Hi all,
I was excited to see the barcode generator plugin in Inkscape 0.46, finally I can make my own EAN-13 barcodes for book jacket designs :-)
I ran into this bug though, while testing 64 Studio 3.0 beta 3, which is Ubuntu Hardy LTS based. The Inkscape package is the same binary as in Hardy.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/inkscape/+bug/334073
I think I found the cause, a bug in the plugin. If you select Barcode Type as EAN13 and enter 13 digits into the Barcode Data field, which is correct according to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Article_Number
you get the error as shown in the Launchpad ticket. If you enter any number of digits other than 12 or 13, it warns:
Can not encode '97819050823' into EAN13 Barcode, Size must be 12 numbers only No barcode was generated
However if you enter the first 12 digits of an ISBN-13, Inkscape will generate a bogus EAN-13 barcode, which will probably not scan in book stores because it has the final checksum digit missing.
I think there's been a mix-up between 12 digit UPC barcodes and 13 digit EAN-13 barcodes used for book ISBN's. Sorry if this is too obvious and you knew about the problem already.
If anyone has a barcode scanner available, I would love to do some quality control testing on this feature, because once it's printed on the back of the book, it's too late to change :-)
Cheers!
Daniel