FAQ TBarCode OCX
QR Code® Character Set
QR Code® Character Set
QR Code was originally developed for Japanese barcode applications. The encodable character set consists of:
SHIFT JIS / CP932 contains both of these character sets and is the multibyte character set used by TBarCode for the older QR-Code implementation.
The later adopted QR Code standards changed the default encoding to Latin-1 - see next section.
QR-Code 2005 / QR-Code (ISO/IEC 18004:2015)
The newer ISO/IEC 18004:2006 and ISO/IEC 18004:2015 standards define ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) as default character set. So the “old” QR-Code uses Shift-JIS and the "new" QR-Code uses Latin-1 as default character set.
Encoding special Latin-1 characters
Encoding the full Latin-1 character set with QR-Code 1997/2000 can lead to problems – for details see Barcode Reference (section Encoding Special Latin-1 Characters).
See also FAQ: Encoding Kanji Characters in QR Code Compaction Mode.