Intelligent Mail Decoder Software

Decoder Design and Support

General Functions

TPG provides support for an Intelligent Mail Decoder for the Intelligent Mail barcode (IMb).

A printed IMb consists of a string of 65 bars, each of which can be one of four symbols: an Ascender, Descender, Tracker, or Full height bar. Before printing with an IMb font, the 65-character string contains only the letters A, D, T, and F.

Since a mathematical algorithm is used to create the bar code string, it cannot be read or decoded without invoking a reverse algorithm.

The decoder software provided by TPG will accept a 65-character IMb string of A, D,T, and F characters as input, to produce six output strings containing the content of the barcode:

Mailer ID
Service Type
Barcode ID
Serial Number
Delivery Point
ZIP Code

The decoder software is coded in java, and is fully supported for a wide range of technical environments.

Decoder Platforms Supported

The Intelligent Mail Barcode Encoder is supported across most of the popular server operating systems and hardware platforms. There is also a version available for the Windows Office environment.

Support is included for the most commonly used programming languages in each operating system environment.

The Decoder operates as a stand-alone Java application. Unlike the Encoder, it is not designed to be callable from other applications. The following table shows the operating systems supported by the Decoder.


Table 1. Operating Systems Supported by Decoder Software
OS Java
z/OS, OS/390, MVS x
VSE/ESA No
OS/400 x
AIX x
Linux for pSeries x
Linux for Intel x
Linux for z/Series x
Microsoft Windows x

For the IBM System/z environment, the decoder is usable in Batch, TSO, USS, and within Websphere Application Server (WAS).

Extensive testing and optimization of the encoder software has been completed for each supported platform.