EAN-2

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ISSN with an EAN-2 addon representing issue number 5. Issn barcode.png
ISSN with an EAN-2 addon representing issue number 5.

The EAN-2 is a supplement to the EAN-13 and UPC-A barcodes. It is often used on magazines and periodicals to indicate an issue number.

Encoding

The encoding of EAN-2 characters is very similar to that of the other European Article Numbers. The only difference is that the digits are separated by 01. The EAN-2 always begins with "01011". Also, the R-Code is not used.

Encoding of the digits
Digit L-code G-code
000011010100111
100110010110011
200100110011011
301111010100001
401000110011101
501100010111001
601011110000101
701110110010001
801101110001001
900010110010111

The structure of the barcode is based on the value of the two digit to be encoded. The two digits treated as a single two-digit number is reduced modulo 4 and used to find the parity pattern to be used. The parity pattern repeats every 4 values.

EAN-2 Parity
Data to encode Parity pattern
00LL Encode as 0 from L table followed by 0 from L table
01LG Encode as 0 from L table followed by 1 from G table
02GL Encode as 0 from G table followed by 2 from L table
03GG Encode as 0 from G table followed by 3 from G table
04LL Encode as 0 from L table followed by 4 from L table
05LG Encode as 0 from L table followed by 5 from G table
06GL Encode as 0 from G table followed by 6 from L table
07GG Encode as 0 from G table followed by 7 from G table
......
98GL Encode as 9 from G table followed by 8 from L table
99GG Encode as 9 from G table followed by 9 from G table
Example - encoding 53
Start 5 (L) Separator 3 (G)
010110110001010100001

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References

U.P.C. Symbol Specification Manual - Appendix D