1-1-1 start code? I only know of the mentioned 101 code. --Abdull 19:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Number of unique items

How many unique items can be indexed with UPC / EAN? --Abdull 19:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Country Codes

There's a section for Country Codes in the article, that starts "The first 3 digits of the bar code of any product you buy represents the country." However, the rest of the article states that a UPC code is twelve digits, starting with one digit for product type and five for manufacturer code. Nowhere else in the article mentions country codes. So why mention these numbers? 12 != 3+12 --Mozai 19:22, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

When you consider the U.P.C.-A the same as the EAN-13 if you right justify a 13-digit number (including the check digit) and look at the country codes, then it makes sense. The bar codes for U.P.C.-A and EAN-13 are the same--but the listing of the numbers on the packaging isn't. --[REL] 2007 July 2

[edit] Example image is wrong

I was implementing code based on this page and ran into trouble -- which I eventually realized was my own fault, the result of my example image being an EAN code, not a UPC code -- but part of the problem was the example image on this page is also EAN, not UPC. Look at the code for the digit '2' -- it uses the EAN odd parity code 2122, not the code 2212 from the table in the representation page.

Forget that. So far as I can tell, the representation section is wrong. It mixes even-parity and odd-parity UPC codes. I will edit it to be consistent with other information on UPC on the net and the example image.

[edit] UPC-A Is Used As An Undefined Term

The page uses UPC-A as an undefined term. It starts talking about UPC-A without giving an overview that says what the relation of UPC-A is to UPC or EAN. Is there a UPC-B? If so does it have a different checksum algorithm? Or is UPC-A simply a synonym for UPC? It would be nice if someone could fix these things on this page. In general the term "UPC-A" should be defined before it is used. - ATBS 14Jun06

There is a U.P.C.-E which is a condensed version of the U.P.C.-A. --[REL] 2007 July 2

[edit] Dividers

What digit are the double, long, thin, bars that divide the code into sections, and why are they there? Is it 6, as said by a character in the movie Naked.83.118.38.37 23:18, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Length of Company Prefix not simply "6"

According to the GS1 US FAQ[1], the "U.P.C. Company Prefixes can vary from six to ten digits in length".

"A further stimulus is the fact that in 2005, associated with the 2005 Sunrise program, GS1 US has

begun issuing variable-length GS1 Company Prefixes and retailers are expected to accept imported products identified with GS1 Company Prefixes. Both changes will lead to an increasing number of coupon mis-redemptions if the full Company Prefix is not processed. This will impact retailers, manufacturers, and coupon processing agents." taken from "North American Coupon Application Guideline using GS1 DataBar (RSS) Expanded® Symbols" (27 June 2007) written by GS1 US--[REL] 2007 July 23

[edit] History Section

there's a lot of history of UPCs in the barcode article. Should that be moved here?


I moved my "Development of the IBM UPC proposal".UPCMaker 21:50, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Periods in U.P.C.

I have added periods in most of the instances of UPC in this article. (the main ones I didn't were inside of links) in accordance with George's letter. I have been reading quite a bit about barcodes over the past year or so, and it is supposed to be U.P.C. (I'm pretty sure the reason is legal, to differentiate from Uniform Plumbing Code.) VikÞor | Talk 05:02, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

No periods should be used. Standard usage is without, and as an acronym no periods is standard. Regardless of whether "George" likes them there or not, actual usage is definitely without periods. 172.151.113.138 23:27, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
People say, "ain't" but as an editor writing a formal document, I'm going to write, "is not" instead. If a court of law made the distinction, I'll make the distinction. --[REL] 2007 July 2

[edit] UPC Wiki

I added an external link to www.upcwiki.com. In the interest of full disclosure, I am the owner of that site. UPC Wiki is an attempt to create a complete product catalog of all retail goods in the world, identified by their unique barcode. In any case, if you have any questions or concerns with my addition of the link, please let me know. But I feel that the site and the addition of the link provides value to Wikipedia. If you feel otherwise, please provide constructive feedback on how I may improve things.

kind regards,

--Casey Plummer 15:22, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] UPC-A

Isn't UPC-A S-5-M-5-Check (SLLLLLMRRRRRX), not S-6-M-6-Check as stated in the article? I know all the products with UPC-A bars within easy reach of me are this way; Also EAN seems to be S-6-M-5-Check (Read "EAN and UPC are the same Symbol" near the end of this article) --tonsofpcs (Talk) 17:09, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] UPC Image

UPC Image is wrong - according to GS1 General specifications first and last digit of UPC-A should be printed outside the symbol to indicate boundaries of the quiet zones (which are necessary for th e bar-code scanner to scan properly. I will be submitting the right symbol representation shortly. Gs1mo 12:54, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Redundant "code"

There are several instances of the redundant usage of "code" after UPC. Shouldn't these be removed? Check out the article on "RAS syndrome".

..."ATM machine," yes, it's redundant.
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[edit] Trimming the External links section

At present most of this article's external links are not compliant with our Wikipedia:External links guideline. There are one or two links that provide historical info about barcodes. I'd be tempted to keep these, since getting reliable published info has not been easy. Most of the rest are promoting commercial products or services, and these should go. (Wikipedia is not a business directory). Please give your opinion if you think any of these should be kept. EdJohnston (talk) 22:55, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ISBN mapping?

ISBNs are mapped to EAN (and vice versa) with the Bookland code. Is there any such mapping with UPC? A look at my book shelf did not reveal any obvious correlation. Thanks, Tim Landscheidt (talk) 23:45, 23 January 2008 (UTC)