5-11
start pattern
A unique pattern of light and dark elements which indicates the leftmost part of a bar-
code label.
stop pattern
A unique pattern of light and dark elements which indicates the rightmost part of a bar-
code label.
row
A lateral set of elements made up of a start pattern, codewords, and a stop pattern. Each
PDF417 symbol must have at least 3 rows. See figure below.
In each row, between left and right row indicators, there may be from 1 to 30 data code-
words. Collectively, among all rows, these codewords form data columns.
Overall Symbol Structure
Any PDF417 symbol is made up of at least 3 rows, and at most 90 rows. The minimum
number of codewords in a row is 3; this includes the left row indicator codeword, 1 data
codeword, and the right row indicator.
Every symbol contains 1 codeword (the first data codeword in row 0) indicating the total
number of data codewords within the symbol, and at least 2 error-detection codewords.
General PDF417 symbol structure is indicated in the following diagram: