There are many nice features in the upcoming InterForm400 2014 version to be released this April. One of the changes, that will make the use of InterForm400 more easy is the elimination of barcode soft fonts. There are these advantages:

1. Option 3. Create barcode soft font for PCL is gone. All you need to do is to select 1. Description of additional fonts as you do for any other font.
2. When you previously created a barcode soft font you could never see what parameters you used when the barcode was created. All you could see was some special CPI and LPI values – that should not be altered! Now the parameters entered when creating a barcode font number are saved – including a description for your own use. So now you know where you are coming from if you want to alter a barcode – and with the description it should also be easier to find the right barcode font.
3. The process of changing the size of barcodes that are using a soft font is long: Remove auto download registration, delete soft font, delete font number and start all over. With the 2014 versions you can simply alter the specs and the barcode settings are changed immediately.
4. Auto download setup does sometime cause confusion and misunderstandings. Now you only need to consider that for True Type Fonts – not for barcodes. You do not need to remember the link between a barcode font number and the relevant soft font as the auto download information unfortunately is not possible to export/import. With the 2014 versions auto download is not used at all (for barcodes), so export/import is much more simple.
5. When exporting an overlay you can chose to export all referenced resources. That does not include any soft fonts, so that comes sometimes as a surprise. This is also no longer an issue with the 2014 versions.
6. A detail for code128 barcode is, that if you were unlucky, then you could have an issue when printing a code128 barcode on a Kyocera printer as the sequence !R! could be sent to the printer (!R! is a sequence for triggering the Prescribe printer language, that is used by Kyocera) causing the remainder of the printout to disappear. The workaround is/was to change the code128 barcode font number and set Character set B only=Y. This will cause the barcode to be a bit larger, but it will also print on Kyocera. With the 2014 versions this is no longer an issue and you do not need to limit the code128 barcodes to character set B only – unless your barcode scanner is limited to reading only character set B (encoding/compression inside the barcode).