Stripes: A barcode toolkit

0.2.1

Introduction

Stripes is a project that aims to create a set of tools to produce and manage code bars. Currently it is composed by a C library (libstripes) which is the core function, a command line tool (stripes), which acts an interface to the library and a graphical tool written in C# which is an interface to the command line tool.

The set of tools was written to support Af-Arch (http://fact.aspl.es) client code bar requirements.

Supported barcode formats

Currently Stripes only supports creating bar codes of any lengths using the CODE39 standard. More formats will come in the future.

Output formats

Stripes is written using cairographics framework (http://www.cairographics.org). As a side effect it support the following backends: png (Portable Network Graphics), pdf (Acrobat document) and ps (Postscript). We did activate them as they look to us to be the most useful, but more backends are available from cairo.

API documentation

Here is the library API documentation:

How can I help (and how get it)

In any form: translations, patches, support for more bar codes, suggestions etc. Use the same mailing list available for the Af-Arch project as stripes is developed inside the same initiative. You'll find more information at the Af-Arch home page http://fact.aspl.es

License

The project is composed by three separated components and here is how they are licensed:

From a commercial point of view, you can use the library to link against it if you adquire a commercial or Aspl Open Source Aliance contract.

However, even in the case you are using the library in the GPL form, you are required to provide the source code of the library with your installation or an explicit reference from inside your program (maybe at the about window) that you are using LibStripes and the location of the source code, in a clear way.

Previous restriction isn't a problem for Open Source people as they provide full sources. In the case of a commercial (closed source) project this isn't requried.

While improving the library, modifying it in any form, you are required to provide back those changes to the main repository or provide them, in a clear way to your customer.

In the case of the tools stripes and stripes-gui, which are released under GPL, both are available to be used from Open Source projects that are released under licenses that are compatible with GPL. They can't be used from closed source project even invoked from a command line (through a system call).

You can still contact us to ask if your license is compatible with any piece inside the stripes project or to buy a license to include stripes in your commercial product without previous restriction. In any case, contact at the following address:

Sales, commercial support and license questions (English and Spanish):

To get support while using the tool, use the mailing list provided by the Af-Arch project. See resource section.

Compiling the tool

The suite is compiled using the standard unix procedure to compile projects that are built on top of autoconf.

First, you must install the following elements in order to activate the compilation for all components inside stripes:

Once you have installed all previous elements, type the following:

  ./autogen.sh
  make
  make install

Resources

[1] http://www.aspl.es Advanced Software Production Line, S.L.

[2] http://fact.aspl.es Af-Arch home page

[3] http://www.aspl.es/fact/index.php?id=26 Af-Arch mailing lists

Stripes - A barcode toolkit   Copyright 2006 (C) Advanced Software Production Line, S.L.