Printer system for removable machine readable code

A printer system for a record containing indicia on at least a portion thereof, the printer system comprising:

• input means for receiving information to be placed on to the record;
• encoding means, coupled to the input means, for encoding the received information in an error-correctable, machine readable, two-dimensional bar code format;
• and
• output means, coupled to the encoding means, for printing the received information on the record, the output means including means for removing encoded information other than the received information from the record, and means for removably printing the received information on the record after removal of the other encoded information;
• wherein the output means further includes;
• means for detecting the presence of the encoded information on the record;
• and
• means responsive to said detection means for rendering said removing means inactive at times when the record is without encoded information.

A printer system for a record containing indicia on at least a portion thereof, the printer system comprising:

• input means for receiving information to be placed on to the record;
• encoding means, coupled to the input means, for encoding the received information in an error-correctable, machine readable, two-dimensional bar code format;
• and
• output means, coupled to the encoding means, for printing the received information on the record, the output means including means for removing encoded information other than the received information from the record, and means for removably printing the received information on the record after removal of the other encoded information;
• the means for encoding the received information in a two-dimensional bar code format includes a plurality of ordered, adjacent rows of codewords of bar-coded information from a set of codewords;
• the set of codewords is partitioned into at least three mutually exclusive clusters, each row in the two-dimensional bar code structure having at least one row indicator codeword and containing only codewords from a cluster different from the codewords in an adjacent row, and the row indicator codewords contain information regarding the number of rows in the two-dimensional bar code structure and the number of codewords in each row.

A printer system for a record containing indicia on at least a portion thereof, the printer system comprising:

• input means for receiving encoded information to be placed on to the record;
• and
• output means, for printing the received information on the record, the output means including means for removing encoded information other than the received encoded information from the record, and means for removable printing the received encoded information on the record after removal of the other encoded information;
• wherein the output means further includes;
• means for detecting the presence or absence of the other encoded information on the record;
• and
• means responsive to said detection means for rendering said removing means inactive at times when the record is absent of said other encoded information.