Patch Codes are an essential part of Bar Code Technology. Each Patch Code is actually a combination of various barcode patterns. Usually, each Patch Code consists of six different barcode patterns. This includes patterns that are created with the numerals 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 and the alphabet T. Patch Codes are used as a part of document separator coding. Please note that document separators are recommended when handling large volumes of scanned documents. The presence of Patch Codes helps to ease the overall scanning process, making it faster and more cost-efficient.
A typical Patch Code looks like a design made up of parallel black bars that are alternated with thicker bars and spaces. When a document is being scanned, saved or retrieved, this Patch Code can be easily recognized by the scanning system. In some scanning systems, the Patch Code is identified by the scanner itself and in the more basic scanning configuration, this identification is done by the scanning or image processing software. Most scanning set-ups insist upon using the Patch Codes at the time of feeding a big pile of documents into the ADF or the sheet-feeding system of the document scanner. The Patch Code makes it much easier to distinguish the ending of one document and the start of the next document.
Patch Codes were first introduced by Kodak as a part of its document processing applications that were meant to handle larger, more voluminous documentation files. Here, Patch Codes were assigned different sets of actions or events, like a page break or section break or the preference of changing from single to duplex-sided scanning. Among the Patch Code patterns that were introduced by Kodak, some have become a bit outdated while some, like the Patch T code, remain highly popular. This particular Patch Code is popular for bar coding the Page/Document separator sheets. It should be understood that when assigning a Patch Code to a separator sheet, no data is being encoded. There can be three or four identical-looking Patch Codes on a single page, but the Patch Code software will identify this as one Patch Code since this coding system doesn’t represent any data.
If a stack of single-sided documents is followed by a series of double-sided documents or there is a mixed batch containing both types of documents in an unknown or undefined pattern, a Patch Code is likely to be inserted between the documents. This helps to change the scanner setting from simplex to duplex scanning mode and then back to simplex mode, as the type of document can be easily identified via the Patch Code. This is vital since simplex mode scanning is quite fast and helps to save time. With a Patch Code present between the documents, the scanning process needs to slow down minimally to decide if the back side of a page is blank or whether the blank image has to be included or not. This helps to save time as the scanning process doesn’t need to be stopped, the settings don’t need to be changed and this translates into cost-savings.