Damon, >>If you have to embed stuff, I'd do it in a string manipulation after input, then shove it through that way.<<
There really are situations where this is impractical, although in theory I agree the cleaner the bar code, the better. Before the days of Palm and CE, we had a great inventory restocking program where the inventory lists with bar codes for different hospital departments/carts were in notebooks in sheet protectors. The staff would just mark the sheet protectors with a grease pencil and hand the books to a clerk. The clerk had a "BarPad" with numbers 0-9, several single and double hard returns, passwords, and obscure commands. They would scan in the inventory, use the barpad for amounts, etc. and never have to touch the keyboard. They just had to wipe the grease pencil markings from the books every day. No wasted paper, no extra printing, etc. Saved LOTS of time, as opposed to hand entry. >>Years ago, I heard the number at an AIAG conference that an operator makes a key stroke error every 600 key strokes, and 85 % of thos errors are caught. On a code of 39 barcode, there are less that 1 errors in 20,000,000. Gives you something to think about with data integrety <g><< AMEN to that. When I first brought bar codes to the hospital (in the form of piggy-back labels), I made enemies of the head data processing clerk. She guaranteed that she was so good that could hand enter data faster than a bar code with no errors, and challenged me to a contest to prove her point. I will admit, she was blindingly fast on the keyboard, but was NO MATCH for me with a ruby wand. It was scary to think of all the potential medical billing errors that are made due to keyboard entry. She gave up the fight after that. Bob C. [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 08/24/2003 02:27:31 PM Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (RBASE-L Mailing List) cc: (bcc: Bob Castanaro/BCH) Subject: [RBASE-L] - Re: BAR CODES In a message dated 8/22/2003 12:03:44 Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > There are a few situations here where it just makes it easier to imbed the > commands to simulate data entry into a mainframe. Sometimes we have large > strings of combined data and commands that fill in multiple fields. Great > timesaver. And your other point should be of interest to all - data entry > errors are reduced to an extreme minimum. The Bar Code does not lie...... Bob, If you have to embed stuff, I'd do it in a string manipulation after input, then shove it through that way. Years ago, I heard the number at an AIAG conference that an operator makes a key stroke error every 600 key strokes, and 85 % of thos errors are caught. On a code of 39 barcode, there are less that 1 errors in 20,000,000. Gives you something to think about with data integrety <g> DamonIn a message dated 8/22/2003 12:03:44 Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
There are a few situations here where it just makes it easier to imbed the
commands to simulate data entry into a mainframe. Sometimes we have large
strings of combined data and commands that fill in multiple fields. Great
timesaver. And your other point should be of interest to all - data entry
errors are reduced to an extreme minimum. The Bar Code does not lie......
Bob,
If you have to embed stuff, I'd do it in a string manipulation after input, then shove it through that way.
Years ago, I heard the number at an AIAG conference that an operator makes a key stroke error every 600 key strokes, and 85 % of thos errors are caught. On a code of 39 barcode, there are less that 1 errors in 20,000,000. Gives you something to think about with data integrety <g>
Damon
