3. Using Zint Barcode Studio

Zint Barcode Studio is the graphical user interface for Zint. If you are starting from a command line interface you can start the GUI by typing

Below is a brief guide to Zint Barcode Studio which is the graphical user interface for the Zint package.

This is the main window of Zint Barcode Studio. The top of the window shows a preview of the barcode which the current settings would create. These settings can be changed using the controls below. The top most text box on this first tab allows you to enter the data to be encoded. When you are happy with your settings you can use the Save button to save the resulting image to file as a PNG, EPS or SVG image. The two sliders next to the preview allow you to change the orientation and scale of the preview image but do not affect the saved image.

The Symbology drop-down box gives access to all of the symbologies supported by Zint shown in alphabetical order.

At the bottom of the screen is an area for creating composite symbologies which appears when the currently selected symbology is supported by the composite symbology standard. GS1 data can then be entered with square brackets used to separate AI information from data as shown here.

With some symbologies extra options are available to fine-tune the appearance or the content of the symbol generated. These are given in a second tab. Here the method is shown for adjusting the size of an Aztec Code symbol.

The appearance tab can be used to adjust the dimensions and other properties of the symbol. The height value affects the height of 1- dimensional symbologies. Boundary bars can be added and adjusted and the size of the saved image can be determined.

A colour dialog is used to adjust the colour of the foreground and background of the generated image. Click on “Foreground Colour” or “Background Colour” respectively.

Clicking on the ellipsis next to the "Data to Encode" text box opens a larger window which can be used to enter longer strings of text. You can also use this window to get data from file.

Clicking on the sequence button (labelled "123..") opens the Sequence Dialog. This allows you to create multiple barcode images by entering a sequence of data inputs in the right hand panel. Sequences can also be automatically generated by entering parameters on the left hand side or by importing the data from file. Zint will generate a separate barcode image for each line of text in the right hand panel. The format field determines the format of the automatically generated sequence where characters have the meanings as given below:

The Export Dialog sets the parameters for exporting a sequence of barcode images. Here you can set the file name and the output image format. Note that the symbology, colour and other formatting information is taken from the main window.