Talk:DotCode

Links to "commercial" web services

Links to and others have been removed, quoting Wikipedia:External_links#Links_normally_to_be_avoided #5. No alternative had been presented.

1) is this reasonable behavior - in general, but especially here?

2) where is the commercial aspect of this special page? I did not know that page before, but [] claims "Our mission is to offer ad-free file format apps [...]". So in fact this page is not created for profit. Quite the opposit is true.

The rule above states "Individual web pages that primarily exist to sell products or services, or to web pages with objectionable amounts of advertising.". This page does not sell anything. This page does not advertise anything, other than its own service - and that's a fundamental mechanism for any and every URL.

Would we need some voting whether these links are helpful or not? --Traut (talk) 21:07, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

is this reasonable behavior - in general, but especially here? - mostly, but for the fact that I reverted your good-faith revert, which I probably shouldn't have done and I've undone. I've removed content from the article which I think doesn't fit, given content guidelines on external links - you disagree, so here we are talking about it.

So in fact this page is not created for profit. Quite the opposit is true. [...] This page does not advertise anything, other than its own service - what they claim on their about page and what the webpage actually is can be totally different. The reader and generator webpages have links both in the page top bar as well as one in the page body - "Also check out our Cloud API" - which link to Aspose paid services. I think that a large part of the of the goal of the free barcode generator pages is to drive traffic to their paid services.

The other side of removing the links was that I don't think generator or reader external links are suitable for inclusion in the article. As useful as they may be as services, including them turns the tone away from encyclopedic and to a guide-book to me. What's your view on why links to readers and generators should be included? Eyesinthefire (talk) 21:57, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

they do provide a useful service and a working reference - and I now from hands-on experience how important a good and fully working reference for Code 128 is required, where many implementations support Type A only, but lack Type B and Type C functionality. --Traut (talk) 23:39, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Code128 write

https://products.aspose.app/barcode/generate/code128

Code128 Read

https://products.aspose.app/barcode/recognize Alexandr.gavriluk (talk) 23:43, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

However the web generator does not have extended functionality. Original Aspose library allows to combine Type A, Type B and Type C in your way. The web generator supports only official standard of compactification. Alexandr.gavriluk (talk) 23:46, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

However, it does not work properly, e.g. generating code-128 for "Ä" Traut (talk) 07:22, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

FNC4 allows to encode Full ISO/IEC 8859-1 charset

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_128#Using_FNC4_to_encode_high_(160%E2%80%93255)_characters

I have written the encoder and checked everything by ISO/IEC 15417

https://www.iso.org/standard/43896.html Alexandr.gavriluk (talk) 00:25, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

The bug has been identified now, why the bar codes for code 128 are wrong. --Traut (talk) 07:14, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

I will agree that it's a useful service and working reference, but I still don't think any barcode reader or generator is appropriate in one of these symbology articles.

I'm less immediately concerned by that and more concerned about Aspose specifically. I was hoping we could mostly have this discussion on the merits of the point above, but I find it inappropriate that User:Alexandr.gavriluk, who has a declared COI as an employee at Aspose is adding external links to the company, both in the article's initial creation and re-adding them after they're removed. I think regardless of what we continue to discuss regarding if external links should be included in the article, the external links to aspose.app and to aspose.com should be removed from barcode symbology articles. Eyesinthefire (talk) 23:12, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Maybe someone is entitled to be proud of the software he develops? I feel that the links are helpful. If you know better sources, feel free to replace them. But don't remove them because you don't like the person. The links do provide a useful service and reference implementation. --Traut (talk) 07:13, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't dislike User:Alexandr.gavriluk at all and don't appreciate your implication that I do. I think they have put a lot of good work into developing out these barcode symbology articles. The facts are that they have a declared financial conflict of interest on their user page and have been adding external links to the company for which that COI exist on pages for which that COI is definitely relevant. I don't think this is appropriate and think the links should be removed, even though they may be useful or in the absence of better sources. Eyesinthefire (talk) 13:49, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

So it would be ok if I would add them again? Traut (talk) 13:56, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Alexandr.gavriluk has already reverted all of my removals. Until we reach some consensus I will not make any changes to these external links, but my view on them hasn't changed. Eyesinthefire (talk) 14:46, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

1. People need to generate barcode examples

2. At this time we have only commercial (but free) sources to generate/recognize these examples.

3. Is it fair to add free commercial sources of current articles creator then other commercial sources? Alexandr.gavriluk (talk) 15:31, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

Apart from that I doubt that User:Alexandr.gavriluk is the programmer himself, since he did not want to fix an identified bug, but suggested to report a bug case instead. --Traut (talk) 07:17, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Ok, I will raise quiet zone increasing for 1D barcodes (web application) on our weekly meeting, but we have workflow that users must open the new issue. Because this is not bug (currently quiet zone size is just recommendation, not a rule), but quality issue. Alexandr.gavriluk (talk) 07:38, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

How do you consider it a recommendation only? Quiet zones of < 10 modules make the code invalid Traut (talk) 08:17, 30 March 2026 (UTC)