Encoding of the Canadian PostBar barcodes

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I am working on a software to encode postal addresses using the PostBar barcode symbology in use in Canada.

I can't find the relevant information for these codes. Wikipedia does describe PostBars, but with a caveat saying that the article is about the D12 type, whereas the Canadian Post actually uses the types D52.01/D82.01/S52.40 and S82.39, which are different and undocumented. (I also know the "CANADA POST CORPORATION 4-STATE BAR CODE HANDBOOK" document, which doesn't help.)

I need the specifics of the encoding of the fields (DCI, Postal Code, Address Locator...) and the parameters of Reed-Solomon parity bits.

I am not after an implementation, which I am able to craft myself. Thank you in advance for any tip.

barcode encoding
2 Answers

I don't think we ( Canada Post ) use PostBar anymore. Management made adoption too much of a pain for the mailer so it died. I haven't seen one on an envelope in years. Now that OCR tech is so good it wouldn't help that much to include a PostBar anyway. What they should have done is given away software that printed up the address labels in alpha-numeric order of the postal code and printed a bunch of positional marks on the top fold of the envelope based on that same postal code. That way a postal clerk need not even take the mail out of the box to see where it should be shipped to. LVM's (large volume mailers) would do this for a rebate on their bill. Ase for smaller businesses or the general public we should have just soled them prepaid envelopes in 2 or 3 standard sizes for a dime less than the cost of a stamp alone. A standard envelop can have a dedicated spot for a machine readable postal code. I would have gone with good old public-domain Braille! printed or in sharpy:-) Oh well I'm rambling now I'll stop.

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