There are a couple of elements appearing in the working area - barcode, human readable, margins and comment. Since the working area includes not only the barcode image, in this manual we use the term “label” or “the working area” to refer to the whole drawing.
The whole drawing (label) consists of three major components, as you can see from the illustration below: (1) the bounding borders surrounding the label; (2) symbol margins surrounding the symbol area; (3) the symbol area, which includes the barcode, human readable and the comment. Furthermore, the whole symbol area can be divided into two parts: (1) the barcode. A barcode can also have a human readable text. You can add extra white spaces surrounding the barcode, a.k.a. Quiet Zones. The human readable text can appear on the top of the barcode, or on the bottom, or does not appear at all. (2) the comment. A comment consists of one or more text paragraphs. Same as the human readable text, the comment can be placed on the top, on the bottom of the image, or does not appear at all.
Three properties control the appearance of the borders:
BorderColor,
BorderStyle and
BorderWidth.
To turn off the border, set BorderWidth to 0 or
BorderStyle to mbxBorderStyleNone.
The BorderWidth property does not affect the overall size.
The border aligns its outer edge to the boundary
of the working area.
The borders are turned off by default in Barcode DLL 3.3.
The margin properties control the marginal space around the symbol area (barcode and comment). There are four symbol margin properties: SymbolMarginLeft, SymbolMarginRight, SymbolMarginTop and SymbolMarginBottom, which define the margin spaces in the four directions respectively.
By default, Barcode DLL adds 100 mils (2.54 mm) margins surrounding the symbol. To modify the symbol margins, set the four symbol margin properties to appropriate values.
The symbol area consists of two components: barcode and comment. The barcode element comprises a barcode image, an optional human readable text and optional quiet zones. The human readable can be placed on the top or the bottom of the barcode element, or does not display at all.
The comment element contains one or more text paragraphs.
The barcode part is always placed in the center of the working area (if there is no rotation at all). The vertical position is determined by two comment margin properties: CommentMarginTop and CommentMarginBottom. If the comment is placed on top of the barcode area, the distance from the bottom edge of the comment to the top edge of the barcode is CommentMarginBottom; otherwise the top edge of the barcode is the top boundary of the symbol. Similar calculation applies to the case when comment is placed on the bottom.
The vertical position of the comment depends on the
CommentOnTop property. When this property is set to
TRUE,
the distance from the top edge of the comment to the bottom of
the symbol is expressed in
CommentMarginTop.
The distance from the bottom edge of the comment box
to the top of the barcode is expressed in
CommentMarginBottom.
The design mode affects the horizontal placement of the comment element. Under label design mode, where the label size (working area) is fixed regardless of the symbology and encoding data, the property CommentMarginLeft measures the distance from the left edge of the symbol to the left edge of the comment box. The CommentMarginRight property measures the distance from the right edge of the symbol to the right edge of the comment box. The calculation is somehow different under barcode design mode: Under barcode design mode, the CommentMarginLeft measures the distance from the left edge of the comment text box to the left edge of the barcode, and CommentMarginRight measures the distance from the right edge of the barcode to the right edge of the comment box.