Patent ID: 8294923

Claim:
A method of obtaining printed instances of a document, the method comprising: distributing copies of electronic document data to document processors via a non-transitory medium, the electronic document data containing printing instructions for printing each instance from a respective one of the document processors; including a definition of a user data input field in the electronic document data, for receiving a user defined string of characters entered in said field; including an embedded control program with processing instructions embedded in the electronic document data, the embedded control program with processing instructions being linked to the user data input field, the embedded control program with processing instructions being distributed in the copies of the electronic document data, the embedded control program with processing instructions comprising: instructions instructing a processor to receive the user defined string of characters from the user data input field, instructions to control processing by the processor of the user defined string, instructions to derive a series of codewords from the characters in the user defined string from the linked user data input field, the embedded control program with processing instructions using the derived codewords to instruct the processor to generate commands to print geometrical elements of a bar code, the geometrical elements representing each codeword as a respective configuration of printed geometrical elements and their background in a respective area of the bar code.